Waylon Jennings: Nashville Rebel - Disc 1 (1958-1969) CD Track Listing

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Waylon Jennings Nashville Rebel - Disc 1 (1958-1969) (2006)
Nashville Rebel - Disc 1 of 4 (1958-1969)\n2006 BMG/Legacy\n\nOriginally Released September 26, 2006 \n\nAMG EXPERT REVIEW: It may be hard to believe, but it's true: Legacy's four-disc 2006 box Nashville Rebel is the first comprehensive, multi-label Waylon Jennings retrospective ever assembled. During the peak of the CD box set reissue boom of the late '80s/early '90s, Waylon did receive a quasi-box in the form of 1993's Only Daddy That'll Walk the Line: The RCA Years, an excellent double-disc set that was housed in a box yet fell short of being a true box set. Starting in the late '90s, his catalog began to be overhauled -- Buddha reissued classic individual albums like Honky Tonk Heroes, Bear Family put out two huge box sets that chronicled all of his RCA work up until 1973, then the rest of his '70s work came out as two-fers overseas, while Hip-O assembled a collection of both his earliest recordings and his '80s work for MCA -- but he still lacked a set that covered his whole career, from 1958 through 1995. That's exactly what Nashville Rebel does, and it does so in superb fashion. Any career with as much great work as Waylon's is inevitably hard to condense, even at the length of a four-disc set with 92 tracks, but Nashville Rebel does the job right, providing an accurate, compelling narrative of Jennings' career, while offering all of his biggest hits along with sharply chosen lesser-known songs and rarities that help complete the picture. Any hardcore fan might find favorite songs missing, but nobody can complain about what's here -- and that applies not only to the first three discs, which trace the prime of Waylon's career, but even the fourth, which is the rare final CD on a multi-disc set that is solid, perhaps not as gripping or timeless as the music that precedes it, but it does present a convincing case that Waylon continued to make strong music right up until the later stages of his career. And this is how Nashville Rebel is like those classic box sets of the late '80s and early '90s: there is no fluff, no needlessly chosen rarities; it simply and cleanly gives the listener the essential items from a truly great artist. There is plenty of other great music within Waylon's catalog, but if this is all somebody heard from him, they would know exactly who he was and what he meant musically. That's the goal of all lavish box sets such as this, and this is one of the few that truly achieves that goal. It's an essential item, not just for country fans, but for anybody who cares about American music of the 20th century. -- Stephen Thomas Erlewine\n\nAmazon.com Editorial Review\nThough the late Waylon Jennings has had numerous greatest-hits compilations, this four-disc box that encompasses almost half a century of music making is his first comprehensive, career-spanning anthology. While the 1970s and early '80s were plainly Jennings's commercial and creative heyday--when the Outlaw movement christened by his recording of "Ladies Love Outlaws" was in full swagger--highlights here extend from his 1958 revival of the Cajun classic "Jolie Blon" (produced by Jennings's mentor Buddy Holly) through his swan-song recordings with Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, and Kris Kristofferson as the Highwaymen. The trademark lope of Jennings's music and his penchant for self-mythologizing material give him a strong signature sound, but the anthology shows just how much musical territory he covered--from his folkish reading of Gordon Lightfoot's "(That's What You Get) For Lovin' Me" and his bluesy transformation of Little Richard's "Lucille" through his dips into the songbooks of Neil Young ("Are You Ready for the Country"), Jimmy Webb ("MacArthur Park"), and Los Lobos ("Will the Wolf Survive?"). The 140-page booklet provides thorough credits and annotation, as well as an abundance of photos of Waylon with friends, fellow musicians, and every famous person he ever met (from Muhammad Ali to Metallica's James Hetfield). --Don McLeese \n\nAmazon.com Product Description\nA previously unreleased duet with Johnny Cash is among the special tracks to be found on the Waylon Jennings boxed set "Nashville Rebel," due Sept. 26th via RLG Nashville/Legacy. \n"The Greatest Cowboy of Them All" was recorded in 1978, the same year the late Jennings' duet with Willie Nelson, "Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys," spent four weeks at No. 1 on Billboard's country chart. \n\nBeyond such hits as "Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way," "Good Hearted Woman," "I Ain't Living Long Like This," "Highwayman" and "Rose in Paradise," the four-disc collection includes two early period tracks that have never been released in the U.S.: "It's Sure Been Fun" and "People in Dallas Got Hair." \n\n"Nashville Rebel" was created in tandem with Jennings' widow Jessi Colter and their son Shooter Jennings. Liner notes were penned by Patti Smith guitarist Lenny Kaye and country historian Rich Kienzle. \n\nAMAZON.COM CUSTOMER REVIEW\nHere's a 4-CD set that's worthy of its subject, October 1, 2006\nReviewer: Joe Sixpack (...in Middle America)\nGoing toe-to-toe with the monolithic, authoritative import box sets on the Bear Family label, Sony-BMG has finally given American country fans a comprehensive, thoroughly satisfying -- and affordable! -- overview of Waylon Jennings' entire career. From his early years singing in bars in the Southwest through his entry into (and swift departure from) the Nashville establishment, on into his "outlaw" golden years, this captures Waylon at his best. \n\nDisc One, which concentrates on Jennings' early years as a 1960s "folk-country" singer in Nashville, probably has the most to offer fans who are already familiar with his big, rowdy hits of the '70s and early '80s. Although the folk-oriented material isn't as rugged or meaty as his later work, there are some soulful performances and unusual arrangements