Waylon Read online

  Lubbock was the biggest city in the south plains, the Hub of the Plains, as they liked to say. KLLL, the station started up by the Corbins, hit that town like a truckload of geese. They bought it, hired me, and there we were, shit-on-the-boot cowboys ready to take on the competition. KDAV had already staked out their claim; they were country, and we were country. There was nothing left but to go to war.

  We started using the station’s studio as a production center. I taught them how to do jingles, and we prided ourselves in being airtight. In those days, KDAV would be very loose and sloppy. “Here’s Hank Williams,” they’d say, and there’d be some dead space and then the record would start. We’d cue that record right up to the groove and let it go when we finished talking. KDAV read all their commercials; we produced them.

  We didn’t make fun as much as cut up about being country. We used it as humor. Instead of “Friends and neighbors, y’all,” we’d say “Hi there, all you friends and neighbors out in radiolint.”

  We did remotes from local grocery stores and meat markets. I’d sing a little, and talk to the owners, Morris Fruit and Vegetables at 704 East Broadway, or his competitor, George Sewall. Ten pounds of flour for forty-nine cents, twenty-five pounds of potatoes for just seventy-nine cents, sausage at three pounds for a dollar, mustard greens at ten cents a bunch; where you can save yourself a bushel of money, friend, on good vittles. One time I said, “Come on down to George’s Fruit and Vegetables. You can’t beat George’s meat.” The phones lit up pretty bright after that one, and those cards and letters kept comin’ in.

  Nobody knew what to make of us. People went crazy because of all these “hillbillies” up at the station. The secretaries in the Great Plains Life Building would walk past on their way to the restaurant at the end of the hall and they’d stare through the glass at us. I think they liked what they saw, and we’d be looking back at them, especially Ray “Slim” Corbin, who was my best friend for many years. We were wilder than guineas.

  Hi Pockets joined us from KDAV, and he became one of the four main K-triple-L disc jockeys. It was a daytime station, though we used to have a guy who was a holdover with the station, named Mr. Sunshine. An old hypocrite was what he was. He’d be talking sweet to these old ladies and shut-in women on the phone, trying to put the make on them while he was playing some gospel music on the air, and we’d be fixin’ to get his ass. He had a disc of “Give the World a Smile Each Day,” and it was Mr. Sunshine’s theme. We duplicated the sticker and put Jerry Lee Lewis’s “Great Balls of Fire” on it. “It’s time now for the Sunshine Hour,” he said, and turned it loose. “You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain …” He sat there and watched it go around until it played completely through, acting like nothing happened.

  I usually was on the radio in the afternoons. They tried me on the morning shift, but that didn’t work out too well. I was still living in Littlefield, and I’d oversleep. I’d have to listen to the sshhhh of dead air for thirty-three miles as I raced down 84, late again. Once I was coming along and there was a tornado watch out. I was driving a ’56 DeSoto convertible, and I had the flap down. Suddenly it got real calm, and I thought, well, I’m out of it. I kicked into gear and was up to seventy miles an hour when all of a sudden the tail end of the tornado whipped that car right off the highway into the grader ditch alongside. The suction just pulled me over and off the road.

  No matter how successful I was on the air, being a disc jockey for me was still a stepping-stone. All I ever wanted to be was a singer. I was pretty funny on the air, but I kept writing songs. We had an eight-by-five-foot studio in the station, with a tape machine that could run fifteen ips. That’s where I learned to overdub and sing harmony with myself. It was a really good experience for me to get used to recording.

  The Cotton Club helped hone my live skills, not to mention my ability to take care of myself. It was a rough joint and earned its reputation as the Bloody Bucket. On a typical Saturday night it was like an orchestrated fistfight, and they used to have to put chicken wire up to protect the band. I don’t suppose it was very civilized. Somebody in the crowd would want to hear “Temptation,” and if you didn’t play it that song or the next, you’d be liable to see a beer bottle sailing through the air. It was a good place to get your chops right, though. You learned to dodge and sing, and never miss a note.

