Waylon Jennings was one of the pioneering artists of the 1970s outlaw country movement, which also included popular songwriters such as Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson. Before all of that, however, Jennings first served as a bass player for Buddy Holly in the late 1950s. In fact, he was supposed to be on the airplane that wound up taking Holly's and others' lives that night, but opted out of the flight at the last moment. By the 1970s, Jennings had begun to work firmly within the country genre, writing stripped-down songs about drinking that consciously went against some of the more sappy and polished material coming out of Nashville at the time. His hard-edged version of country struck a chord, and soon the "outlaw" sub-genre was gaining steam. Jennings enjoyed his biggest success in the late 1970s, when a series of collaborative recordings with Willie Nelson yielded hits such as "Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys." Around this time, he also wrote the theme song to the hit television show Dukes of Hazard, serving as the program's narrator for seven seasons as well. Jennings was inducted in the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2001 before he passed away just a year later at the age of 64.
