
01/22/2025
In the mid-1960s, Waylon Jennings uprooted his life from Arizona to Nashville after Nashville label chief Chet Atkins, at Bobby Bare’s urging, signed him to RCA. The Texas native had already put out one release on a small label, but this was a promotion to the big leagues.
During March 1965, Jennings and Atkins (as producer) were in Nashville’s RCA Studio B working on what would become the singer’s first album for the label, the 1966 release “Folk-Country.” Markedly different than the rough-edged, rebellious sound he would perfect years later, the album notably featured studio contributions from Jennings’s band members Jerry Gropp, Richie Albright, and Paul Foster—highly unusual considering that Atkins normally selected from Nashville’s top-tier studio musicians.
Though not a commercial blockbuster, “Folk-Country” included at least one enduring song that remained a staple of Jennings’s repertoire for years. “Stop the World (and Let Me Off),” a lament of romantic frustration that had been recorded by artists including Carl Belew, Patsy Cline, and Johnnie & Jack, received the Jennings treatment after he and the band worked up a live version. The recording has many of the smooth, sophisticated Nashville Sound trappings, but it’s beefed up with a shuffling rhythm and Jennings’s electric guitar.
The audacity of playing a guitar solo while Atkins observed certainly wasn’t lost on Jennings. “I looked over in the control room and realized ‘I’m playing guitar in front of Chet Atkins!’ So I just grabbed me a string and held on for dear life,” he recalled in his autobiography.
Jennings’s long tenure with RCA would bring him back to RCA Studio B many times over the years. Songs from those sessions include “(That’s What You Get) For Lovin’ Me” and “Only Daddy That’ll Walk the Line,” the 1968 single that foreshadowed his more individualistic work to come.