Waylon Jennings In The Beginning

Waylon Jennings

The Jennings family was like many in West Texas, subsistence farmers and odd jobbers. His folks, William Albert Jennings and Lorene Beatrice Shipley, had married in 1935, and he was the oldest child, born June l5, 1937. Littlefield was a town built around the cotton fields, carved up from a three million acre ranch that had been under the aegis of Major George Washington Littlefield at the turn of the twentieth century. The seat of Lamb County, it was bisected by the Panhandle and Santa Fe Railroad, and it was as typical a small town Texas life as could be, working in his Daddy's produce store, chasing girls through the town square, watching the cowboy pictures at the Palace Theatre.

There was music in the family - his Daddy loved to sing like Bill Monroe and pluck his guitar thumb-and-finger style, while his Momma showed him how to form his first chords - and more crackling over the radio: the Grand Ole Opry and the Louisiana Hayride and Stan's Record Rack and, one morning in the fall of 1954, the echoings of a countryish singer who sounded like no other country singer before: Elvis Presley, reprising Arthur Crudup's That's Alright, Mama and Bill Monroe's Blue Moon Of Kentucky.

Waylon himself leaned toward Hank Williams and Ernest Tubb, and soon enough was trying to emulate his idols by appearing at the weekly Palace Theatre talent shows. Finding he wasn't much good at most of the available menial labors in town, he found a job at the Voice of Lamb County, KVOW, as a disc jockey, playing a variety of music from Mantovani to country to the classics. Slowly his circle of performing expanded, and he was able to watch the rise of rock and roll first-hand when a local boy from Lubbock, Buddy Holly, had a hit record called
The Jennings family was like many in West Texas, subsistence farmers and odd jobbers. His folks, William Albert Jennings and Lorene Beatrice Shipley, had married in 1935, and he was the oldest child, born June l5, 1937. Littlefield was a town built around the cotton fields, carved up from a three million acre ranch that had been under the aegis of Major George Washington Littlefield at the turn of the twentieth century. The seat of Lamb County, it was bisected by the Panhandle and Santa Fe Railroad, and it was as typical a small town Texas life as could be, working in his Daddy's produce store, chasing girls through the town square, watching the cowboy pictures at the Palace Theatre.

There was music in the family - his Daddy loved to sing like Bill Monroe and pluck his guitar thumb-and-finger style, while his Momma showed him how to form his first chords - and more crackling over the radio: the Grand Ole Opry and the Louisiana Hayride and Stan's Record Rack and, one morning in the fall of 1954, the echoings of a countryish singer who sounded like no other country singer before: Elvis Presley, reprising Arthur Crudup's That's Alright, Mama and Bill Monroe's Blue Moon Of Kentucky.

Waylon himself leaned toward Hank Williams and Ernest Tubb, and soon enough was trying to emulate his idols by appearing at the weekly Palace Theatre talent shows. Finding he wasn't much good at most of the available menial labors in town, he found a job at the Voice of Lamb County, KVOW, as a disc jockey, playing a variety of music from Mantovani to country to the classics. Slowly his circle of performing expanded, and he was able to watch the rise of rock and roll first-hand when a local boy from Lubbock, Buddy Holly, had a hit record called That'll Be The Day.
Excerpt from the book BCD 16320 - Waylon Jennings - The Journey: Destiny's Child - Read more at: https://www.bear-family.com/jennings-waylon-the-journey-destiny-s-child-6-cd.html
https://www.bear-family.com/jennings-waylon/
Copyright © Bear Family Records

Auszug aus dem Buch BCD 16320 - Waylon Jennings - The Journey: Destiny's Child - Lesen Sie mehr unter: https://www.bear-family.com/jennings-waylon-the-journey-destiny-s-child-6-cd.html
https://www.bear-family.com/jennings-waylon/
Copyright © Bear Family Records