Although A&M became a quasi-major label after signing the Carpenters, Sheryl Crow, the Police, Sting, and others, it was a struggling indie when the partners, Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss, signed Waylon in 1963. Neither Alpert nor Moss knew anything about country music, but they knew Waylon was a true talent who deserved to be on record. Together, Waylon and Herb Alpert forged some singles and abandoned sessions that showed Waylon’s eclecticism: old rock ’n’ roll songs (some of them associated with his mentor and friend, Buddy Holly), new folk songs by Ian & Sylvia and Bob Dylan, some pop standards, and covers of a recent hits by Little Jimmy Dickens and George Jones. And there was one Waylon original, the first-ever version of the classic Just To Satisfy You – later a #1 country hit for Waylon and Willie. After Waylon scored his first hits on RCA, A&M issued some of those early recordings on an album, reissued here with bonus songs.
This fabulously remastered edition of Waylon’s first LP includes five songs not on the original album: Love Denied, Buddy Holly’s Rave On, Johnny Horton’s I’m Coming Home, Link Davis’s Cajun hit Big Mamou, and a rare Harlan Howard song, Sing The Girls A Song, Bill.