Music Style and Image
Jennings was characterized by his "powerful" singing voice, noted by his "rough-edged quality", as well as his phrasing and texture. Accompanying his vocals, he played guitar. He was recognized for his "spanky-twang" playing. To create his sound, he used a mixture of thumb and fingers during the rhythmic parts, while using picks for the lead runs. He combined hammer-on and pull-off riffs, with eventual upper-fret double stops and modulation effects. Jennings played a 1953 Fender Telecaster, which was a used guitar purchased as a gift to him by The Waylors. Jennings' bandmates adorned his guitar with a distinctive leather cover, that featured a black background with a white floral work. Jennings did further customizing work on the guitar, by filing down the frets to lower the strings on the neck to obtain the slapping sound. His signature image was characterized by his long hair and beard, as well as his black hat and the black leather vest he wore during his appareances.
Read more about this topic: Waylon Jennings
Famous quotes containing the words music, style and/or image:
“I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man: wine is not so noble a liquor; and think of dashing the hopes of a morning with a cup of warm coffee, or of an evening with a dish of tea! Ah, how low I fall when I am tempted by them! Even music may be intoxicating. Such apparently slight causes destroyed Greece and Rome, and will destroy England and America.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“The image cannot be dispossessed of a primordial freshness, which idea can never claim. An idea is derivative and tamed. The image is in the natural or wild state, and it has to be discovered there, not put there, obeying its own law and none of ours. We think we can lay hold of image and take it captive, but the docile captive is not the real image but only the idea, which is the image with its character beaten out of it.”
—John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974)