  Artists would usually play the Coliseum, and later that night they’d play a dance at the Cotton Club. It could get really drunk and mean. One night Hi Pockets Duncan was promoting a show there, and he saw a guy start beating up his wife. Hi Pockets, being the gentleman that he was, pulled the guy off and hit him, and then the guy and the woman both turned on him. It was that kind of place. Buddy Holly played there a lot before he signed with Decca, and then after, when he started recording the demos that would make him a legend.

  Buddy’s success gave us all hope. He had traveled the world with his music, appeared at the New York Paramount with Alan Freed and a “Caravan” of teen idols, and was one of the first rock and rollers to write his own songs. Though he may have been inspired by Elvis, he knew that there was an Elvis already. Buddy sounded like himself. His experiences in Nashville, where they tried to change his unique style, had helped to mature him, make him more sure of what he was doing as an artist, and when he took the Crickets, J.I. and Joe B. Mauldin, over to Norman Petty’s studio in Clovis, New Mexico, he knew pretty much what he wanted from his music. He was ready for international stardom.

  Buddy wrote “That’ll Be the Day” after seeing John Wayne use the phrase all the time in The Searchers, and he and Jerry had “Peggy Sue” as “Cindy Lou” for a year or two before he recorded it. Guitarist Niki Sullivan, who was the fourth Cricket, never really fit in the group, though during the recording of “Peggy Sue,” his essential mission was to flick Buddy’s electric guitar pickup switch from the bass to the bright spot for the solo and back again for the rhythm. Buddy couldn’t break stride long enough to do it himself.

  Mr. Holley, Buddy’s dad—Buddy had dropped the “e” for his stage name—was the dearest man, and he was so proud of his son. One day, he came up to the station with Buddy, and we got to renew our acquaintance. I was surprised to see how good Buddy looked. It was like he’d had himself redone; the way I remembered him, he had acne and bad teeth, but now his skin was smooth and he had a gleaming smile. He wore heavy black-rimmed glasses that gave his face a certain weight. He hadn’t changed as a personality, though. Buddy was an upper, just a happy person. He would laugh and cut up all the time.

  That was probably why he enjoyed being with us. We were a bunch of funny guys, Sky Corbin, Slim Corbin, his old friend Hi Pockets, and me. We laughed all the time, and he laughed all the time, and we were country. He liked that.

  Every time he’d come to town, he’d head up to see us at K-triple-L. That was his hangout. We’d lay back in the studio and play guitars, and Buddy would tell us stories. Our eyes would bug out of our heads because he’d been all over the world. He would talk about people like the Everly Brothers and Jerry Lee and Elvis. After, we’d usually stop at the Night Owl, a drive-in hamburger joint on Broadway, looking for girls, cruising around town aimlessly. Actually, we didn’t know what we were looking for, and I don’t guess we found it. But it was a way for him to unwind from the things he was going through at the time with the Crickets and Norman.

  They were falling apart, and it had gotten worse after he married Maria Elena on August 15, 1958. Petty could see Buddy slipping away, and Maria knew that Norman was ripping Buddy off. After all, she worked in the publishing business. On a song like “Oh Boy,” the original writers were Bill Tilghman and Sonny West. Buddy cut the song, and after he left, Norman took the singing group he used for backing vocals, had them go “dum diddy dum dum, oh boy,” and took a piece of the writing credit. He was really good at that. He took a part of all or Buddy’s songs and hardly paid him any performance royalties. He kept a tight control on the Crickets’ money.

  Budd
y had recently moved to New York, which kind of left the Crickets high and dry. Experimenting with strings and newer arrangements, like he did on “I Guess It Doesn’t Matter Anymore,” didn’t help. There’s a big distance between Texas and New York, and Buddy wanted to be close to his publishing company and record company. J.I. and Joe B. also didn’t like the fact that Buddy was talking about starting a label of his own, and they didn’t have a share in it. They were used to getting a third of everything. The new company was to be called Taupe, after the reddish-brown color of the Cadillac that Buddy drove. Its first artist was going to be Waylon Jennings.

