Country music from a fan's point of view since 2008
Many of Waylon’s early albums have been made available during the digital. For some reason one of my very favorite albums, Ladies Love Outlaws, has never been made available except as an mp3. There is a CD available bearing this title but it is not this album, instead being a sampler album of miscellaneous tracks.
Released in September 1972, the album reached #11 on Bilboard’s country album charts despite being relatively bereft of single releases, with only a cover of an old Buck Owens hit “Under Your Spell Again” with wife Jessi Colter being released as a single (it reached #39) .
In his autobiography Waylon says that RCA released the album without his consent and he regarded most of the tracks as being little more than demos or ‘scratch’ tracks. That may be true, but Waylon’s demos are superior to 90% of what I hear on the radio these days.
The album opens with the title track, written by Lee Clayton, which was never issued as a single by Waylon, although the song received considerable airplay in my area. Jimmy Rabbitt & The Renegades had a marginally successful single with the song in 1980. Waylon and Jessi are mentioned in one of the verses of the song.
Jessi liked Cadillacs and diamonds on her hands
Waymore had a reputation as a lady’s man
Then one night, her light of love finally gave a sign
Jessi parked her Cadillac and got herself in line‘Cause ladies love outlaws
Like babies love a bunch of stray dogs
Ladies touch babies like a banker touches gold
Outlaws touch ladies somewhere deep down in their soul
Next up is a cover of the Three Dog Night song “Never Been To Spain”. The song and arrangement fit Waylon’s voice well, but the vocal clearly is not intended as a final vocal. Hoyt Axton wrote the song.
“Sure Didn’t Take Him Long” is a Waylon Jennings composition about the rounder who stole his woman.
My long and lean and hungry looks really used to turn her on
Till she found two hundred pounds or true love muscle and bone
I made up my mind to keep what was mine, he made up my mind I was wrong
To take my Ann took a hell of a man but it sure didn’t take him too long
“Crazy Arms” is one of the great country songs, a major hit for Ray Price and a song that has been recorded by dozens of country artists. Waylon’s steel guitar player Ralph Mooney co-wrote the song and I think Waylon included the song on the album as a tribute to him.
“Revelation” is simply the best song on the album, although releasing religious songs as singles in the early 1970s was normally a career killer. Bobby Braddock wrote the song, which Joe Nichols included on an album a few years ago. Joe’s version is good but no one will ever top Waylon’s dramatic version
Somewhere in Vietnam a 19-year-old soldier walked out of a barroom
And he said “I must be seeing things, that bourbon hit me like a baseball bat”
In Belfast Ireland a little lady dropped her shovel in her garden
She raced across the yard and ask her neighbor Mrs Clancy what was thatIn Memphis Tennessee a teacher raised the window closest to the river
And the children in her classroom swore they’d heard a choir singing down the street
In Washington DC a private secretary’s lips began to quiver
And the President just put aside his papers and rose quickly to his feetI lay in a cheap motel in the arms of someone else’s woman
When a loud explosion rocked the room and turned the morning into night
I jumped out of bed and ran into the street with hardly any clothes on
As the sky lit up my heart stood still and I could feel my face was turnin’ whiteAll at once the clouds rolled back and there stood Jesus Christ in all his glory
And I realized the saddest eyes I’d ever seen were lookin’ straight at me
I guess I was awakened by the penetrating sounds of my own screamin’
And it didn’t take me long to stumble out of bed and fall down on my knees
As tears rolled down my face I cried dear God I’m thankful I was only dreamin’
And if I never go to hell, Lord, it’ll be because you scared it out of me
Larry Collins and Alex Harvey wrote “Delta Dawn”, which was Tanya Tucker’s debut single in 1972, and was an international pop hit for Helen Reddy in 1973. Because of those two versions, listeners tend to think of the song as a ‘female’ song but Waylon sings it well with the right amount of empathy in his vocals.
“Frisco Depot was a Mickey Newbury song that Waylons tackles with aplomb. The song is a slow ballad with steel guitar and acoustic guitar dominating the mix
“Thanks”, co-written by Irish folk singer Phil Coulter and Scottish folk singer Bill Martin, is a quiet folk song, or perhaps a song of praise for one of life’s more important treasures:
Sunday morning in the valley we would gather for the service
Emily Jane would run to meet me, she’d smile at papa kinda nervous
All the people came from miles around, I can still hear the sound
As they sang thanks to the Lord for the sun up in the sky
For the corn that’s growing high and for the child that didn’t die
Thanks to the Lord for the crops and for the farm
For the strength in my right arm and for keepin’ us from harm
Thanks, thanks, thanks, thanks, thanks, to the Lord for a girl like Emily Jane
“I Think It’s Time She Learned” is credited to Waylon Jennings and Mirriam Eddy (aka Jessi Colter). The song features a nice steel guitar introduction by Ralph Mooney, and is a song about a man leaving a woman who never returned his love for her.
