Waylon Jennings – Nashville Rebel (4-CD box) / Waylon Sings Hank Williams
Oddly enough, there hasn’t been a career-spanning, cross-label set of Waylon’s music until now, let alone one that’s well-conceived, carefully selected, and well-documented. The four-disc Nashville Rebel box is all of that.
The set’s lavish, photo-filled book provides sweet musical remembrances by Jessi Colter and Shooter Jennings, plus detailed essays by Lenny Kaye and Rich Kienzle tracking Waylon’s rollercoaster life, his career arc, and the context of the 92 mainly indelible recordings included here. The hits and key LP cuts from the late ’50s through the ’90s are here, from pre-RCA sides of his Buddy Holly band days on through his RCA Nashville years, the world stardom of the Outlaw country era, and on to latter day, often affecting recordings from MCA and Capitol. There are pairings with Anita Carter, Jessi, and his Highwaymen buddies.
For listeners who’ve concentrated solely on the electrifying 1970s Waylon with his own band, or who have overinvested in the myth that his music was perpetually hamstrung by Bad Guys from Nashville before that, the first third of this collection provides new perspective.
With Nashville Sound musicians assigned to play with him (greats Jerry Reed, Pig Robbins, Roy Huskey Jr., Buddy Harman, and Floyd Cramer among them; the horror!), Jennings made a lot of great and varied records before 1972 — some nearly indistinguishable from the later ones in sound. This box isn’t called Nashville Rebel (the title of his mid-’60s movie and its title song) for nothing; Waylon was out there, edgy and experimental and playing off tradition, years before “the outlaw bit done got out of hand.”
Waylon’s best-known gifts — a spine-tingling voice that powered his fierce, rocking side, yet could be singularly delicate; a song sense that led to remarkably apt, sharp material choices once it was set loose; musical drive that brought country an irresistible, propulsive new rhythm of his own devising; and a masterful way with a Telecaster — are repeatedly demonstrated here on the less familiar sides as much as the hits.
The man’s less frequently noted gifts grow clearer toward the end. He had a readily apparent, if measured, modesty, built on perspective, intelligence and a fundamental sense of respect for others. Take, for example, his renditions of the balanced “yes, but” patriotic song “America” and the self-penned, utterly credible and personal spiritual testament “I Do Believe”. The total absence of belligerence in these nonetheless pointed songs would be well worth a fresh listen by some of the man’s alleged disciples today.
The lack of bluster was just a part of Jennings’ straight-talking, entirely adult art, which was never too “tough” to fear celebrating the sweet in his world.
In that context, Waylon’s never-before-released 1985 recording of Hank Williams songs is a revelation for the surprising ways he’s not always so comfortable with Hank’s material. Give Waylon a piece of Cajun-influenced rhythm such as “Jambalaya” and he’s at home. A less familiar Williams song, “Why Should We Try Anymore?”, works too, for the unusual, two-sided “we” in its sentiment.
But when Waylon takes on Hank’s “woman, you’ve left me bleeding” songs — from “Cold Cold Heart” to “Half As Much” — they just lie there unconnected, seemingly sung by rote. Waylon feeds off of that Ernest Tubb-derived southwestern part of Williams’ music, but that cryin’, southeastern Roy Acuff side, not so much. There was always more rockabilly “I’m not gonna take it” to his singing than ’40s-style crying in his beer. Waylon, left to his own devices, always sang who he was; and, as this held-back salute inadvertently shows, that wasn’t exactly Hank.