  “Help me finish this song,” Buddy said when he visited the station in December of 1958. Slim and I were back in the station’s studio doing jingles—Buddy had cut a few takeoffs on “Peggy Sue” and “Everyday” for K-triple-L promotions—but this was the first time we’d worked on any of his music. We didn’t do much, maybe added a line here or there, and we clapped along while Buddy sang “You’re the One.” It didn’t take more than an hour and a half from start to finish. I’m the one double-timing in straight eights.

  Buddy had decided he wanted to record me that past summer. He could see how much music meant to me, and maybe he related my yearning desire to himself, growing up in a sun-baked West Texas town with music as an only outlet. On September 10, he’d taken me out to Clovis to do my first session. It was an unnerving experience. Norman made me feel the most unwelcome I’ve ever felt in my life. He didn’t like me to start with, and he didn’t want Buddy to get involved in a record company.

  “Volare” had been a big hit during the summer for Domenico Modugno, an Italian-language song on top of the American Hit Parade, and that sparked Buddy thinking. He was having King Curtis, the famous R&B sax player who was on the Coasters’ “Yakety Yak,” fly down to Clovis to play on a couple of his songs, and he thought it might be a nice idea to use him on the classic “Jole Blon,” with me singing in Cajun-French.

  We didn’t know the lyrics, so I tried to learn them off the Harry Choates original. By the time we finished, you couldn’t understand a word. I just sang gibberish, really. Buddy strummed rhythm guitar, and King Curtis called-and-responsed around my fractured French. George Atwood and Bo Clark stepped in on bass and drums, playing a syncopated waltz beat. The Crickets didn’t want to do it; they were still mad at Buddy. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Buddy and Norman got into it the night that I was there. They were in another room, and they were arguing bad.

  As a producer, Buddy was easy in the studio. He knew what he was doing. He was hardly twenty-two years old, but he sat there and directed the whole thing. I’m not saying he didn’t need Petty, especially when he was starting out, though Norman himself has admitted that you can’t manufacture talent. Norman could be a genius, and had the time and patience to allow Buddy to follow his own vision. He cut some great records, like Buddy Knox’s “Party Doll.” That’s what convinced Buddy to travel one hundred miles to see him in the first place. If you weren’t in a hurry to get married, there was no other reason to be in Clovis except for Petty’s studio.

  I didn’t like Norman, either. Can you imagine a kid scared to death, cutting his first real record? He wouldn’t even talk to me. Buddy couldn’t be there when it came time to put my vocals and the background harmonies of the Roses on the B side, “When Sin Stops Love Begins,” so Norman was the engineer. He treated me like I wasn’t alive. I was so insecure and alone. He was real curt. He just didn’t want to be doing it. He was still mad about Buddy, and he had me sing the song an octave lower than I needed to. He said it sounded sexier; I could barely get to the notes. It was his way of making Buddy see I wasn’t worth shit.

  I was musically naive. I had no earthly idea how things were done. I thought you cut a record and you were automatically a hit. I didn’t know that studios and producers had that much to do with it. All I knew was that Buddy Holly had befriended me and taken me under his wing.

  Still, I couldn’t have been more surprised when Buddy walked into the station one day, pitched me an electric bass guitar, and told me “You have two weeks to learn to play that thing.” He had taken a three-week tour starting in January 1959, because Norman had his money all tied up, close to a hundred thousand dollars worth that he’d put in some church trust fund. Petty had talked the Crickets into staying with him, and they had officially called it quits, though I think both sides felt kind of bad about it. Buddy was hurt, and mad, but he needed a band. He chose me, guitarist Tommy Allsup, who had come down from Tulsa with western swing influences he’d learned while playing with Bob Wills, and Odessa drummer Carl “Goose” Bunch.

  I had never played bass before. I didn’t even know till about a week after I was on tour that it was the same as the top four strings of a guitar, only an octave lower. It ruined my whole style of playing when I realized. I had memorized everything from the records.