How many times must I tell her
How many times must I say
I won’t be around to pick her up again
From now on she’ll have to find her own way.How many years have I loved her
While she stood by so unconcerned
But the things she don’t know I’ll teach her when I go
She’s been wrong and I think it’s time she learned.
The album closed with the Buck Owens-Dusty Rhodes classic “Under Your Spell Again”, performed as a duet with wife Jessi Colter.
“Never Been To Spain” is the weakest track on the album mostly because of the rough vocals, and even it isn’t a bad track.
I’m calling this an A- because there are little finishing touches that could have greatly improved the album.
One of the hottest male-female duet acts of the early 80s, David Frizzell and Shelly West released four studio albums together. None of them ever had a CD release, nor are they currently in print. However, this 2009 anthology includes all of their big hits, plus a few misses and some key alubm cuts, and provides a more than adequate overview of their duet career.
The younger brother of Lefty Frizzell, David had had a singles deal with Columbia from 1970 to 1976. Only one of those recordings, 1970’s “I Just Can’t Stop Believin'” (not included in this collection) cracked the Top 40; the rest languished in obscurity on the lower rungs of the charts. His younger brother Allen joined his band in 1977. Alan had been the lead guitarist for Dottie West, and had married West’s daughter Shelly. Shelly began performing with David, and eventually they caught the attention of producer Snuff Garrett. Their big break came in 1981 when their recording of “You’re The Reason God Made Oklahoma” was included in the Clint Eastwood film Any Which Way You Can. The song was written by the legendary Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, along with Larry Collins and Sandy Pinkard. It reached the #1 spot on the Billboard country singles chart. It was the duo’s biggest hit, telling the story of a couple dealing with a painful separation when one of them leaves their hometown for the bright lights of the big city. It’s a theme that the duo would explore a number of times, beginning with their follow-up hit “Texas State of Mind”, which peaked at #9 and the following year’s “Another Honky-tonk Night On Broadway”, which reached #8. Of the three songs, it isn’t difficult to see why “Oklahoma” is the best-remembered (the other two have been virtually forgotten); it is the best-written of the three songs and also managed to avoid some of the early 80s production excesses that marred the other two records; there is a somewhat intrusive string section on “Texas State of Mind”. While this is less of a problem on “Broadway”, “Oklahoma” sounds the least dated and would stand a reasonable chance at success today with very little tinkering to the arrangement.
In between “Texas State of Mind” and “Another Honky-tonk Night on Broadway”, Frizzell and West did an excellent cover version of Roger Miller’s “Husbands and Wives”, which peaked at #16. One of Miller’s more serious efforts, his original 1966 version had reached #5, as well as reaching #26 on the Hot 100. Brooks & Dunn would cover it again in 1998 and take it all the way to #1 on the country charts. Their version also reached the Hot 100, peaking at #36.
Frizzell and West stopped recording together after 1985. It was speculated that West’s acrimonious divorce from Allen Frizzell was a contributing factor, but the rest of the songs in this collection — and their performances on the charts — suggest that the official reason, a lack of good duet material, was probably the truth. The duo had only one more Top 10 hit, 1982’s “I Just Came Here To Dance”, a cover of an R&B hit by Peabo Bryson and Roberta Flack. The Frizzell and West version is barely country, yet managed to reach #4. Their next release, the decent but somewhat overproduced “Please Surrender” only reached #43. 1983’s “Cajun Invitation” was a song that I liked a lot when it was first released, but it sounds very cheesy today. The duo reached the Top 20 two more times in 1984 with the beautiful “Silent Partners” and “It’s a Be-Together Night”. Their final single together “Do Me Right”, released in 1985, failed to chart at all.
Also included in this collection are some very good non-single releases. “Carryin’ On The Family Names”, which was the title track of their first duet album, name checks other stars such as Hank Williams Jr., Rex Allen Jr., Debby Boone, and Crystal Gayle, who, like David and Shelly, were trying to emerge from the shadows of their more famous relatives. Also quite good is a medey of “The Wild Side of Life” and “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky-tonk Angels” which are performed as a single song, much like Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter had earlier done. Missing the mark entirely, however is a cover version of the 1963 Ruby and the Romantics’ R&B hit “Our Day Will Come.”
The collection does not include any of David or Shelly’s solo hits, which is a shame, because there is sufficient room on the disc for “I’m Gonna Hire a Wino To Decorate Our Home”, “Lost My Baby Blues”, “Jose Cuervo” and “Flight 309 To Tennessee”. It does, however, include one solo performance by Shelly of “I Just Fall In Love Again”, which is very good, though it does not compare with Anne Murray’s version that topped the country charts for three weeks in 1979.
David and Shelly’s careers — as a duo and as solo artists — were largely over before the CD era, so very little of their work was ever released in that format. This collection appears to about the best that is currently available, and will suffice for all but the most die-hard fans.
Grade: B+
My Kind of Country 