In addition to five No. 1 country singles of his own, Rodney Crowell has also penned multiple hits for other artists, including Emmylou Harris and Johnny Cash. Among his career gems is “I Ain’t Living Long Like This,” recorded by four different country singers. On this day (March 1) in 1980, Waylon Jennings took his version to the top of the Hot Country Songs chart—therefore making Crowell’s stint behind bars worth it.
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The Inspiration Behind This Waylon Jennings Hit
In the late 1960s, Rodney Crowell and his football buddies liked to get beer after practice and cruise the backroads of Crosby, Texas, often pulling up stop signs. One time, a Texas highway patrolman caught them. When the boys scattered, the lawman told them, “If you make one move, you’re a dead man, friend.”
Years later, Crowell would incorporate the policeman’s words into “I Ain’t Living Long Like This”: I look for trouble and I found it son / Straight down the barrel of a law man’s gun / I tried to run but I don’t think I can / You make one move and you’re a dead man, friend.
In the 1970s, Crowell moved from Tennessee to Hermosa Beach, California, with his wife and their dog, Banjo. Back in the Volunteer State, leash laws were practically nonexistent, and Crowell allowed Banjo to roam as he pleased.
Things were different in California, however, and Crowell would go on to rack up nearly 50 leash law violations. One day in 1976, he was sitting at home writing a song with a “Texas boogie beat” when a knock came at the door. The cops arrested Crowell and took him to the local jail—which, as it turns out, was “the perfect setting” for the songwriter to finish up his latest work.
“So that song came to me the way any song called ‘I Ain’t Living Long Like This’ should come—in jail,” Crowell recalled in an interview with PBS.
Who Else Recorded The Song?
Country singer Gary Stewart first recorded “I Ain’t Living Long Like This” for his 1977 album Your Place or Mine. The next year, Emmylou Harris would also put her own spin on the song for her album Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town. Rodney Crowell himself also recorded the song for his debut album of the same name.
However, it was Waylon Jennings who took “I Ain’t Living Long Like This” straight to the top. “When I met him, he corned me and he said, ‘Hoss, I’m going to record your song ‘I Ain’t Living Long This,’ and I’m gonna make it a hit,” Crowell recalled. “I said, ‘You go on, brother.’ And true to his word, he did.”
(Photo by Tom Hill/Getty Images)
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