When you're starting out in any field, you tend to reflect who you learn from. Influence is a part of learning and we cite our sources pretty frequently based on what they taught us. This is true from learning how to perform a job to making different forms of art. Eventually, you come into your own and discover how you want to do things. This is true, even of the all time greats like Waylon Jennings. However, he also felt wholly distinct from the rest of his contemporaries.
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In a 1996 interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air, Jennings opens up about understanding his own music at an early age. He lists his influences and how he wanted to sound like him. However, he realizes that it never came out the way he imagined. "I was just like everybody else, I heard somebody I liked. I loved Hank Williams, and I loved Carl Smith and Ernest Tubb. And I wanted to sound like all of them," Waylon says. "And I was in Phoenix and in a club before I really realized that I was different - and that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't imitate nobody.
Waylon Jennings Realizes How His Music Separates From The Greats
So how did they sound different exactly? Jennings breaks it down effectively. "I was writing songs, and they sounded different. They sounded - you know, I thought, man, mine don't sound like anybody else's. You know? Which I didn't realize was good. I thought - but you couldn't imagine it being played on the radio, because I would use calypso beats and hard rhythms, and what have you. And they wouldn't have fit, at all, on the radio, in country music that way," Waylon explains.
"But the way I developed my style, really, was getting bored. I would be in a nightclub and play for four hours, and you sing the song like somebody - the guy that wrote it or the guy that sang it. And I got tired of that. So I started changing the rhythms and maybe giving it a heavier beat, and just rearranging the song to fit what I felt. And it worked," Waylon adds.
