Hell-raising country music icon Waylon Jennings has died aged 64.
The deep-voiced Texas troubadour, who escaped death by giving up his seat on Buddy Holly's plane and helped launch Nashville's "outlaw" movement with Willie Nelson, "died very peacefully in his sleep" at his home outside Phoenix, Arizona, last night, a spokeswoman said.
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Waylon Jennings
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Ill-health had plagued Jennings since the late 1980s when he had a triple heart bypass. He had also battled diabetes and related illnesses and last year had his left foot amputated. Nonetheless, he still had concert dates booked for the coming months.
Disillusioned by country music's slickness in the early 1970s, Jennings brought a rock 'n' roll sensibility to the genre and crossed over to mainstream fans. He enjoyed such hit songs as Luckenbach, Texas, Good Hearted Womanand the Grammy-winning duet with Willie Nelson, Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys.
The two-time Grammy-winner recorded dozens of albums and had 16 No 1 country singles in a career spanning five decades. His second Grammy Award was for his 1968 cover of MacArthur Park. In the mid 1980s, he and Nelson formed the Highwaymen, a "superstar" quartet that also included Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson.
In the late 1960s, Jennings shared an apartment in Nashville with Cash after their respective marriages had broken up, and the duo lived high on methamphetamines and general destruction.
After Cash remarried and sobered up, Jennings complained in 1974 that Cash had "sold out to religion". Jennings, too, gave up the drugs, but as recently as 2000 he said religion could be "a bad crutch".
Jennings was born on June 15th, 1937, in Littlefield, Texas. He became a radio DJ at the age of 12, dropped out of high school in the 10th grade and befriended fellow Texan Buddy Holly after moving to Lubbock to work at a station there.
Holly produced Jennings's first album and hired him as a bass player for his 1959 tour of the Midwest with Ritchie Valens and J.P. "the Big Bopper" Richardson.
After a February 2nd show in Clear Lake, Iowa, an exhausted Holly chartered a small plane to get to the next gig. Jennings gave up his seat to the Big Bopper, who was suffering from the 'flu and did not want to ride in the bus.
The plane crashed soon after takeoff early on February 3rd, killing Holly, Valens and the Big Bopper. For years Jennings was haunted by a joking exchange he had had with Holly, as he related in VH1's Behind The Music.
"Buddy was leaning back against the wall in this cane-bottom chair laughing at me. He says, 'You're not going on the plane tonight, huh?' I said 'No.' He said, 'Well, I hope your bus freezes up.' And I said, 'Well, I hope your plane crashes.' I was awful young, and it took me a long time to get over that".