Dedication

This page of the site is dedicated to Johnny's longtime friend and (in his own words) "Blood-brother" Waylon Jennings. They met when Waylon was just making some noise at a club called "JDs" in Phoenix. Not long after, Johnny and Waylon got an apartment together in Madison Tennessee. Both were heavily taking pills, and really only used the apartment as a "crash pad" and sometimes for breakfast. If Johnny would stay in the apartment, Waylon would stay downtown somewhere else, and vice versa. They never gave each other pills, both thought each other couldn't handle it, they hid them from each other. After many glued-together doors, many mornings where Johnny would have his black outfit covered in flour, they went their seperate ways but still stayed friends. As a part from, Johnny Cash: The Autobiography.

Johnny wrote: "Waylon, my dear old friend and former roommate, knew every picker in town and knew just what each one of them could do and couldn't do. I called. He answered. He'd get right on it, he said. He called me the next day and said, "I found you a good guitar player." "Who's that?" I asked. "Me," he said. "No, no, no," I said. "You're kidding. You can't do that. I can't have you playing guitar for me. That's just not right, a star of your magnitude standing out there playing guitar for me." He wouldn't bend. "Well, Hoss, I'm going with you. I'm going to be there. I'm off the next five days, so I'm going to play guitar for you in Toronto, and that's all there is. I ain't going to be great, but I'll do the best I can." I took him up on it, thank fully, on the condition that we'd do a couple of duets together in addition to my regular show. It went really well. When we got onstage in Toronto, I had him stand way back out of the lights for the first few songs, then gradually move forward a little at a time. As he began to emerge, people started noticing that it wasn't Bob up there. Then they saw something familier about the man, the way he stood, the way he moved, the way he held his guitar. They started whispering and pointing. I could see them, and it was fun. Finally, he was fully lit, and even people who couldn't make out his face could see the black-and-white-tooled-leather Telecaster that'll always shout WAYLON!! to country music fans.

At that point I confirmed it. "Well you're right," I said into the mike. "I've got the greatest guitar player in the world on stage tonight. This is Waylon Jennings."

When the applause died down, he stepped forward and we talked a little, telling the story of how he came to be on my stage, and then we carried on with the show. And so it went for almost a whole week. Waylon hung in there every night, and when it was over he wouldn't take a penny for it.

That all says something about the kind of friend Waylon has been to me. Put simply, he's another of my brothers. I keep looking for something good to do for him sometime. The thing about it is, I know that if either of us is hurt on in trouble, we can call on each other. We both feel that bond, even though we haven't talked in a while. We know that we're still almost blood brothers. Our friendship has had some rough spots, some ups and downs, things that could have tested it and even ended it, but I think as kindly of Waylon today as I ever did. We both have good reasons to be cranky, we've suffered a lot, him with his carpal tunnel syndrome, me with my jaw, both of us with major heart problems. But I'm sure that the next time I hear his voice on the phone, it'll be like it's always been: no complaints about how long it's been, just "What are you doing, John?"

"Nothing much, Waylon. Want to come over?"