Country Music

Classic Country Music Hits

Country Music

In 1989, Waylon Jennings began studying for his high school equivalency exam on his tour bus. When he struggled with the math, his young son Shooter helped him. Waylon had been telling the boy that education mattered. Eventually, he became uncomfortable with the unfinished business behind his own advice. He had left school decades earlier, and a successful recording career had never changed his opinion of that decision. Now he was asking his son to finish something he had walked away from himself. Recovering from heart surgery gave him time to think about it. In a later interview, he explained that the lectures had begun to feel like words he had not earned. So he enrolled in Kentucky Educational Television’s GED program and worked through the lessons. Fractions and algebra brought a reversal neither a concert audience nor a record company would normally see: Waylon needed help, and Shooter had something to teach him. Waylon’s account, Phoenix New Times He passed the examination in December 1989. The certificate followed in 1990. At fifty-two, the achievement belonged beside a career’s worth of honors, although it had required a kind of work his audience had never bought a ticket to watch. Contemporary report, Los Angeles Times The decision also belonged to a larger effort at home. Waylon spoke openly about having been too occupied with making a living and becoming successful when his older children were growing up. He could not recover those years. With Shooter, he was trying to pay closer attention while there was still time. By 1993, he was visiting schools, speaking about education, and performing for children—including his son’s classmates. He wore a ring from Littlefield High School, the Texas school he had left. Those classroom visits gave his old advice a different weight. When Waylon asked children to stay in school, he could tell them where he had struggled, who had helped him, and how long he had waited. Shooter had heard the advice at home. He had also helped his father do the homework.

“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.”

WAYLON JENNINGS, SHOOTER, AND THE WORK OF STARTING AGAIN

A Father’s Unfinished Education

Waylon’s explanation for returning to his studies was unusually direct. He disliked telling Shooter to value something while leaving his own failure to finish untouched.

His fame offered plenty of material for an argument that school had been unnecessary. Waylon declined to make that argument. Looking back, he regarded leaving as a mistake, even after music had given him a living far beyond anything his younger self could have expected.

Passing the examination would not revise that early decision. It would give him a way to act on what he now believed. Phoenix New Times interview

Lessons That Could Travel

KET’s study-at-home approach made education available outside a conventional classroom. The broadcaster had launched its second-generation GED series and home-study initiative in 1985. For an adult whose working life involved travel, recorded instruction offered a practical route back. KET’s institutional history

Waylon studied aboard the bus. The account leaves no elaborate scene of a midnight revelation, only the ordinary machinery of catching up: lessons, material to understand, and an examination still to pass.

A Bus Was Familiar Ground

For Shooter, the road had been part of family life long before homework entered the picture. He later remembered traveling with his parents before he started school, then joining them during summers.

He remembered sleeping on the bus and hearing the shows. Concerts were so closely associated with childhood bedtime that, as an adult, he joked about becoming sleepy at performances.

That background makes the educational episode less like an unlikely meeting between a celebrity and a child. This was their family’s working environment. Within it, the younger Jennings briefly knew more about the problem in front of them. Shooter’s interview, Country Music Dads

What Success Had Taken

In his 1993 interview, Waylon acknowledged mistakes with his older children. He connected them to the years spent pursuing work and success.

There was no claim that being more involved with Shooter settled those earlier accounts. His admission allowed both realities to remain: children whose growing-up years he had missed, and a younger son with whom he was trying to behave differently.

The GED belongs within that effort. It required him to be present as someone still learning, rather than someone whose experience automatically supplied every answer. Deseret News

Listening to a Small Boy

Fatherhood was also entering his writing. The children’s album Cowboys, Sisters, Rascals & Dirt included material shaped by Shooter’s experiences.

One story drew partly on the boy having been the smallest child at school. 1993 interview, Los Angeles Times

That is a different scale of attention from watching a child grow taller between tours. It involves noticing what being small feels like while the child is still living through it.

What Waylon’s Second Education Really Leaves Behind

The most revealing part of the GED story happens before the result.

A father had something he wanted his son to learn about responsibility. To follow his own advice, he had to accept instruction from that same boy.

The certificate recorded an examination passed. Their work together had already given Shooter another experience of his father: capable of being wrong, willing to begin again, and willing to let his child help.

