FORTY-THREE YEARS TO THE MONTH AFTER THE MUSIC DIED FOR BUDDY HOLLY, IT DIED FOR WAYLON TOO — CHANDLER, ARIZONA, FEBRUARY 13, 2002 “Keep singing. Don’t let the music die with me.” That was what Waylon Jennings whispered to Jessi Colter the night before he died. She had played piano for him in the bedroom — not for an audience, just for him. He squeezed her hand as the notes filled the room. Two months earlier, in December 2001, surgeons in Phoenix had amputated Waylon’s left foot. Diabetes had been eating him from the inside for years. The body was sending the bill. But every night after the amputation, Waylon asked the nurses for the same thing. An old pair of cracked cowboy boots. Both of them. Left and right. Placed on the floor beside his bed like nothing had changed. He never looked down. Not when they changed the bandages. Not when they wheeled him to therapy. Not even when Jessi cried beside the bed. A nurse once asked Jessi where the boots came from. Jessi only smiled and said, “A friend gave them to him a long time ago.” That answer was just vague enough to last forever. The next morning — February 13, 2002 — Jessi came home from a morning appointment and found him unresponsive in their living room. Paramedics did CPR. It was too late. He had died in his sleep, sixty-four years old, the man who had once given his seat on a small plane to the Big Bopper in February 1959 and lived through it. The friend who gave Waylon those boots — most fans of country music could guess his name, but they would still be wrong about why the boots mattered.
Forty-Three Years After Buddy Holly, Waylon Jennings Faced His Own Quiet Goodbye Chandler, Arizona — February 13, 2002. Forty-three years…