Waylon Jennings Album: “I've Always Been Crazy”

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Personnel include: Waylon Jennings (vocals, guitar); Fred Carter, Gordon Payne, Tony Joe White, Rance Wasson, William Joor (guitar); Ralph Mooney (steel guitar); Barny Robertson (keyboards); Sherman Hayes (bass instrument); Richie Albright (drums). <p>Recording information: 1978. <p>Though 1978's I'VE ALWAYS BEEN CRAZY was a major success for Waylon Jennings, the seams in his public image were beginning to show, with numerous songs casting aspersions on his own fame and outlaw reputation. Though Waylon had pioneered the Outlaw Country movement a few years earlier, and celebrated his rough-and-rowdy ways in song, the hard-living lot of a country superstar was taking a toll on him, and he was beginning to detail that process in a very personal way. <p>It would have been difficult to get more explicit about the issue than "Don't You Think This Outlaw Bit's Done Got Out of Hand," a sentiment reinforced by the title track's acknowledgement of Jennings's out-of-control lifestyle, and by "A Long Time Ago," which sums up his troubles with everything from love to drugs to the press. It's no coincidence that there's a higher percentage of self-penned tunes here than on many Waylon albums. If it weren't for the fact that he still sounded like a master of his mode, and was still hugely popular, I'VE ALWAYS BEEN CRAZY would have seemed like a eulogy for the Outlaw Country scene, but, in retrospect, that might be just what it is.

"I don't look the way the average cowboy singer looks," Waylon sings at the start of "A Long Time Ago", and that surely was true. He didn't sound the way your average country singer sounded, either, and for that we can all be forever grateful. In 1980, when I was 12 years old, I ordered his "I've Always Been Crazy" album on LP. That album was accidentally destroyed a few years ago, but now RCA has re-issued the set on CD for the first time. I bought mine today, and wow, if anything it's even better than I remember. Great songwriting and singing, a couple of humorous songs, a couple ballads, and most of all that great Waylon DRIVE. His cover of "Tonight the Bottle Let me Down" flies out of the speakers at about Mach 8, and even eclipses Haggard's original, in my opinion. If you like Waylon, get this CD. I think it's the finest album he ever recorded. Heck, it might just be the best country album EVER recorded. VERY HIGHLY RECCOMMENDED!!