Waylon Jennings
#
90
Ranking
Hall of Famer
BIRTHDATE
BIRTHPLACE
Littlefield
,
TX
,
USA
64
6
'
0
"
DIED
Waylon Jennings was a Littlefield, Texas-born outlaw country pioneer who escaped a life of cotton picking to become Buddy Holly's bassist, narrowly avoided the 1959 plane crash that killed his mentor, and went on to record the first platinum-selling album in country music history with "Wanted! The Outlaws," cementing his place alongside Willie Nelson as one of the most rebellious and influential figures the genre has ever produced before his death on February 13, 2002, at age 64.
Current Tour & Setlist
Waylon Jennings continued performing through the late 1990s despite declining health from diabetes and related complications, giving his final performances in 2001 before passing away at his home in Chandler, Arizona on February 13, 2002, at age 64. His legacy has been carried forward most prominently by his son Shooter Jennings, who has built his own outlaw country career and released the posthumous "Waylon Forever" album of his father's final recordings, while artists including Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, and Merle Haggard have cited him as the heart and soul of the outlaw movement. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2001, the year before his death.
Early Life
Born Wayland Arnold Jennings on June 15, 1937, near Littlefield, Texas, the eldest of four boys in a desperately poor family, he grew up in a one-room corrugated-metal lean-to with a dirt floor where his father, a sharecropper and truck driver who played harmonica and guitar, taught him his first chords, and his family gathered around the radio each week to listen to the Grand Ole Opry despite attending a Church of Christ that frowned upon musical instruments in worship. By age 10 he was working in cotton fields while teaching himself guitar, at 12 he had his own radio show singing country songs and was already performing in a local band, and at 14 he dropped out of high school to become a full-time disc jockey, seeing music as the only escape from a life of picking cotton in West Texas.
Career Highlights
After moving to Lubbock in 1954, Jennings landed a job at radio station KLLL where he befriended Buddy Holly, who became his mentor, taught him guitar licks, and in 1958 produced his first single "Jole Blon" before hiring him to play bass in the Crickets for what became Holly's final tour. On February 3, 1959, Jennings gave up his seat on the plane that crashed and killed Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper, a moment that haunted him for the rest of his life and that he later said drove him to spend years questioning whether he deserved the success he eventually found. After years of grinding through Phoenix clubs with his band the Waylors and battling RCA Records for creative control in Nashville, Jennings became a founding figure of the outlaw country movement alongside Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, and Kris Kristofferson, recording "Wanted! The Outlaws" in 1976 with Willie Nelson, Jessi Colter, and Tompall Glaser, which became the first country album in history to be certified platinum, followed by "Ol' Waylon" and the landmark hit "Luckenbach, Texas," and he later joined Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, and Kris Kristofferson as the Highwaymen, one of country's most celebrated supergroups.
Family & Personal Life
Jennings was married four times: to Maxine Lawrence (1955 to 1962), Lynne Jones (1962 to 1967), Barbara Elizabeth Rood (1967 to 1968), and finally to fellow outlaw country singer Jessi Colter in 1969, who remained his partner for the rest of his life and with whom he had son Waylon Albright Jennings, known as Shooter Jennings, born May 19, 1979. Jennings had six children in total across his marriages and relationships, battled a serious cocaine addiction throughout much of the 1970s and 1980s that left him deeply in debt and briefly bankrupt, before getting sober and spending his final years in Chandler, Arizona with Jessi, recording collaborations with his son Shooter that were released posthumously as "Waylon Forever" in 2008.
Awards
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