The country music world is in mourning today after the legendary Outlaw Country singer/songwriter Billy Joe Shaver, who passed away on Wednesday. He was 81 years-old.
Shaver’s death was confirmed to Fox News by a rep, who said he died at Ascension Providence Hospital in Waco, Texas after “an illness.”
“Shaver’s hardscrabble songs reflected his often-tough life,” his rep said in a statement. “He dropped out of high school and hitchhiked and drove trucks across the country. He married and divorced the same woman (Brenda Tindell) three times.”
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Shaver took the country music storm in 1973 with his debut album, “Old Five and Dimers Like Me,” and he quickly became known as a major contributor to the 1970s’ “outlaw country” movement. Shaver was close friends with Willy Nelson, who once referred to him as “the greatest living songwriter.”
Songs written by Shaver were recorded by such country music legends as Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Kris Kristofferson, Jerry Lee Lewis, and many more.
“I know the power of words,” he told Esquire in 2014. “I figure they’d be here forever. I’m hoping a lot of them are gonna make it.”
Later in this same interview, Shaver vowed, “I’ll bop till I drop.”
Shaver certainly was met with his fair share of challenges in life. When he was young, he was in a sawmill accident that lost him the tops of three fingers. He once suffered a heart attack onstage before publishing a memoir called “Honky Tonk Hero” in 2005.
In 2007, Shaver shot a man in the face outside of a bar in Texas, and he was later acquitted after claiming self-defense. His son Eddy tragically died of a heroin overdose on New Year’s Eve back in 2000. Shaver once told Rolling Stone that he considered taking revenge for his son’s death, but Nelson convinced him not to.
“I knew where [the drugs] came from — that drug dealer, I would have shot him up and killed him instead of calling the police,” he said. “But Willie talked me out of it. He said, ‘You’re best just leaving it alone.’ And I did. I just left it alone. But you don’t ever forget something like that.”
Shaver was inducted into the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame in 2006, and last year, the Academy of Country music gave him the Shaver the Poets Award. Despite this, he has never been inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, something that irritated him in his final years.
“If you don’t want to put me in there, that’s fine. But I just don’t understand it to tell you the truth,” he said. “I feel like I am part of the foundation and maybe even a cornerstone. I think I’m that much.”
This piece originally appeared in UpliftingToday.com and is used by permission.
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