Before Waylon Jennings Was A Country Music Outlaw, He Was Waylon Jennings ‘Folk Country’
What became known as the 'Outlaw Movement' in country music wouldn't happen for another decade. This was 1966.
Ten years before artist's like Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Jessi Colter, Tompall Glaser, Johnny Paycheck, David Allan Coe and others would become world famous for leading that 'outlaw movement', it was artist's like Buck Owens, Marty Robbins, Eddy Arnold, Sonny James and Johnny Cash (already something of a music outlaw himself) dominated the country music charts.
But let's get back to that artist we would come to call Ol' Waylon.
Already well known, but no where near the fame he would find in the 1970's, it's interesting to note that on his 1966 RCA album Leavin Town, he was being billed as 'folk country'. And prominently stamped on the front of the album are the words 'Nashville Sound'.
It's well documented that Waylon (as well as many of the others who would spearhead the 'outlaw' movement) really didn't fit in comfortably with that 'Nashville Sound'. And so, in the mid 1970's, the sound became more raw and the hair became a lot longer, the clothes certainly more, ah, casual.
But give a listen to Waylon Jennings from almost a half century ago, from that 1966 Leavin' Town album, a song called 'Time Will Tell The Story'. It's there, even then...that deep voice that we all came to know and love in songs like 'Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way', 'I've Always Been Crazy' and 'Luckenback Texas'.
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