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Author Topic:  Waylon Jennings
Fred Wright

 

From:
Minocqua, Wi USA
Post  Posted 9 Jan 2018 5:49 pm    
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Please. Does anyone know what Key Waylon Jennings Sang most of his Songs in??
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Dustin Rhodes


From:
Owasso OK
Post  Posted 10 Jan 2018 9:25 am    
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A lot was in D and A. Big reason why he had the drop tuner on his E string.
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Fred Wright

 

From:
Minocqua, Wi USA
Post  Posted 10 Jan 2018 11:09 am    
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Thanks Dustin. Fred
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Dustin Rhodes


From:
Owasso OK
Post  Posted 10 Jan 2018 11:11 am    
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I will say though that there are definitely other songs he does in other keys. He does Big Balls in Cowtown in G for example.
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Jerry Overstreet


From:
Louisville Ky
Post  Posted 10 Jan 2018 1:01 pm    
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When I think of Waylon, I'm always thinking of I Don't Think Hank Done it This Way and the vamp in the key of A along with the swirl of that phaser sound. When I sit down to noodle with the guitar, that's usually the first thing I do.

Other key of A songs of his are Ain't Livin' Long Like This and Rainy Day Woman...all immediately identifiable Waylon tunes....and I get to play these regularly on pedal steel too trying hopelessly to cop a Mooney feel.

Of course he played and sang in various keys, but these songs in the key of A define the Waylon sound for me. I'm obviously a fan of his outlaw days. Not really too familiar with the early stuff.
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Mitch Drumm

 

From:
Frostbite Falls, hard by Veronica Lake
Post  Posted 10 Jan 2018 2:27 pm    
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Jerry Overstreet wrote:
I'm obviously a fan of his outlaw days. Not really too familiar with the early stuff.


Funny how he rarely if ever used steel in the first 10 years of his career.

I can't even find a picture of his band with steel from the 1960s.

I always thought that "outlaw" stuff was an affectation driven by marketers lusting after the "counter-culture" anti-establishment set. Rebels, don't you know. And Waylon gladly went along, to his financial benefit.

Can it be a coincidence that his earliest and late period photographs all show him with Carl Smith's haircut? I think not. Reverting to true form, without the affectation. The last pic in a wheelchair, taken at Chet's funeral in 2001.











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Fred Wright

 

From:
Minocqua, Wi USA
Post  Posted 10 Jan 2018 3:38 pm    
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Wow! Thanks to everyone! Fred
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Les Cargill

 

From:
Oklahoma City, Ok, USA
Post  Posted 14 Jan 2018 9:56 am    
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Mitch Drumm wrote:



I always thought that "outlaw" stuff was an affectation driven by marketers lusting after the "counter-culture" anti-establishment set. Rebels, don't you know. And Waylon gladly went along, to his financial benefit.




I dunno - he an Willie both more or less split Nashville to get off the treadmill.

The 1975 "Outlaws" record was a watershed. Willie "invented" the picnic ( congruent with Hank Williams "School Shows" ) and cleaned up. Waylon steered in to The System and got a lot better cash flow out of it - proportional to Ray Charles getting his masters back and later what Tom Petty did.

It was as much business innovation as musical stuff.

Some say the nexus was Austin, but Austin didn't last long[1], and was a lot an infestation Smile of NorCal folks fleeing the ... whatever had happened there after that.... evolved. They closed the Armadillo in 1983, so that sort of bookmarks the end of that.

[1] see also Fred Reed of "Fred on Everything".

Waylon did write "Don't You Think This Outlaw Bit Has Done Got Out of Hand?" and in 1978. But I suspect the evolution of it to that point was largely organic and less an affectation. But who knows? You either change or ... stop being.....
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