Music Man (album)
| Music Man | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Studio album by Waylon Jennings | ||||
| Released | May 1980 | |||
| Recorded | 1980 | |||
| Genre |
Country Outlaw country |
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| Length | 32:13 | |||
| Label | RCA Victor | |||
| Producer | Richie Albright, Waylon Jennings | |||
| Waylon Jennings chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |
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Music Man is an album by Waylon Jennings, released in 1980 on RCA Victor.
The new decade brought another #1 album for Jennings, his fifth since 1976. Produced by the singer and Waylors drummer Richie Albright, the mood is lighter than it had been on Jennings previous release, the ballad-heavy What Goes Around Comes Around. It contains the popular "Theme from "The Dukes of Hazzard" (Good Ol' Boys)," which became Jennings' tenth solo #1 hit. As the narrator for the 1975 movie Moonrunners, Jennings was tapped to serve in the same capacity for The Dukes of Hazzard which premiered on CBS in 1979 and was based on Moonrunners. Jennings wrote the theme song for the show and recorded two versions: the television theme version and a slightly different version made commercially available on both single and album which received radio airplay. The television show version features a banjo which the commercially available version does not, as well as a bridge which follows the first verse and chorus. Following the second chorus, Jennings makes a tongue-in-cheek reference to his faceless appearance in the credits by singing, "I'm a good ol' boy, you know my mama loves me, but she don't understand why they keep showing my hands and not my face on TV!", a statement referring to the opening shot in the television theme version where Jennings is only shown below the neck playing guitar. As Andrew Dansby of Rolling Stone wryly noted in 2002, "In 1980, another generation discovered Jennings, albeit only a third of him." The song was certified double-platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America with over 2 million in sales. Jennings other songwriting contribution, "It's Alright," is a simultaneous tribute to Oklahoma rocker J.J. Cale (Music Man opens with a cover of Cale's song "Clyde") and George Jones ("If we could all sing like we wanted to, we'd all sound like George Jones"). Waylon also mentions his wife Jessi Colter on "It's Alright" and recorded her song "Storms Never Last" for the LP, which they would reprise on their duet album Leather and Lace. In the liner notes to The Essential Waylon Jennings, Wade Jessen quotes the singer: "Jessi had this song and she threw it away. Like Lash Larue I brought it back. She said, 'I have a silly song for you.' There was not a rhyming line it, every line in the song standing on its own. At first the chorus went, 'Storms never last/Do they, Waylon?' She wrote it for me." The singles "Clyde" and "Storms Never Last" reached #7 and #17 respectively.
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