Waylon Jennings - Six White Horses

This song positively guts me. As an, at best, casual fan of outlaw country this is a side of Waylon I was unfamiliar with.

Why isn't this song more well known? I assumed it was an anti-war classic that passed me by but google didn't register many hits. Is the '71 LP 'The Taker/Tulsa' the first place it appeared? Did Bobby Bond write this for Waylon? Any edification is appreciated.

Listen and weep..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwPakRKhh1k

 

I've got to check out this song.

I love Waylon... one of the all-time great voices!
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It's an album track that is considered a classic among fans. It's a great, powerful song. If I'm not mistaken (and my copy is across the room) it appeared on the RCA "Only Daddy That'll Walk The Line" compilation but, other than that and the recent box set, it hasn't really been on many other compilations that I can recall.

"Revelation," from 1972's "Ladies Love Outlaws," is similar in that it's a really powerful song that, again, is known really only by diehards.

 

Both "Six White Horses" and "Revelation" (and dozens of other really good, forgotten Jennings recordings) can also be found on the Bear Family 6-cd set "The Journey: Six Strings Away".

 

I have that set and also the earlier "Destiny's Child" set. They're expensive but totally worth it!

 

Is this the same song that Tommy Cash recorded in the sixties?

 

Nope different tune. I need more Waylon.......

 

bump.

 

giving this one more bump.

 

Call me stupid, but what's the link between a knock on the door and six white horses? Death?

 

Here's the Tommy Cash record.

And yes, as is evident here, the "six white horses" symbolize death.

 

In 1990 MFSL did an aluminum 2-fer (MFCD 779) of the 1971 and 1973 albums The Taker/Tulsa and Honky Tonk Heroes.
It's the best I've ever heard these two classic albums. Worth hunting down if you like the albums. IMHO, of course.

 

Just discovered this tune on a Waylon playlist I made on Spotify and the exact same thing struck me. Here's a true piece of "Americana". I listen to a lot of English folk music old and new and it struck me that here was a true American folk tune - as much as "Meet on the Ledge" from Fairport Convention has become such, especially for people of a certain generation, a true British folk tunes. Both are sentiments of a particular time and place in the histories of the societies involved - whether a paid songwriter or not matters not a bit - which sounds like a definition of a "folk" song to me. And I could go into why a mint Waylon 60's Lp "should" be worth as much as a pink label Fairport Lp, but that's another topic.

 

I can't find The Taker/Tulsa in my area on record and barely anywhere else, I mention it in my travels and always come up empty.

 

I always liked Casey's Last Ride

 

You can't go wrong with any 70s Waylon ...IMO. His collaboration with Willie Nelson, Waylon & Willie, contains an incredible cover of Gold Dust Woman.

 

VG copies start at about $20.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-list...?ie=UTF8&condition=used&sr=8-1&qid=1429481816