Video

Related Post

Country Music

On his 1971 recording of “The Pilgrim: Chapter 33,” Kris Kristofferson begins by explaining that the song started with his friend Chris Gantry. Then the names keep coming. Johnny Cash. Dennis Hopper. Jerry Jeff Walker. Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. Before the first verse, the portrait has already outgrown the person who prompted it. Gantry belonged to the Nashville circle Kristofferson had entered in the 1960s: writers trying to make a living from songs while figuring out what kind of lives they wanted. He wrote “Dreams of the Everyday Housewife,” which Glen Campbell recorded in 1968. But in Kristofferson’s song, a friend would become something more complicated than a successful songwriter with a recognizable credit. Gantry’s Nashville background, FolkWorks The man in “The Pilgrim” has ability and failings, memories of better circumstances, and a stubborn attachment to the course he has chosen. Kristofferson gives him no tidy transformation. The damage remains visible alongside the qualities that make him worth knowing. Years later, Kris explained why so many people had entered the song. He had begun with Gantry and others, but he was also writing about himself. The distance between the singer and the man he described was smaller than the introduction suggested. Kristofferson’s interview, Lone Star Music Even the number in the title came from that shared life. Speaking to Terry Gross, Kristofferson recalled being thirty-three in Peru with Dennis Hopper and hearing people connect the age with Christ. The association stayed with him. “Chapter 33” placed the song in a particular season of adulthood, when a man could already have made consequential mistakes without knowing where they would lead. Fresh Air interview The song appeared on The Silver Tongued Devil and I. Years afterward, Kristofferson performed it with Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Willie Nelson as the Highwaymen, the four men taking turns through its portrait of an imperfect life. Official biography · Live: American Outlaws liner notes, PBS Cash had once been a name in the introduction. Now he helped sing the character into being. The song had become something its writer could share with the people he had been trying to understand—without asking any of them to pretend they had lived more neatly.

Country Music

In 1981, Buck Owens began wandering through the offices on the Bakersfield block that carried his name. The studios were still working. His radio stations were still broadcasting. People had desks, calls and deadlines. Buck would sit with them for a while, then move to another room. Two years earlier, he had stopped recording. In 1980, he stopped touring. After decades of airports and late shows, he had expected to enjoy the freedom. He played golf, then tennis, then more golf. The empty hours kept coming. Buck later spoke plainly about that period: he had grown bored and deeply depressed. His wife Jennifer could see that retirement was wearing on him. At the offices, he sensed that the people around him could see it too. Owning a busy business was different from having work that required him to get up and meet a particular day. Late in 1985, he noticed a small advertisement seeking an investment partner for a local publication. Buck bought 51 percent of the business, then purchased the remaining 49 percent the following month. He turned the monthly publication into a weekly shopper delivered around Bakersfield. There was no stage in it for him. A shopper had to be filled, printed and sent out again whether its owner felt inspired or not. Buck took to the work with an energy that surprised him. In a 1987 interview, he called the publishing venture a lifesaver; by then, he said, the weekly was going to 110,000 homes. The familiar account of Buck’s quieter years usually runs from the loss of Don Rich to his eventual return alongside Dwight Yoakam. Both belong to his story. So do the years between them, when a man who had spent much of his life making records discovered that golf could not organize a week. By the time another generation was ready to hear Buck Owens sing again, Bakersfield households had already been receiving something from him every seven days.

