The “up country” boys that fancied themselves cowboys and ruled the back of my high school bus often sang “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys” on the twenty five mile ride back home from school. I hated that song for a long time, associating it with being oppressed by lunkheads. Even after I started to love country music, I held this song at arm’s length. And in full disclosure, I took my time getting into Waylon and Willie, as if they were the ringleaders of that gang of sad losers at the back of my bus.
Over the past ten years, I’ve finally delved into the catalogues of Waylon and Willie and discovered that I was depriving myself of much enjoyment and inspiration by these two geniuses. Furthermore, I’ve come to realize the melancholy (albiet romantic melancholy) inherent in “Mammas,” and by extension the sadness of being a cowpoke who’s too afraid to get off the mountain. But perhaps I project…
Anyway, that’s my lead in for Waylon and Willie’s duel album, Waylon & Willie. For what was probably more than a bit of a commercial cash in effort/contractual obligation filler (and an excuse to snort mountains of cocaine), this is a pretty solid record. Despite the the embossed, “hand tooled” leather look of the cover that frames the painted portrait of our heroes and looks like one of those modern Jesus paintings from the seventies, despite the presence of the previously recorded by both Willie and Waylon “It’s Not Supposed to Be That Way” and “Pick Up the Tempo,” despite all that, it holds up pretty well.
Let’s talk about cocaine for a second. It’s interesting that the sole compositional collaboration between Waylon and Willie, “I Can Get Off on You,” begins with the line: Take back the weed, take back the cocaine, baby. The implication in this Jimmy Buffetesque trifle is that Willie and Waylon can get off on their ladies without all them mind alterin’ drugs and such, thank you very much. Probably something they cooked up when they were in the doghouse with their respective significant others (and no doubt, coke was somewhere in the mix). As Waylon quotes Willie in his memoir Waylon, “It (getting Waylon into trouble) keeps Waylon alert.”
The other coke song on this record is Stevie Nicks’s “Gold Dust Woman.” Yep, that’s right. And man, does Waylon gave it the full Waylon treatment. I think this song really spoke to him, he sings it like he means it—with tons of soul. My favorite song of the week.
Willie stands out on “If You Can Touch Her at All” and “A Couple More Years”—sing it, Willie!
This one’s for you, cowboys on the back of the bus!
Next Up: A couple of Jewish-themed records. My grandparents will be so proud!
