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“I Could Be The First Hillbilly On There” – Waylon Jennings Once Turned Down A Feature In ‘Playgirl’ Magazine For A Very Good Reason
Honestly, he probably would've nailed it.
Of course, it's no secret that Waylon Jennings was a favorite of the ladies back in the day, for obvious reasons, though he had a long and successful marriage to his fellow country star Jessi Colter, and they were married for 33 years, from 1969 until Jennings' death in 2002.
And on an old episode of the talk show Music City Tonight in November of 1993, it was revealed that Waylon had been offered the cover of Playgirl Magazine (Playboy for female readers, which featured men in the photos) back in the day. Host Lorianne Crook told the audience that she had talked to Waylon backstage, and told him how good he looked, joking that he'd be perfect for Playgirl.
It was that comment that sparked Waylon to reveal that Playgirl staff had approached him back in the day and asked him to appear in print, though he had a couple of very good reasons for turning it down:
"Well, they approached me one time, yeah. And this has been years ago, that I could be the first hillbilly on there. I said, I don't know, I might be the last hillbilly, so let's just go on about your business. Well, if I hadn't been married I would've turned them down, but second of all, Jessi would've killed me."
Touché... Waylon was a smart man. But truthfully, they really could've used a hillbilly on the cover, I think.
Other co-host Charlie Chase joked that Waylon must've been flattered regardless of if he did it or not, to which he responded:
"Not necessarily..."
It's a great story, and Waylon was quite handsome back in the day, so I can certainly understand why Playgirl would've asked him to make an appearance in their publication... also, it was a much different time, so I don't think he would've even shown that much skin, he could've done it in a really classy way like Dolly Parton in 1978, but I digress...
Waylon also talked about how he helped invent and popularize the use of jingles on the radio, which is pretty neat (Waylon started out as a radio DJ in Texas, similar to his friend and fellow outlaw pioneer Willie Nelson):
"You know what I did do? A lot of things that you hear on radio now, I started it. I'm gonna brag a little right here... but me and some guys named the Corbin brothers, we were jut old country boys, and we didn't know what we couldn't do in radio...
We kind of made it into a thing where you were poking fun at yourself. But what I did first, I started doing the jingles, it was KLLL, that was the name of it. Buddy Holly even did one of them that I wrote."
Charlie followed-up:
"So in other words, the jingles that we hear on radio today, you were kind of the forerunner on that?"
Waylon added:
"I was, 'cuz Webb Pierce was the first one that heard him, and he came back and had them done professionally. I just did 'em back in the back... we didn't know we had anything any good."
A pioneer and innovator at every turn... he was one of a kind.
You can watch the full interview here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4W8YO3sY7L0
I mean, I think we really missed out here, especially if this offer was in his prime in the mid-70's (the magazine launched in 1973, so I'm thinking it could've been sometime around then):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeRZpR_hdz0