Billy Joe Shaver Gets His Wings

Billy Joe Shaver in 2012 (Photo by Sandy Carson)

Billy Joe Shaver left this world Wednesday, Oct. 28, at a hospital in Waco. According to local sources, the country music legend's health problems resulted from a stroke. The singer was 81.

The crème de la crème of Texas songwriters, Shaver wrote with the rare ability to contextualize life in a manner both artful and grounded. Songs penned by the Corsicana native included "I'm Just an Old Chunk of Coal (But I'm Gonna Be a Diamond Someday)," "I've Been to Georgia on a Fast Train," "Ride Me Down Easy," and "Live Forever," which he composed with his late son Eddy Shaver. Throughout his six-decade career, Billy Joe steadily produced a masterful body of song craft, so much so that he could hardly remember the term other artists use when they can't write.

"I've never had that ... what do you call it? 'Writer's block' or whatever," he professed to the Chronicle in a 2014 interview (revisit "The Unabridged Billy Joe Shaver," Music, Aug. 5, 2014).

What makes a great song, is there a magic ingredient, I wondered?

"It's truth and saying it in as few words as you possibly can to the point where an idiot like me can understand it," he replied. "You've gotta start at the bottom. When I have trouble with a song, I'll lay it out on the table and visualize it as a letter to someone I care about. Then I'll realize what I want to say."

Asked if he wrote better on speed or God, he laughed:

"The speed just helped me stay up so I could have more fun, but I figure it knocked a whole bunch of years off my writing and my friendships. I don't think God helps anybody write songs, except maybe 'I'm Just an Old Chunk of Coal.' I wrote that right when I was born again and it just came down through me."

Following a rough Texas upbringing, Shaver joined the Navy at 16 and returned home to start a family. Five years later, he lost two fingers on his right hand in a sawmill accident. In 1966, he relocated to Nashville with a job as a songwriter in Bobby Bare's publishing company, for which he earned $50 a week.

Shaver's star rose in Nashville when he penned or co-wrote all but one song for Waylon Jennings' 1973 classic Honky Tonk Heroes. In the ensuing years, Shaver's compositions were covered by Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, John Anderson, and Elvis Presley, who closed his 1975 album Promised Land with Shaver's "You Asked Me To." Additionally, Bob Dylan namechecked "listening to Billy Joe Shaver" in his song "I Feel a Change Comin' On." Shaver also distinguished himself as a solid actor, having a memorable turn in Robert Duvall's 1996 film The Apostle.

In much of his material – and life – Shaver seemed to have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other.

"I'm just a really spiritual, kinda hardheaded religious guy," he told Doug Freeman in a 2012 Chronicle feature. "I'm constantly wondering if I'm doing the right thing, every day and every second just about. And I realize now that people are listening to me, so now I'm very careful about what I write, because I don't want to hurt nobody.

"Actually, most of my songs, they were written trying to stay alive. The rest of them were written trying to get back in the house."

A faithful Christian no doubt, but Shaver also wrote a chapter or two on hell-raising. Legends about his toughness proved only partially true, he told the Chronicle:

"Half the stories are a blown-up bunch of bullshit. One time these two guys tried to roll me in the alley behind the old Ryman in Nashville and I whupped 'em and left 'em lying there. By the time I'd walked to the other end of town, people were already saying I'd beat up five guys, fucked 'em up so bad, kicked a hole in their damn car – all kinda crazy shit!

"The more I tried to deny it, the worse it got."

Shaver's most notorious incident made it into Freeman's cover story (revisit, "God Loves Ya When You Dance," Music, Aug. 17, 2012).

"'That shooting incident' is the infamous 2007 shooting outside of Papa Joe's Texas Saloon in nearby Lorena, where Shaver shot Billy Bryant Coker in the face with a .22-caliber pistol. In the subsequent 2010 trial, the singer was acquitted of aggravated assault on grounds of self defense."

Shaver later wrote a song about it called "Wacko from Waco."

In death, Billy Joe is reunited with his son and lead guitarist Eddy, who passed away from a heroin overdose in 2000. In his song "Ride Me Down Easy," Shaver lands his lyric with maximum effect.

"Ride me down easy Lord, ride me on down.

Leave word in the dust where I lay.

Say I'm easy come, easy go, and easy to love when I stay."