When a Beatle calls a country music legend with deep Arizona ties an influence, that’s cool.
Ringo Starr appeared on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” this past Tuesday night to promote his latest album, “Look Up.” The new release sees the twice-inducted Rock and Roll Hall of Famer return to his country roots for the first time in decades.
“Look Up” has become Starr’s first No. 1 album on the charts in 50 years.
During his chat with Kimmel, the 84-year-old talked about his lifelong love for country music.
“I love country music, yeah. I love the blues as well and pop and Motown. I like a lot of different music but I really love country music,” Starr said, before sharing what country artists influenced him as a kid in Liverpool. “Ernest Tubb, Hank Williams, Hank Snow, you had all those early guys. And then it got into Willie (Nelson) and everybody, and Waylon.”
Waylon, of course, being Waylon Jennings.
The late country music superstar found himself on Ringo’s short list of favorite country performers almost a quarter-century after Jennings’ death on Feb. 13, 2002, at age 64 after a long battle with diabetes-related health problems.
Jennings recorded 60 albums, earned 16 No. 1 country hits and won two Grammy Awards in a career spanning six decades. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame shortly before his death and is widely regarded as a pioneer in the country-rock crossover style.
His Arizona ties were as pronounced as his signature black cowboy hat.
Though born just south of the Texas Panhandle in 1937, Jennings and his first wife in the early 1960s moved to the Valley where her father lived in Scottsdale and she had a brother in Coolidge. At the time Arizona was the furthest west the young Jennings had ever been, as he wrote in his 1996 autobiography “Waylon,” and “it took a hold of me.”
“The desert is still and strong,” Jennings wrote in an entire chapter he devoted to his time in Phoenix. “You ain’t got a chance. You can’t push it back. You just surrender to the surroundings. When I got there it was like I stopped pushing toward something and just let myself go, floating where the winds would carry me.”
Jennings famously built a huge fan base in the Valley in those years and played regularly around town at venues like JD’s, Wild Bill’s, Mr. Lucky’s, and the Cross Keys, a former jazz club located at the corner of Scottsdale and Camelback roads. He was also a disc jockey on local radio stations like KCKY.
In a case of irony given Ringo Starr’s admiration for Jennings’ music, Jennings was living in an apartment on North 36th Street the first time he’d ever heard the Beatles on the radio.
“It was the first nice place I’d ever had,” he wrote.
As his success grew, Jennings and his family moved to a new house in Scottsdale on East Amelia right off Indian School Road.
Eventually, Jennings’ success would outgrow the Valley altogether and he was soon off to Nashville and Los Angeles and to superstardom.
Arizona would call him back, though.
Jennings later moved back to the Valley and died peacefully at his home in Chandler in 2002. He is buried at Mesa Cemetery.
Steve Stockmar
News Editor | Sun Life Magazine & Arts & Entertainment
YourValley.net
sstockmar@iniusa.org
Meet Steve
Steve Stockmar joined Independent Newsmedia, Inc., USA, in 2017, and has been an Arizona journalist for almost 30 years. He serves as editor of Sun Life Magazine and contributes to West Valley communities where he focuses mostly on arts & culture, education, and profiles of neighbors making a difference.
Community: Every season Steve serves as a “buddy” with the Miracle League of Arizona in Scottsdale, has volunteered his time with Family Promise in Glendale, and previously served on the Ghostlight Theatre board in Sun City West.
Education: Graduated from Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff with a Journalism major and English minor.
Random Fact: Steve once won a 50-player live Texas Hold ’Em poker tournament.
Hobbies: Anguishing over his beloved Chicago Cubs and Bears; listening to Beatles and Grateful Dead music.
By 
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here