Waylon’s son Shooter Jennings has been culling through the archives of unreleased recordings from his father over the last few years looking for anything worthy of public consumption. This resulted in the 2025 album Songbird—a very surprisingly strong collection of 10 songs that for one reason or another, never saw the light of day when Waylon Jennings was living. Many of them were songs written or previously-recorded by others, but were very strong offerings nonetheless.
The Songbird release went very well. It went so well in fact, it ended up charting in the Top 20 upon its release. Shooter says he has at least two more full albums of archieved recordings to go that we can expect to be released in the coming years. If they’re anywhere near the caliber of Songbird, we’re in for a treat.
But that is not all. During Shooter’s search for unreleased gold, he also came across the original recordings of lines of “The Balladeer” for the first two episodes of The Dukes of Hazzard, complete with bloopers and out-takes. Shooter also found the original instrumental recordings for the soundtrack to the first season of the TV show, produced by Waylon’s drummer Richie Albright, and featuring Waylon and his backing band The Waylors.
For those that don’t know, Waylon Jennings played “The Balladeer” for The Dukes of Hazzard TV show, a.k.a. the narrator who would talk between scenes, or when the screen would freeze on the Duke boys jumping a creek bed right before a commercial break. Waylon would come in and say, “Now how do you think the Duke boys are gonna get out of this one ?!?”
Now Shooter Jennings is preparing to release all of this audio in an album called The Balladeer meets the Dukes of Hazzard. Granted, this will not be for the Waylon Jennings semi-fan. This is something for the serious Waylon Jennings aficionado and super collector. That is why these previously-unreleased recordings will only be available via 1,500 orange vinyl copies as part of an exclusive Record Store Day release on April 18th.
Granted, often these Record Store Day exclusives do end up on streaming services and such eventually. But don’t expect this to be an album that is a daily listener full of defined songs. This is more about catching Waylon and The Waylors in their native element. But let’s be frank: The Dukes of Hazzard had some pretty killer music playing in the background when they were high tailing it from Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane.
Don’t forget, Waylon’s “Theme from The Dukes of Hazzard (Good Ol’ Boys)” became a #1 single in country in 1980, and hit #21 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart—his biggest crossover hit.
You can’t order the new album online. You’ll have to show up to your local record store on April 18th to secure a copy that will surely become a collector’s item for country and Waylon Jennings fans. For more info on the release from Record Store Day, click here.
– – – – – – –
Side A: The full recording of Waylon’s first session doing the voice-overs for the Dukes of Hazzard, complete with all the mistakes and bloopers, played over the music for season one of The Dukes of Hazzard. (~16:00)
Side B: The instrumental version of the music from the first season of The Dukes of Hazzard. (~16:00)
– – – – – – – –
If you found this article valuable, consider leaving Saving Country Music A TIP.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source savingcountrymusic.com ’
