Waylon Jennings, "Only Daddy That'll Walk The Line"

I did a little extra work at my job last week, and I used the money to buy the DVD set of highlights from the Johnny Cash Show, which ran from 1969 to 1971. Unlike most country music television it wasn't syndicated but a major network production and the performances crackle and pop in ways that variety show TV rarely did. 

Variety shows seem to have disappeared after the 70s, which is a damn shame. Sure they're as cheesy as all get out, but I'd rather watch great musicians do their thing than some rich failson or trophy wife clown in from of the camera on a "reality" show.

One of my favorite performances on the DVD is Waylon Jennings doing "The Only Daddy That'll Walk The Line." It's a song from his pre-outlaw days when Nashville just didn't know what to do with him. While Jennings languished a bit in those days, this track has the bite and rhythm that his future outlaw classics would show. 

On the Johnny Cash Show Jennings turned in a great gritty performance of this song, breaking it out of the shackles of the Nashville Sound. He also performs a truly baller move (as the kids say) when the band strikes up the song while he is still being interviewed by Cash, Jennings strides across the stage and grabs his guitar to join in at the exact right moment. 

It's a moment that's both contrived and spontaneous, and the kind of thing, for better or worse, you just don't see on television anymore.