More than 24 years since his passing, the great Waylon Jennings continues to deliver, with a posthumous record confirmed for a December release date.
The new record – titled Diamonds – will arrive on December 11th as the fourth record of new studio material since Jennings’ death, and his second release in as many years.
First teased in April by way of a series of Californian billboards featuring Jennings smoking a cigarette, it has now been confirmed that the 12-track collection features a batch of songs originally recorded between 1973 and 1984.
Alongside renditions of the Bee Gees' Words and Lynyrd Skynyrd's Saturday Night Special, it features tunes written by the likes of Leon Russell, Hank Williams Jr., and more. The record’s lead single – its title track – features the late Glen Campbell on guitar, while the album also sees Jennings collaborating with his widow Jessi Colter on the J.J. Cale-penned Same Old Blues.
“This track eluded me,” Rolling Stone quoted Jennings’ son, Shooter, as saying of the title track. “I kept finding it across three different sessions while I was going through my father‘s work. At first, I was very confused because of the sound of the guitar as to what it was.
“Suddenly, upon listening to the whole thing, I realized Glen Campbell had stopped by the studio and they recorded this little gem on a late December night in 1978. The remaining members of the Waylors helped put the picture together. It quickly became one of my favorite recordings that my dad ever made and I knew I had to have a whole album centered around it.”
Diamonds follows on from the release of October's Songbird, which featured material from the same period of Jennings' career.
Jennings passed away in February 2002 at the age of 69, having been performing since a young teenager. His career was peppered with numerous accolades, being recognised as one of the most acclaimed and impactful figures in the history of outlaw country.
The archival release project has been spearheaded by Shooter, who is a musician in his own right. The younger Jennings last year explained to Garden & Gun that much of the material set for release has been sitting on a hard drive since 2008, with plenty more music still to arrive.
At the time, he said “at least two more albums” would arrive (of which one of them is ostensibly Diamonds), alongside "live recordings, side projects with Jessi Colter, and an unreleased album from the Waylors”. However, the material isn’t being fast-tracked, with Shooter previously estimating it would “probably take him the next five years to sort through it all”.
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