  We got off the plane at Idlewild. I could see Buddy’s shadow behind the tinted glass of the terminal. We’d flown all night, and it was just starting to be daylight. He was waiting for us, and I was about to head into New York for the first time. As dawn broke, Buddy drove us to the city in his car.

  It took my breath away. The sight of New York as we drove through Brooklyn along the East River was like nothing I’d ever glimpsed before. I’d been as far as Houston, but the tallest building I had ever seen was maybe fifteen stories high. I couldn’t believe there was anything so big, or that there was so much of it.

  We arrived around the fifteenth of January. The tour wasn’t scheduled to start until the twenty-third, so there was time for rehearsal and getting acclimated. Buddy put Tommy and Goose at the Edison Hotel in Times Square, and I stayed at his apartment with him and Maria Elena. I slept on the couch.

  He lived right down by Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village. The apartment building was at 11 Fifth Avenue, and it cost him four hundred dollars a month. That was a lot of money in those days.

  Maria Elena was a sweet girl, and you could see that Buddy was very much in love with her. On the first night I was there she cooked us beans, and burned them. He whispered, “Don’t say a word, just eat ’em.” She was a terrible cook. She couldn’t boil water, and I’d have to go out and get me something to eat later.

  Buddy must have told her all about me. One time she was listening to one of my tapes that was in the apartment, and she said, “Waylons”—that’s what she called me—“you could be a pop singer.” She didn’t speak very good English. “Every time I listen to you sing, it gives me goose bumples.” Buddy would crack up laughing when he heard that.

  Buddy was the first guy who had confidence in me. Hell, I had as much star quality as an old shoe. But he really liked me and believed in me. He said, “There’s no doubt you’re going to be a star. I know. The way you sing, there’s no limit. You can sing pop, you can sing rock, and you can sing country.”

  New York looked just like the movies to me. The Reg Owen song “Manhattan Spiritual” was big when I was there, and I could hear it as I walked around those crowded streets, so different than Lubbock’s broad, empty avenues. I thought there was nothing but gangsters lurking around, and strange looking people that would as soon jump on you as ignore you if you’d stepped too close to them. Me and Goose walked around for two days in a row looking for the Empire State Building, and we were standing right under it. I’d never looked up. And I remember girls that were so beautiful they’d take your breath away.

  Buddy liked to make me marvel. We’d be walking down the street, and I’d see a pretty girl, and I’d say “Goddamn, there goes a good-lookin’ woman,” and he’d say “That ain’t a woman; that’s a man dressed up like one.” He had me to where I almost bought some blinders because I was afraid to look at any girl, scared she was a boy and I didn’t know it.

  I couldn’t figure how to take the New York attitude. In West Texas, people are always asking “How you doing?” when you go into a store. They seem like they
genuinely care about the answer. But New York had me up a tree. I’d go in and buy something, and they wouldn’t even say thank you. One time Tommy and I bought some shoes, and I’d had a couple of beers. That’s all it took to get me half-loaded. As we started leaving, I asked the clerk, “Ain’t you gonna tell us to come back?”

  “Come back?” he said. “Hillbilly, there’s eight million people in this city, and if I never see you again, it’ll be too soon.”

  Buddy didn’t think anything of it. He’d learned the ways of the city. About the second day I was there, we were looking for a cab on Seventh Avenue and it was raining. Buddy said, “Stand over here,” and he flagged a cab down. He turned around to say something to me, and this woman who had been hiding between the cars tried to get into his cab. “Get your ass out of there,” he told her. “That’s not your cab.” I started pouting on him, but he said, “You don’t understand how to get along in New York.”

  Eating the food was like being in a foreign country. Buddy, Tommy, and I went into a delicatessen. I had never been in a delicatessen in my life. I’d never seen so many different sandwich meats. Baloney was all I was used to, and they didn’t have any, nor ham and cheese. Tommy ordered liverwurst, and I said “I’ll have one too.” The waitress brought our sandwiches over and I took a bite. It tasted awful. It sat there with one bite out of it.