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This is Vinyl Tap
SE 1, EP 2: Emergency Podcast - We remember Billy Joe Shaver
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Doug, Tony, and J.M. discuss what made Billy Joe Shaver such a force on country music. He wrote the music for Waylon Jennings best all time album. He also wrote songs covered by Willie Nelson, Elvis Presley and many others. One of the greatest songwriters in the history of Texas music.
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Listening to Full Albums
Speaker 1In 1948 Columbia Records introduced its long play 33 and a third Michael Groove record . The next year , rca Victor introduced the 7 inch 45 RPM record . This was the beginning of the conflict between a full album and a stack of hits . Downloadable music has only increased the temptation to stay in the shallow end with just the hits . This podcast makes the case for a deep dive into the satisfaction of listening to the whole album . Alright , guys , we were supposed to do Derek and the Dominoes this week , but every week somebody dies , and this week it was Billy Joe Shaper , last week it was Jerry Jeff Walker .
Speaker 2Yes , this is an emergency podcast .
Speaker 1I really hope that Willie Nelson has checked in with his doctor . It's just bad two weeks for the outlaw country people . Anyway , obviously Jerry Jeff Walker is more famous , but Billy Joe Shaper is a huge person in the whole outlaw country scene and one of the greatest songwriters Texas has ever made , easily Definitely in there with Guy Clark , chris Christoperson and .
Speaker 2Towns Van Zandt .
Speaker 1Towns Van Zandt is what I was about to say , and Butch Hancock Yeah .
Speaker 2Willie Yeah Butch Hancock .
Speaker 1Yeah , willie . But anyway , a little background on Billy Joe Shaper . He was born in , of course , in Canada , texas , in August of 1939 . He came to attention in about 1973 , just like last week with Jerry Jeff Walker . That was a big year where everybody was coming to Austin and starting all of this business .
Speaker 1Actually , billy Joe Shaper went to Nashville , which is the exact opposite of him , but his big break came when he walked into a studio where Wayland Jennings was recording and he told the guy to go get Wayland and he had something to say to him . The guy comes back with a $100 bill wadded up and said here , take this and go away . And he tells the guy that he can take that $100 and go tell Wayland to stick it in this place . So a little while later , wayland comes out with two Hells Angels on each side of them and asks him what he wants . And Billy Joe Shaper says I want you to listen to my song and if you don't , i'm going to kick your butt , right here , in front of God and everybody . Right before the Hells Angels killed him , wayland said okay , okay , i'll give you one song , you play one song and then , after I hear it , if I don't like it . You go away and we never meet again and if you see me coming you hide . And Billy Joe Shaper says I think that's fair . And he played him one song and then he played him another song and he kept playing songs and before he knew it , wayland had decided to record all of them .
Speaker 1And this changed his plans . He was working with Chet Atkins on something a little flashier and more Nashfully and ended up recording this album with just his band , which no one in Nashville did at that time . That album became Hunky Tonk Heroes , which is almost all Billy Joe Shaper songs . It is , in my opinion , wayland Jennings greatest album . It is , in my opinion , the greatest album in all of country music and you just combined one of the best songwriters in country music with , in my opinion , the best singer in country music And I never have gotten tired of that record and to listen to it over and over again . From then on , people started picking up his songs and singing them Johnny Cash , willie Nelson , chris Christoperson . I don't know why Chris Christoperson thinks he needs to sing anyone else's songs .
Speaker 3Elvis . Elvis covers .
Speaker 1Yeah , well , anyway , there was a bunch of great songs . He's just one of the tops . I don't know who's in his class .
Speaker 2I would say you could put Chris Christoperson . I see Billy Joe Shaver and Chris Christoperson is kind of very similar . And listening to him last couple of days , one of the things I've always liked about him is he talks about trains , he talks about romance , he talks about all the things that are cliche , country stuff . There's always sort of this psychological part to it . There's always this sort of why am I doing this ? Well , a song I'm thinking about is Honky Tonk Heroes . Where does it go ? The good Lord only knows . Seems like it was just the other day . Well , it was me . Why does it have to be that I can't seem to leave well enough alone ? I mean , it's just perfect . I'm about to go out and do this thing again . I'm about to spend all my money again . I'm about to make a fool of myself again . Why am I doing it ?
Billy Joe Shaver's Life and Music
Speaker 3I think a big distinction between him and Chris Christoperson Isn't that who you compare him to .
