On This Day in 1977, Waylon Jennings Started a Six-Week Run at No. 1 with a Song He Never Liked

On this day (May 21) in 1977, Waylon Jennings started a six-week run atop the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart with “Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love).” The song would be Jennings’ biggest hit on the country chart, but it was far from his favorite song.

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Bobby Emmons and Chips Moman co-wrote “Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love),” and Jennings released it as the lead single from his album Ol’ Waylon. Released on April 11, the song quickly climbed to the top of the country chart. It also landed at No. 16 and No. 25 on the Adult Contemporary and Hot 100 charts, respectively. Its six-week run at the top of the country survey made it the Outlaw Country legend’s most successful single. Unfortunately, he wasn’t a fan of the song.

[RELATED: On This Day in 1977, Waylon Jennings Released the Massively Successful Hit That He Hated]

More than being his most successful single, “Luckenbach, Texas” helped bolster the sales of Jennings’ most successful album. Ol’ Waylon topped the country albums chart for 13 weeks. More than that, it was the first album by a solo country artist to reach Platinum status.

Waylon Jennings Never Liked “Luckenbach, Texas”

One of Waylon Jennings’ most famous quotes is about this hit song. “I knew it was a hit song, even though I didn’t like it–and still don’t,” he wrote in his autobiography.

Many fans would like to believe that the song was an ode to Jennings’ or the songwriters’ favorite little town in Texas. However, that wasn’t the case. Neither Chips Moman nor Bobby Emmons had been to Luckenbach, Texas, when they wrote the song. Jennings didn’t visit until he played Willie Nelson’s Fourth of July Picnic there in 1997, twenty years after releasing the song.

Jennings’ longtime drummer, Ritchie Albright, once recalled the “I’ve Always Been Crazy” singer sharing his thoughts on the song during a recording session. “He said, ‘Just remind me when I’m picking singles from now on that I got to sing that motherf**ker every night.’”

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