If yous're primarily a fan of mainstream rock and pop music, maybe you're not familiar with Billy Joe Shaver. But if yous've had any interest in a genre known equally Outlaw Country, you know that a seminal figure, an absolute giant, has just left us. A truthful pioneer of the movement, Shaver wrote near it, equally well as lived it, arguably like no i else has in history. The Outlaw Country music scene essentially broke through with the defining and iconic 1973 Waylon Jennings album, Honky Tonk Heroes. Shaver wrote nine of the x songs it contained (including the wry championship rails), penning what Jennings referred to every bit "soul music for rednecks." Kris Kristofferson and Johnny Greenbacks recorded his songs. So did Elvis. Not long ago, Willie Nelson chosen him "the greatest living songwriter." That ended yesterday, when Shaver died in Waco, Texas, at 81, after suffering a stroke. Somewhat less renowned than Jennings, Kristofferson, Greenbacks, Presley, and Nelson, only no less respected by me, my friend and walking musical encyclopedia, Tom Clifford, responded to a notation calling Billy Joe "One of the best" by clarifying "He was the best of the best."

Shaver wrote such Outlaw standards every bit 'Georgia on a Fast Train' and 'Old Five and Dimers Like Me,' a melody whose lyric "As well much ain't enough" adorned the marquee of New York City's only honky tonk music club, The Solitary Star Cafe throughout its legendary beingness. For over iv decades Shaver was an iconic institution of Outlaw Country music, touring and recording up until his expiry, including what turned out to be his final album of 17 in all, 2014's Long In The Tooth, which featured the full-circumvolve duet 'Hard To Be An Outlaw' with Willie Nelson.

But Shaver'due south own hard-living, disorderly, tragicomic experiences, as much as the roughneck, scoundrel characters and hardscrabble stories he created in his songwriting, cemented his stature as the apotheosis of the Outlaw lifestyle in both Texas and his one-time adopted dwelling house in Nashville. A partial listing of what could be called The Ballad of Billy Joe Shaver would include the following:

  • He joined the Navy at 17 simply was soon thrown out for punching an officer, and spent the adjacent six months in a New Hampshire prison.
  • Outdoing Jerry Garcia by ane, Shaver lost two fingers on his right (dominant) manus in a sawmill accident, simply after taught himself to play without them. He couldn't hold a selection, but plucked his guitar with his thumb and pinkie. "I wouldn't ever have gone into music if I hadn't lost my fingers," Shaver recounted, after having get convinced that he wasn't suited for difficult labor. "And I ain't no finger-pointer," he was known to joke, "I can't."
  • He married his wife, Brenda, 3 separate times, before losing her to cancer in 1999; Around the same time his mother, near whom he'd written the song 'My Female parent's Proper name Is Victory' (her bodily name), also died; And so just three months later on, his son, all-time friend, and long-time musical collaborator, Boil, a remarkable, incandescent guitarist and master of endless styles, was institute dead of a heroin overdose at 38.
  • Billy Joe himself survived a eye assault, which he had on phase while performing aslope his Outlaw comrade Kinky Friedman at a seedy Texas saloon. "I said, 'Cheers, Lord, for letting me die in the oldest honky-tonk in Texas.' Iwanted to die. I was going domicile to come across Eddy, Brenda, and my mother." Instead, he joined Friedman on a three-calendar week Australian bout, and had quadruple bypass surgery upon returning.
  • Shaver shot a man named Billy Bryant Coker in the confront, post-obit an altercation at Papa Joe'southward Saloon in Lorena, Texas, in which Billy Joe was famously heard to say "Where exercise yous want information technology?" Despite Coker'due south claims (yes, he survived) that the occurrence was unprovoked, Shaver was ultimately acquitted afterward testifying that he acted in self-defence force. Billy Joe, who went on to turn the episode into a song chosen 'Wacko From Waco,' said in an interview years later on he'd proceeded considering Coker was "such a corking," and so "I hit him correct between a mother and a f*cker, and that was the end of that," earlier belatedly adding, "I'm very deplorable about the incident. Hopefully things will work out where nosotros become friends enough so that he gives me dorsum my bullet."

Another of Billy Joe's archetype tunes, which seemingly became his signature, is the unspeakably powerful number 'Live Forever,' a bluegrass hymn off his 1993 anthology Tramps On Your Street, put out in tandem with Boil, simply nether the banner of Shaver, which was a transcendent masterpiece upon its release, but was ever going to become all the same more poignant someday. When Shaver would perform it for an audience, he would often finish the song on his knees, easily at his sides, head bowed in silence. Equally much as that would be the obvious and proper vocal choice to feature here upon his passing, I'm still going to pick another, a song of aspiration and affidavit, which Shaver wrote and first released in 1981 simply and then re-recorded every bit a more revved-up version with Eddy for their same '93 tape. Eddy's coincidental guitar wizardry in the two solo breaks (starting at :52 then again at i:53) would otherwise be the natural testify-stoppers, just Baton Joe's dull-cooked, drawling delivery is truly understated Outlaw magic. The title line, 'I'm Only An Old Chunk Of Coal,' is followed immediately by the completion of just one more of Shaver's incomparable couplets, "Just I'chiliad gonna be a diamond anytime." I believe that day, Billy Joe, has arrived.

(and hell, let's also include a 'Live Forever' clip, in addition to the amazing lyrics)

I'm gonna live forever
I'm gonna cantankerous that river
I'one thousand gonna catch tomorrow now

You're gonna want to hold me
Just like I always told y'all
You're gonna miss me when I'thou gone

Nobody here volition e'er observe me
Merely I will always exist around
Just like the songs I leave behind me
I'thou gonna live forever now

Yous fathers and you mothers
Exist good to one some other
Delight try to raise your children correct

Don't let the darkness take 'em
Don't make 'em experience forsaken
Only atomic number 82 them safely to the light

When this erstwhile world is blown u.s. under
And all the stars autumn from the sky
Recall someone actually loves you
We'll live forever, you lot and I

I'grand gonna alive forever
I'chiliad gonna cross that river
I'chiliad gonna catch tomorrow now