Billy Jo Shaver with Willie Nelson
Billy Joe Shaver was born 83 years ago today.
A Texas country music singer and songwriter, Shaver's 1973 album, Old Five and Dimers Like Me, is a classic in the outlaw country genre.
Shaver was raised by his mother, Victory Watson Shaver, after his father Virgil left the family before he was born. Until he was 12, he spent a great deal of time with his grandmother in Corsicana, Texas so that his mother could work in Waco. He sometimes accompanied his mother to her job at a local nightclub, where he began to be exposed to country music.
Shaver joined the U.S. Navy on his 17th birthday. Upon his discharge, he worked a series of dead-end jobs, including trying to be a rodeo cowboy. About this time, Shaver met and married, Brenda Joyce Tindell. They had one son, John Edwin, known as Eddy, who was born in 1962. The two divorced.
Shaver took a job at a lumber mill to make ends meet. One day his right hand (his dominant hand) became caught in the machinery, and he lost the better part of two fingers and contracted a serious infection. He eventually recovered, and taught himself to play the guitar without those missing fingers.
Shaver decided that life was too short to do something he didn't enjoy, so he set out one day to hitchhike to L.A. He couldn't get a ride west, and ended up accompanying a man who dropped him off just outside of Memphis.
The next ride brought him to Nashville, where he found a job as a songwriter for $50/week. His work came to the attention of Waylon Jennings, who filled most of his album, Honky Tonk Heroes, with Shaver's songs.
Other artists, including Elvis Presley and Kris Kristofferson, began to record Shaver's music. This led to his own record deal.
Unfortunately for Shaver, the first few recording companies he signed with soon folded. He was never able to gain widespread recognition as a singer, although he didn’t stop recording his own music.
On his records, he has been accompanied by other major rock and country music musicians like Willie Nelson, Nanci Griffith, Chuck Leavell and Dickey Betts (of the Allman Brothers), Charlie Daniels, Flaco Jiménez and Al Kooper.
After losing his wife, Brenda, and his mother to cancer in 1999, Shaver lost his son and longtime guitarist, Eddy, who died at age 38 of a heroin overdose on December 31, 2000. Shaver nearly died himself the following year when he had a heart attack on stage during an Independence Day show at Gruene Hall in New Braunfels, Texas.
After successful heart surgery, Billy Joe came back to release a new album entitled Freedom's Child in 2002. In 1999, Shaver was invited to perform at the Grand Ole Opry. In November 2005, he performed on the CMT Outlaws 2005.
In 2006, Shaver was inducted in the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame. The Americana Music Convention awarded him their Lifetime Achievement Award in Songwriting.
Shaver died on October 28, 2020 from a massive stroke at the age of 81.
Here, Shaver performs “Georgia on a Fast Train” at the Farm Aid concert in Indianapolis, 1990