Fresh-Faced Waylon Jennings Performs One Of His Biggest Hits
on Feb 07, 2017 • Updated Oct 24, 2018
It’s hard to imagine that there was a time when Waylon Jennings performed without a hat or a full beard. Believe it or not, in his early days, Jennings’ hair was always perfectly coiffed and his face was always freshly shaved, but his voice was just as amazing.
During a performance on The Johnny Cash Show, Jennings performed his hit song “Brown Eyed Handsome Man,” which climbed to number three on the country charts, making it Jennings’ third Top Five solo hit.
“Brown Eyed Handsome Man” was written by Chuck Berry, who released it in 1956. According to Rolling Stone, Berry wrote the song after he toured several heavily populated Latino and African American cities in California. “I didn’t see too many blue eyes,” Berry said. He witnessed a Hispanic man being arrested by a policeman for loitering when “some woman came up shouting for the policeman to let him go.”
Jennings released the tune as a single off his 1970 album Waylon, which is remembered as the beginning of his displeasure with the way his record label was taking his career.
Recording for “Waylon” began in October 1969, and was released in January 1970! The album reached #14 on Billboards Country Albums! pic.twitter.com/gkUeholci2
— Waylon Jennings (@ol_waymore) October 16, 2017
A few albums later, he went from the poster boy of the Nashville Sound to a real country outlaw.
Although “Brown Eyed Handsome Man” was one of his last recordings as a clean-cut country singer, it is remembered as one of the best of his career.
Brown Eyed Handsome Man was recorded by Waylon on his "Waylon" album released in 1970. It peaked as a single at #3 on the Billboard country singles chart.https://t.co/RTi8UBRRPl pic.twitter.com/7z0AlvCGXA
— T. Tex Edwards (@ttexed) May 10, 2018
Watch his performance below.