Speaker 2Yeah .
Speaker 3First of all , I think Billy Joe is a better singer .
Speaker 2I'll give you that .
Speaker 3And I think he continued to write . I mean not to knock Chris Christoperson , but I think Billy Joe's deep into his newer catalog has some really good songs . That guy was the real deal . You know , when you hear about his history he just is pretty amazing . I read a quote when you're talking about . You know his what is , you know kind of the psychology of his songs . He said one time that he wrote most of his songs were written trying to get back into the house . In other words , he's thinking about what he did that kept him out of the house and he's trying to put into the song how to get back in the house . And he said and then the rest of them are written about trying to stay alive .
Speaker 1Something . That's , if you've listened to Billy Joe Schaeffer's songs and you're familiar with them , then it would be redundant for us to go over his biography , because everything in those it's not like most country music where somebody's trying to imagine being someone else hitching a ride on a train or something . It's all what happened . I got to think of fast train to Georgia . I got a good Christian raising them . They great education . They don't need me all treating me as one . He said . My daddy left me two days what ? two days before they had me hit the road .
Speaker 1His dad beat the hell out of his mom trying to kill him while he was inside of her , left her dead in a tank And then he made it and he was raised by his mother and his grandmother and she was picking cotton with the boy on the back and the girl in the front and a bag of cotton And , fortunately for everybody , somebody came by from the Green Gables and offered his mom a job and She ended up attending bar while he sat there and learned to play the piano and sing songs . It's I mean , it's all straight out of honky-tonk heroes or any of those other songs . It's his biography . There's Nothing made up . I mean the guy did rodeo cowboy . He Lost two fingers in the sawmill .
Speaker 2It's none of the brings that up . He brings that up in that song Working man Some fingers , it's gone , awful one . I'm a rough as a cop , but I do a good job Yeah .
Speaker 1I am my hard-working man .
Speaker 3I . Is it true that he taught himself to play the guitar after that happened ? I ?
Speaker 2Think so because he I don't think it happened when he was very young .
Speaker 3Yeah , I think . I think he taught himself to play the guitar after he lost those fingers , which is pretty .
Speaker 2I mean that guy that guy .
Speaker 3I think that guy , you know , i think he had more than nine lives . I think that guy , by any account , should have been gone a long time ago . I'd heard that they used when he would be on the bus with these other guys They would . They would give him whatever drug they knew , drug they had , because he'd try it And they didn't . They wanted to see how it would react it . Give it to Billy Joe and see what happened to him And he'd take it . That guy was Yeah , he lived a hard life .
Speaker 1How many times he was married he got married and divorced three times . His wife , mother and son died within 18 months of each other . His son , james , brought this up a jam . Talk a little bit about Tramp on your streets and that how great that kid was on your street You must understand .
Speaker 2He plays a great solo but he his guitar fills would just make you boohoo . And he would do him on His ballads on that album . He would do it . Tramp on your street . Got that incredible organ solo in it To me . If you just what ? if you need a starting point for Billy Joe Shaver , I would say that's the best I will listen to besides honky-tonky roast Bands great on that , It's just the songwriting . Tramp on your street . That song alone is worth the price of admission .
Speaker 3Fantastic , Fantastic song but I would like to point out that we recommend listening to the entire album and not hopping from hit to hit you know , it's amazing that he and Waylon never did anything else , but evidently Waylon was , i guess , kind of jealous of the fact that people pointed out that honky-tonk heroes , that Billy , wouldn't be what it was without Billy Joe Shaver , and he didn't particularly care for that , which is really sad , because imagine what those two guys could have done Together .
Speaker 1Continuing well now Wayland does sing all On one of those songs on tramp , tramp on your street . Tramp on your street came out in 1993 , old five and dimers came out in 73 . So there's 20 years and there's a lot of good albums between there . Last album was long in the tooth . Billy Joe Schaeffer became a very committed Christian and It shows up in almost all of his music at at a certain point and yeah , he's had so many religious songs .
Speaker 2Look at Jesus Christ with my friend .
Speaker 3He talked about that always being there . It just came out later . More prevalent , once , i guess You know life's life's smacked him around a little bit . He embraced it more , more openly .
Speaker 2Yeah . It's I think the death death of Eddie probably had a Lot to do with that and the death of his wife . I mean , you did go through that point where he So yes , there is a infamous he was .
