MCLENNAN COUNTY, TX — A country music legend from Central Texas will sing no more except in recordings and memories.
Billy Joe Shaver died of a stroke wednesday morning at Ascention Providence Hospital.
Shaver helped usher in a new kind of country music, a kind that relied less on cheating spouses, pickup trucks and hound dogs, and more on the grit and grime of real life.
He didn't have the easiest start. He couldn't even get a ride to Tennessee.
"Trying to go to Nashville its getting dark. I've been out there all down day long. Nobody's stopping," he recalled.
Once he did get to the music city he joined good friend and neighbor Willie Nelson of Hill County and other songwriters who gave country music a new look.
Shaver made a lot of friends along the way, due to his kindness. Jim Nash at 92.9 Shooter FM in Waco, said you couldn't find a better friend than Billy Joe Shaver. Nash recalled a concert where he was pre-occupied with personal problems, until Shaver put his arm around him. "I was feeling not that great that night, kind of down a little bit, and without ever saying a word to him before I leave the room he gave me a hug and he said, God loves you, you know, everything's gonna be alright," said the deejay.
Friends knew Shaver as kind, generous, but sometimes moody, and one night at Papa Joe's in Lorena, his mood got the better of him during a friendly card game which led to Shaver and another man having words.
The two went out to the bar's back porch.
To this day, witnesses say shaver pointed the gun asked the man 'where do you want it?' and fired.
It left the man injured and bleeding badly but Shaver walked over to his wife, and then the two left.
"Everybody was so stunned. You know, and he Billy Joe shaver was really kind of casual about it," said Pat Mace, a friend of Shaver's. As they waited for an ambulance, a phone call came. "Maybe 30 to 45 minutes later Willie Nelson called and asked what happened. I told him, because he said he wanted to hear it from someone who was there," she said.
A jury acquitted Shaver but neither he, nor the other man ever came back to papa joes.
What was behind it? "I believe jealousy" said Mace, who said Shaver's wife and the other man's wife were related.
But more than one incident makes up the Shaver story. He's mostly remembered remembered for writing songs for Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, and even Elvis Presley.
Jennings had a hit album, "Honky Tonk Heroes", with nothing but Shaver's songs. Nash said, as a performer, Shaver gave audiences a lot. "He's one of those guys that could put you in the palm of his hand throughout his entire show, take you on a ride. And when he's done with the headset shut down and he leaves stage," said Nash.
Now Shaver has left the stage for good... a country music legend who put Texas on the country music map.
