Waylon Jennings - Honky Tonk Heroes (CD)

    This is the quintessential "Outlaw country" album. Waylon Jennings spent the early '70s working his way up to this rough-and-tumble masterpiece, arguably the finest album of his prolific career. Jennings was so taken with the songwriting of Nashville rowdy Billy Joe Shaver that he decided to record this all-Shaver album (with the exception of the Fritts/Seals-penned "You Asked Me To"), which helped put Shaver on the map as the poet laureate of the Outlaw set. Jennings eschewed the lush countrypolitan sound in favor of a raw, electrified approach that owed more to the Rolling Stones than to Billy Sherrill. With a small band and simple arrangements, he introduced contemporary rock-oriented beats into his hard-hitting country sound, adding some funky grit to Shaver's common-man poetics on tunes about the tougher side of life. HONKY TONK HEROES inspired a subsequent generation of country iconoclasts, as well as spurring on Jennings's contemporaries like Willie Nelson and Tompall Glase