Speaker 1He was going out and trying to take . He's with his ex-wife again . Are there she ? they're about to get divorced and , uh , he's out taking photographs for an album cover and they stop into this bar and The rain at Texas .
Speaker 1Yep , which is outside Waco where he was living . And uh , guy comes in and starts pouring whiskey into everybody's drink , whether they asked for it or not , and stern it up with a knife and Being really rude . And before he knows it , this guy's talking to his Uh , wife they're not divorced yet , they're about to get divorced . He said he was out celebrating their divorce and uh , it escalated . And and what billy joe Schafer said in the courtroom is that He was kind of like john Wayne . He has , he's raised like john Wayne , he's not going to take any of this kind of crap . So it escalated and The stories get really weird and divergent .
Speaker 1Billy Joe Schafer's saying that this was that guy's home bar , so everybody was naturally on his side . But One way or the other the guy came out of the back of the bar where billy joe schafer was waiting for him . Billy Joe Schafer says he was shooting at him and sometimes he was saying he's waving a knife at him , but anyway , billy joe schafer ended up shooting in the face and uh , they went to , they went to court , you know , uh reasons no one knows he was Quitted .
Speaker 3Yeah , for a self-defense . You know what he said when he got out . He was standing outside of the courtroom and he said or the court , yeah , the courthouse . And he said , uh . He said that hopefully they could , they could work it out and become friends and maybe he'd get his bullet back .
Speaker 1Yeah , he was worried that guy was gonna walk around telling everybody had that bullet and and use it .
Speaker 3Well , you want to hear something else ? strange , evidently some . He gave his fingers to some fan who yeah , put him in a jar someplace and he spent a good chunk of time trying to get him back .
Speaker 2He was sitting in the . He had the fingers wrapped up in a cloth and some , some person came up to him and said , hey , can I have those fingers ? And he just said what the hell ? And he gave him to the random person and he never . I'm guessing he was delirious . I mean , if I'd lost my fingers , i'm like okay , yeah , he's a nasty , i don't want him in my hand anymore .
Speaker 1But also also notable that the trial was the fact that Robert DeVall and Will and Elson were character witnesses . That's right .
Speaker 3I probably had something to do with it , with him getting acquitted .
Speaker 1And he had one of the best defense attorneys in Texas working pro bono .
Speaker 2So yeah , And you know who ? the first person that's saying I want to live forever was .
Speaker 1I don't .
Speaker 2Robert DeVall .
Speaker 1Oh yeah , He did it in the movie .
Speaker 2Alexander Mercy's .
Speaker 1He's a great songwriter , and we lost another one , and I'm hoping that next week we can review an album that we've been planning to review for some time now , but no more emergency deaths . Yeah , no more of these . We can go a week without a great Texas singer , songwriter down . That would be . That would just be great . Thank you , tony . Yes , sir , i wanted to know . What are the kids listening to right now ?
Speaker 3Well I thought I'd talk about . This album was released in 19 2019 by a band called the Cactus Blossoms . I don't know if either one of you have ever heard of them . They're from Minnesota and they for lack of a better term channel the spirit of the Everly Brothers . They said close , you know , almost blood harmony . They're not related , so it's not quite blood harmony but it's pretty close , and they released an album called Easy Way in 2019 . That's really great , fantastic . If you like , if you like that kind of stuff , if you like close , close harmony , traditional , you know , sort of rock , not really rockabilly , but the Everly Brothers , sort of that spectrum of the country stuff , then you'd really dig this album by the Cactus Blossoms .
Speaker 1The name of the album It is called .
Speaker 3Easy Way .
Speaker 2Easy .
Speaker 3Their second album , yeah .
Speaker 2That's great .
Speaker 3Yeah .
Speaker 2All right . Well , I dig the Everly Brothers quite a bit .
Speaker 1That will be an easy one to check out .
Speaker 3Yeah Yeah , their debut is good as well , but this is this . One was released more recently .
Speaker 1All right , that's all , for this is vinyl tap . This is Doug Cooper . I'm signing off . We got JM and Tony . You guys tell everybody good night .
Speaker 3Good night everybody .
Speaker 1And remember , listen to the whole album . Thanks , all right . Good night , see you . Thank you , thank you , okay , bye , all right , all right , we'll have a little break . All right , let's do this , let me go . Okay , okay , all right , all right , all right , all right , let's get ready for the next one . Okay , all right , all right , all right , all right , yeah .