Billy Joe Shaver, the Texas singer-songwriter whose trenchant, vivid compositions helped launch country music’s outlaw movement in the 1970s, died on Wednesday in Waco, Texas. His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by his friend Connie Nelson, who said he had recently had a stroke. Mr. Shaver wrote songs for many of the major outlaw figures, including Willie Nelson, Bobbie Bare and Kris Kristofferson. (“I’m hearing Billy Joe Shaver/And I’m reading James Joyce.”)Mr. Shaver’s early reputation rested on his plain-spoken yet poetic contributions to Waylon Jennings’s landmark 1973 album “Honky Tonk Heroes,” regarded as a quintessential expression of outlaw country’s nonconformist spirit. “I’ve spent a lifetime making up my mind to be/More than the measure of what I thought others could see,” Mr. Jennings sang on his version of Mr. Shaver’s “Old Five and Dimers Like Me.”

Source: New York Times October 29, 2020 19:55 UTC