Country Music

By the mid-1980s, Susan Walker was looking at a country-music career that had generated famous songs, hundreds of road dates—and an American Express debt of roughly $90,000. The card had absorbed hotel rooms, airline tickets, meals and the daily expense of keeping Jerry Jeff Walker’s band moving. American Express eventually sued. The IRS was also demanding unpaid taxes. Jerry Jeff could joke about how astonishing it was that the company had allowed the balance to climb so high. Susan had to help determine how they were going to pay it. A decade earlier, Jerry Jeff had stood near the center of the Texas progressive-country movement. He recorded ¡Viva Terlingua! in Luckenbach, wrote “Mr. Bojangles,” championed songs by Guy Clark and surrounded himself with the musicians who helped make Austin an alternative to Nashville. During the busiest years, he released eight albums and played as many as 200 dates annually. Jerry Jeff later acknowledged that much of the pace had been sustained by alcohol and drugs. Susan saw the other machinery: invoices, taxes, contracts, hotel bills and a catalog whose ownership and availability depended upon decisions being made far from the stage. When record sales and performance fees weakened in the early 1980s, she did more than ask her husband to slow down. Susan began studying contract law, music publishing, copyright, booking practices and road logistics. She gathered the scattered pieces of a career that had been run as though the next concert would somehow settle the previous night’s bill. In 1986, the couple formed Tried & True Music. It was a record company, management office, booking operation and publishing center constructed around one client: Jerry Jeff Walker. They temporarily let the band go, and Jerry Jeff toured alone with his guitar. Because much of his older catalog was out of print, Tried & True assembled twenty-four songs as Gypsy Songman. The collection was issued on cassette, light enough to carry and simple enough to sell directly after solo performances. Rykodisc later picked it up for international CD distribution. Susan built the rest through paper newsletters, mailing lists and direct contact with listeners who became known as the Tried & True Warriors. The audience no longer waited for a major label to decide whether Jerry Jeff deserved another release. His family could record the music, tell fans it existed and place it directly into their hands. The songs still wandered through Luckenbach, Austin, New Orleans and Belize. Behind them, Susan kept the contracts current, the bookings organized and the catalog in print. By then, Jerry Jeff’s career no longer depended upon behaving like an outlaw. It depended upon envelopes leaving the office with the correct names and addresses.

You Missed

Country Music

On his 1971 recording of “The Pilgrim: Chapter 33,” Kris Kristofferson begins by explaining that the song started with his friend Chris Gantry. Then the names keep coming. Johnny Cash. Dennis Hopper. Jerry Jeff Walker. Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. Before the first verse, the portrait has already outgrown the person who prompted it. Gantry belonged to the Nashville circle Kristofferson had entered in the 1960s: writers trying to make a living from songs while figuring out what kind of lives they wanted. He wrote “Dreams of the Everyday Housewife,” which Glen Campbell recorded in 1968. But in Kristofferson’s song, a friend would become something more complicated than a successful songwriter with a recognizable credit. Gantry’s Nashville background, FolkWorks The man in “The Pilgrim” has ability and failings, memories of better circumstances, and a stubborn attachment to the course he has chosen. Kristofferson gives him no tidy transformation. The damage remains visible alongside the qualities that make him worth knowing. Years later, Kris explained why so many people had entered the song. He had begun with Gantry and others, but he was also writing about himself. The distance between the singer and the man he described was smaller than the introduction suggested. Kristofferson’s interview, Lone Star Music Even the number in the title came from that shared life. Speaking to Terry Gross, Kristofferson recalled being thirty-three in Peru with Dennis Hopper and hearing people connect the age with Christ. The association stayed with him. “Chapter 33” placed the song in a particular season of adulthood, when a man could already have made consequential mistakes without knowing where they would lead. Fresh Air interview The song appeared on The Silver Tongued Devil and I. Years afterward, Kristofferson performed it with Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Willie Nelson as the Highwaymen, the four men taking turns through its portrait of an imperfect life. Official biography · Live: American Outlaws liner notes, PBS Cash had once been a name in the introduction. Now he helped sing the character into being. The song had become something its writer could share with the people he had been trying to understand—without asking any of them to pretend they had lived more neatly.

Country Music

In 1981, Buck Owens began wandering through the offices on the Bakersfield block that carried his name. The studios were still working. His radio stations were still broadcasting. People had desks, calls and deadlines. Buck would sit with them for a while, then move to another room. Two years earlier, he had stopped recording. In 1980, he stopped touring. After decades of airports and late shows, he had expected to enjoy the freedom. He played golf, then tennis, then more golf. The empty hours kept coming. Buck later spoke plainly about that period: he had grown bored and deeply depressed. His wife Jennifer could see that retirement was wearing on him. At the offices, he sensed that the people around him could see it too. Owning a busy business was different from having work that required him to get up and meet a particular day. Late in 1985, he noticed a small advertisement seeking an investment partner for a local publication. Buck bought 51 percent of the business, then purchased the remaining 49 percent the following month. He turned the monthly publication into a weekly shopper delivered around Bakersfield. There was no stage in it for him. A shopper had to be filled, printed and sent out again whether its owner felt inspired or not. Buck took to the work with an energy that surprised him. In a 1987 interview, he called the publishing venture a lifesaver; by then, he said, the weekly was going to 110,000 homes. The familiar account of Buck’s quieter years usually runs from the loss of Don Rich to his eventual return alongside Dwight Yoakam. Both belong to his story. So do the years between them, when a man who had spent much of his life making records discovered that golf could not organize a week. By the time another generation was ready to hear Buck Owens sing again, Bakersfield households had already been receiving something from him every seven days.

