Word: waylon
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...person who makes those curious, almost nonsensical lyrics work with his eerie back-up vocals is Waylon Jennings, almost as if Hank Sr. himself was back there howling into the 24-track tape machine. Jennings also produced this album, and to him must be given credit for the lean, Austin-like sound--this is the first Hank Jr. album in which he has gotten away from Nashville's slick guitar tracks and banks of strings that work for the Ronny Milsaps of the world. Waylon's bit in all this is interesting--he has an ego you could stretch from...
...lovin' on a featherbed, smokin' that homegrown, do it on my own--this here music from now on gone be nothin' but homegrown." That's the refrain that runs through The New South: Hank Jr. has assumed his place as the best vocalist in country music, better even than Waylon himself. If you like Hank Williams, check out Hank Jr., or "Bocephus" as he calls himself. He's got the same lonesome blood in his veins...
ABOUT A MONTH AGO Chet Flippo wrote in Rolling Stone that since Waylon Jennings was a recluse up in the hills and Willie Nelson had moved to California, the only thing that was left in Austin was the best of the country swing bands. Then he dumped some more on Waylon and Willie. So imagine my surprise when the Waylon and Willie album came out a couple weeks after that with effusive liner notes by--you guessed it, Chet Flippo--some of which bear quoting: "I humbly submit that the world needs a lot more Willie and Waylon right...
...thing is, Flippo is approaching right--we do need a little more Waylon and Willie. Their duet album is amazing, the best country album of the year by a long shot. From the first cut on side one, "Mama Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys," a tongue-in-cheek hymn to pre-professionalism ("Don't let 'em play guitars and drive them old trucks/Let 'em grow up to be lawyers and doctors and such"), you know this album is going to have some punch and humor. The crazy, whining guitars on "Mamas" come back...
...which leads into an impromptu chorus of "Goodhearted Woman." But perhaps most engaging is "The Wurlitzer Prize (I Don't Want to Get Over You)" the quintessential country song about putting quarters in the same Wurlitzer every night, playing the old songs and thinking about a woman. And even Waylon's death wish, which came through on the uneven Luchenbach album when he recorded "Sweet Caroline" and sometimes makes you think he wants to be Tom Jones or Engelbert Humperdinck, makes for a surprising cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Gold Dust Woman...