“Brown Eyed Handsome Man (TV version)” (1970) – Waylon Jennings * Written by Chuck Berry * Produced by Al Quaglieri * CD: The Best of the Johnny Cash TV Show 1969-1971 * Label: Columbia
The Johnny Cash Show celebrated the cross-pollination of American musical genres for two seasons between 1969 and 1971. Among the Man in Black’s guests were Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Ray Charles, the Monkees, and Derek and the Dominos. In January 1971, Waylon Jennings appeared with his then-current incarnation of the Waylors, a group whose various personnel all shared a strong Phoenix, Arizona connection. Because Jennings’s contract with RCA forbade him from using anyone but studio vets on his records, his live sound distinguished itself with an alternate edginess. While his late-1969 country chart hit version (#3) of Chuck Berry’s “Brown Eyed Handsome Man” trotted along tamely to Charlie McCoy’s harmonica, the 1971 TV version (link below) jangled and snapped to the rhythm of Jimmy Byrd’s twelve-string guitar, which looks like a double-neck Mosrite. An archived website alludes to double-necks that Byrd had developed by himself.