and production touches that may surprise even longtime fans. The disc is well-chosen and nicely paced, and packed with plenty of non-hit material that may be unfamiliar even to devoted Waylon fans. Discs Two and Three comprehensively document his glory years, all those fearless, funny, sad, soulful hits that stand at the very core of the outlaw/alternative country canon. Yeah, there are some songs left out, but not many, and all the major touchstones are included. The last disc skims his work in the 1980s and '90s, with the added bonus that his work for the rival MCA label is also sampled, making room for some of his later hits and one-off material. \n\nThere are a lot of good Waylon best-of collections on the market today, but this really blows most of them away. We could all think of some additional songs we'd like to see on here as well, but for anyone who just wants to get a really, really good introduction to Waylon's work, this collection oughtta do it for you.\n\nAMAZON.COM CUSTOMER REVIEW\nWaylon Done It His Way, October 30, 2006\nReviewer: Jim Newsom (Norfolk, VA)\nWaylon Jennings had one of the quintessential country music voices, a deep baritone audibly imbued with the hardscrabble upbringing of a child of itinerant farmhands who grew up to become a hard-headed, hard-boiled singer of songs on his own terms. \n\nJennings embodied the "outlaw" movement that reinvigorated country music in the 1970s. But his music career stretched back to the beginnings of rock-n-roll, when he was a disc jockey in Lubbock, Texas, who befriended rock pioneer Buddy Holly. Holly produced his first recording, a strange cover of the Cajun tune, "Jole Blon" that featured King Curtis on doo-wop saxophone. That single flopped, but Jennings was assured of being at least a footnote in the music history books even if he never recorded again: \n\nAfter breaking up his band, the Crickets, Holly recruited Jennings to play electric bass with him on the "Winter Dance Party Tour" of 1959. When the heater on the tour bus stopped working, Holly chartered a plane for himself and his band to fly from a show in Clear Lake, Iowa, to the next night's performance in Moorhead, Minnesota. But Jennings gave up his seat on the plane to J. P. Richardson, aka "the Big Bopper," because Richardson had come down with the flu. Just before the plane took off, Holly joked to Jennings, "Well, I hope your old tour bus freezes up." Jennings good naturedly replied, "I hope your darn ol' plane crashes!" \n\nAnd that's just what happened on February 3, 1959, "the day the music died." His final words to his good friend would haunt Waylon Jennings for years, and that eerie feeling that he was supposed to have been on the doomed plane would trouble him for the rest of his life. \n\nNonetheless, country music stardom was in his future, and his first hit came in 1965 with the Buck Owens-like, "Stop the World (and Let Me Off)." The next year he reached the country Top Ten with a semi-rockabilly ride through Gordon Lightfoot's "(That's What You Get) For Lovin' Me," and he flirted with the upper reaches of the country charts for the next five years with a series of singles cranked out in the efficient factory-like production style of the then-dominant "Nashville Sound." \n\nBut he was chomping at the bit, eager to make records on his own terms. His frustration peaked about the same time he learned of the record industry's indulgent treatment of rock musicians and in 1972, he successfully renegotiated his contract with RCA, freeing himself from the heavy hand of corporate Nashville and gaining control over his own recorded output. With his pal, Willie Nelson, and other free-thinking artists like Johnny Cash, Tompall Glaser, Kris Kristofferson and Hank Williams, Jr., he plotted a new direction and inspired a movement that took its name from his recording of "Ladies Love Outlaws" and was cemented with the compilation album, Wanted! The Outlaws, the first platinum-selling country album ever. \n\nBy the mid-'70s, Waylon Jennings was one of the true superstars of country music, crossing over to appeal to rockers as well with songs like "I'm a Ramblin' Man," "Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way" and "Good Hearted Woman." He closed out the decade with a string of chart toppers including "Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love)," "Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys," "I Ain't Living Long Like This," and the theme from the TV show, The Dukes of Hazzard. \n\nNashville Rebel is a four-disc set that collects 92 songs from throughout Jennings' career, opening with that Buddy Holly collaboration and continuing with late '60s hits like "The Only Daddy That'll Walk the Line," through the "Outlaw" period on into the "Highwayman" projects with Nelson, Cash and Kristofferson and concluding with a couple of latter day outings including his final Top Ten tune, "Wrong," a multi-cultural blend of marimba and dobro from 1990. \n\nAlong the way there are several duets with Willie, a few with wife Jessi Colter, and some surprises--you'd think "MacArthur Park" would be a ridiculous choice for a country singer, but Jennings actually gives his six-and-a-half minute "MacArthur Park (Revisited)" a depth not even hinted at in Richard Harris' pop hit version. \n\nThe box set takes its title from a low-budget American International straight-to-drive-in movie from 1966 in which Jennings plays a musician with "a guitar in his hand...a gal on his arm and a talent for trouble with his fists." Ironically, he would become a much more serious kind of Nashville Rebel, paving the way for a union of hippie rockers and country traditionalists that shook up the arbiters on both sides of the divide. \n\nWhile contemporary country has embraced the rock elements ol' Waylon brought into it in spades, the factory system is now as strong as it's ever been. But this box set reminds us that once upon a time, there was a man who took on Nashville's entrenched powers and triumphed by doing it his way. \n\ncopyright

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