Country Music

In 1989, Waylon Jennings began studying for his high school equivalency exam on his tour bus. When he struggled with the math, his young son Shooter helped him. Waylon had been telling the boy that education mattered. Eventually, he became uncomfortable with the unfinished business behind his own advice. He had left school decades earlier, and a successful recording career had never changed his opinion of that decision. Now he was asking his son to finish something he had walked away from himself. Recovering from heart surgery gave him time to think about it. In a later interview, he explained that the lectures had begun to feel like words he had not earned. So he enrolled in Kentucky Educational Television’s GED program and worked through the lessons. Fractions and algebra brought a reversal neither a concert audience nor a record company would normally see: Waylon needed help, and Shooter had something to teach him. Waylon’s account, Phoenix New Times He passed the examination in December 1989. The certificate followed in 1990. At fifty-two, the achievement belonged beside a career’s worth of honors, although it had required a kind of work his audience had never bought a ticket to watch. Contemporary report, Los Angeles Times The decision also belonged to a larger effort at home. Waylon spoke openly about having been too occupied with making a living and becoming successful when his older children were growing up. He could not recover those years. With Shooter, he was trying to pay closer attention while there was still time. By 1993, he was visiting schools, speaking about education, and performing for children—including his son’s classmates. He wore a ring from Littlefield High School, the Texas school he had left. Those classroom visits gave his old advice a different weight. When Waylon asked children to stay in school, he could tell them where he had struggled, who had helped him, and how long he had waited. Shooter had heard the advice at home. He had also helped his father do the homework.

Country Music

By the mid-1980s, Susan Walker was looking at a country-music career that had generated famous songs, hundreds of road dates—and an American Express debt of roughly $90,000. The card had absorbed hotel rooms, airline tickets, meals and the daily expense of keeping Jerry Jeff Walker’s band moving. American Express eventually sued. The IRS was also demanding unpaid taxes. Jerry Jeff could joke about how astonishing it was that the company had allowed the balance to climb so high. Susan had to help determine how they were going to pay it. A decade earlier, Jerry Jeff had stood near the center of the Texas progressive-country movement. He recorded ¡Viva Terlingua! in Luckenbach, wrote “Mr. Bojangles,” championed songs by Guy Clark and surrounded himself with the musicians who helped make Austin an alternative to Nashville. During the busiest years, he released eight albums and played as many as 200 dates annually. Jerry Jeff later acknowledged that much of the pace had been sustained by alcohol and drugs. Susan saw the other machinery: invoices, taxes, contracts, hotel bills and a catalog whose ownership and availability depended upon decisions being made far from the stage. When record sales and performance fees weakened in the early 1980s, she did more than ask her husband to slow down. Susan began studying contract law, music publishing, copyright, booking practices and road logistics. She gathered the scattered pieces of a career that had been run as though the next concert would somehow settle the previous night’s bill. In 1986, the couple formed Tried & True Music. It was a record company, management office, booking operation and publishing center constructed around one client: Jerry Jeff Walker. They temporarily let the band go, and Jerry Jeff toured alone with his guitar. Because much of his older catalog was out of print, Tried & True assembled twenty-four songs as Gypsy Songman. The collection was issued on cassette, light enough to carry and simple enough to sell directly after solo performances. Rykodisc later picked it up for international CD distribution. Susan built the rest through paper newsletters, mailing lists and direct contact with listeners who became known as the Tried & True Warriors. The audience no longer waited for a major label to decide whether Jerry Jeff deserved another release. His family could record the music, tell fans it existed and place it directly into their hands. The songs still wandered through Luckenbach, Austin, New Orleans and Belize. Behind them, Susan kept the contracts current, the bookings organized and the catalog in print. By then, Jerry Jeff’s career no longer depended upon behaving like an outlaw. It depended upon envelopes leaving the office with the correct names and addresses.