Likely the one and only time Merle Haggard and Waylon Jennings shared the stage.
Of course, they had a notorious fallout early on in their respective careers over a poker game gone wrong. Waylon was deep in his cocaine addiction, and in his 1996 book Waylon: An Autobiography, he said that he felt like Merle and his manager had malicious intent and took advantage of him, knowing the state he was in:
“Merle Haggard and his manager, Fuzzy Owens, got me in a poker game and cleaned me out. I had four or five thousand dollars on me, and they won everything. They were there to get my money. That was it.
I think Merle is a great singer and songwriter, and probably he was in as bad a shape as I was, but we’ve never been close since that night.”
I think it’s a big part of the reason that he wasn’t in the Highwaymen with Waylon, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson, though he’s stated on the record in a radio interview years ago with Broadway of Country 92.5 that it’s because:
“I was asked to become a fifth member, and I turned it down because I said hell, it will cut the money down so low so the four of you guys won’t even want to do it. But they did offer me a part…
When you’re touring the world, you’ve got to take the economics in play. It’s going to cost a lot of money to do that. When you’ve got 15 or 20 people traveling with you, you know, it’s a big deal.”
That is definitely true, but I just have to wonder if there’s more to it than that, though I digress in terms of the purpose of this article… you can read much more about their fallout and that poker game HERE.
While the pair never officially collaborated in the studio (a sad side effect of their lifelong disagreement), they did share the stage one time back in 1985, at the 19th annual CMA Awards, which was hosted by Kris Kristofferson and Anne Murray.
For context, that year, George Strait won Male Vocalist of the Year and Album of the Year for Does Fort Worth Ever Cross Your Mind, Reba McEntire won Female Vocalist of the Year, and Ricky Skaggs took home the coveted Entertainer of the Year award… good times.
That night, they also did a tribute to Willie Nelson, where different artists throughout the evening covered his music. Additionally, at the end of the show, quite a few country stars teamed up for a medley of “Good Hearted Woman” and “On The Road Again,” which included all of the original Highwaymen, as well as Merle.
Waylon starts the big number with “Good Hearted Woman” solo, and he plugs his nose for Willie’s part to get that nasally sound which is pretty dang funny. Also, I’ve rarely, if ever, seen him onstage without his iconic leather-clad 1954 Telecaster.
When everyone returns to the stage after their individual solos, with a few other artists who had performed throughout the evening, Merle and Waylon ended up almost right next to each other on one end of the line, with only Emmylou Harris as a barrier in between them.
Honestly, it’s really cool to see all these country stars together, but seeing Waylon and Merle onstage in what is likely the only time I know of, is special. I have to wonder if they even said hello, shook hands, or acknowledged each other at all during the whole process of putting this together, but unfortunately, I don’t think we’ll ever really know.
To have been a fly on the wall, though… they’re really professional, so it’s kind of hard to tell what they were really thinking of the situation, though the header photo for this post kind of says it all, I think.
If you’re a music nerd like me, you’ll definitely want to check this out:
The Highwaymen also performed their hit “Highwayman”:
