I’m giving a talk – well, it’s a conversation, really – on “How Waylon Jennings Changed My World” at the Country Music Hall of Fame on January 25.

This video shows some of the reasons why.

One of a series of five segments from a 1984 TV special called “The Door Is Always Open,” it exhibits all of the qualities of raffish good humor, self-deprecating charm, soulful expression, and plain-spoken truth that first drew me to country music – and it is curated by Waylon, who provided me with a personal introduction a decade earlier. It’s all in tribute to Sue Brewer, den mother to several generations of Nashville singer/songwriters, who managed George Jones’ club, Possum Holler, but whose home served as both creative exchange and refuge for every one of the performers featured here, up until her death in 1981.

Waylon proves to be the most sardonic (make that “most genuine”) of genial hosts, introducing a beardless and thoroughly engaging Willie Nelson (“We used to go by Sue Brewer’s house,” Waylon says, “and listen to Willie smile”) who opens with a vibrant “I Gotta Get Drunk,” then seconds just about everyone else on guitar, including Faron Young on “Hello Walls,” Willie’s first #1 country songwriting hit. In addition, you get Roger Miller’s irrepressible energy, contagious good humor, and inimitable sound effects (Roger Miller is one of the few artists who could be accurately described as having arrived, purposefully, from another planet), all accompanied by the appreciative laughter and encouragement of every country music legend in the room.

This is what I encountered when I first met Waylon Jennings in 1974 – well, not so much the irrepressible humor but the individualism, the embrace of life (the embrace of the future), the appreciation of eccentricity, the denial of category that has marked every great American artist from August Wilson to Merle Haggard, from Howlin’ Wolf to Mark Twain. It was the beginning of the so-called “Outlaw Movement” – but that wasn’t what drew me to Waylon or the music. It was, rather, his existential embrace of the moment so perfectly exemplified in his collection of Billy Joe Shaver songs, Honky Tonk Heroes. It was that same celebration of everyday reality, without any need for adornment or prettification, that I had first found in the blues.

I remember seeing Willie Nelson at Fan Fair around this same time, just after Red Headed Stranger came out (not long after his other great “concept album,” Phases and Stages) and being just as mesmerized. Neither Waylon nor Willie was selling anything but the truth. “Country music is just as serious as any other kind of music,” Waylon told me then, speaking of a proposed national television appearance. “They wanted me to do ‘We Had It All’ sitting on a horse. I couldn’t do that shit. I told them to fuck themselves. To them [country music] ain’t nothing but a goddamn joke.”

This was the new world I sought entry to. It seemed like everything was possible. (“I think right now that the country’s in the best shape for the future that it’s ever been,” said Waylon, “because the kids are thinking and worrying about things that never even occurred to me when I was a kid.”) If you want a quick run-down on some of that raw, undiluted feeling, check out this video series. You’ll get everything from Hank Williams Jr.’s witty take-off on his own renunciation of respectability, “All My Rowdy Friends Have Settled Down” to the painful beauty of Mickey Newbury’s “Sweet Memory” to Webb Pierce’s shattering “There Stands the Glass,” branded by his peers as “The National Anthem.”

Traditional country, folk country, outlaw country, classic compositions by Harlan Howard (“Busted”) and Kris Kristofferson (“Sunday Morning Coming Down”) – just set aside any preconceptions, these are performances and performers that defy categorization or idealization. They are simply proudly, defiantly, and irremediably themselves. Just like they should be.

Saturday, January 25, 2014 : 1:30pm

Special Program: Peter Guralnick in Conversation with Robert Gordon

Museum admission or Museum membership required for program admittance. Due to limited seating, a program pass is required for your complimentary seat. Passes will be available for pick-up at the Museum two hours prior to the start of the program, on a first-come, first-served basis. Your pass does not guarantee you a seat after the program begins.

MEMBERS ONLY:Call 615.416.2050 or email Reservations@CountryMusicHallofFame.org to reserve your program pass in advance. Reservations will be accepted until 48 hours before the program, or until the program is at capacity. Your pass does not guarantee you a seat after the program begins.

This seemed like it might really be fun. It was a lot of fun to put together anyway!

Here’s an erratic, eccentric collection of video clips to accompany the book, available at the time of posting anyway, and subject to addition, subtraction, suggestion, and revision – but whichever the case, it should in the end simply lead you to discover – lead me to discover, too – more music.

This is the third of four installments, covering the third section of the book: “Honky Tonk Masquerade.” Once we’ve posted all four, we’ll put them together in one giant Lost Highway video playlist!

Part Three: Honky Tonk Masquerade

WAYLON JENNINGS: The Pleasures of Life in a Hillbilly Band

“Waymore Blues”

This might seem a little slight (the performance, not the song, despite what Waylon says) but it is certainly charming. Which is one of Waylon’s many outstanding, if occasionally wayward, qualities. Another being his typically offbeat, and decidedly non-linear, approach to country music. Here he performs solo, singing one of his recent compositions to his wife, Jessi Colter, on his one-time brother-in-law Jack Clement’s never-actually-screened (except in the documentary referenced above) television show. The song is a tribute to Jimmie Rodgers in a way (“It don’t make any sense,” Waylon says to Jessi. “It does, but it don’t. You could say it has a concept to it”) – but take it as a completely unself-conscious statement of Waylon’s naturally existential point of view. Sometimes – frequently – this can take a darker turn, but it always comes out no-bullshit-with-a-sardonic sense-of-humor Waylon. For Waylon performing in a more characteristic band setting, with one of his many superlative groups of Waylors, check out Waylon Live: The Expanded Edition (BMG 82876 51855), a wonderful two-CD audio set recorded in 1974 with the great Ralph Mooney (also a Stranger at one point and author of “Crazy Arms”) on steel guitar.

HANK WILLIAMS, JR.: Living Proof

“Family Tradition”

Okay, I’m not going to even go there. Just dig the music. Check out the sheer playfulness and intelligence of the composition, the catchiness of the playing, the timelessness (and timeliness) of Hank Jr.’s message at this particular point in his life, as opposed to – look, I’m not going to even go there. This just reminds me all over again why Hank Jr. made such an impact – both popular and personal. So sit back and – well, don’t sit back. Jump up and listen to the music: to the unerring feel for the blues, to a spontaneity and improvisational sense worthy of the master (Jerry Lee Lewis was in many ways as much his model as his daddy), to the whole relaxed (but revealing) approach. And don’t miss out on the way Merle Kilgore throws himself into the act in the background (as he always did), shouting out the chorus and grinning to beat the band. The interview is pretty cool, too, a relaxed interchange that is not without its moments of insight and revelation.

MERLE HAGGARD: In the Good Old Days (When Times Were Bad)

“A Tribute to Bob Wills, with the Texas Playboys”

The greatest Merle Haggard show I ever saw wasn’t a show at all. It was a rehearsal at Harrah’s in Reno – not even a rehearsal, a sound check – that went on for two or three hours. Merle had a twelve-piece “orchestra,” very similar to this one, made up of former Playboys, the core of Merle’s band, the Strangers, and a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old Mark O’Connor. The show that Merle did that night for the public was professional enough but not even remotely on the same plane. The sound check was music purely for the sake of making music – and I think they would have played all night (another Bob Wills reference) if they hadn’t had a supper show to do. Just to show how dedicated Merle can be when it comes to what he really cares about, he learned to play fiddle just so he could play Bob Wills music with the great Bob Wills band. To my mind there could be no better proof of the totality of Merle’s commitment to music: like Duke Ellington, for Merle the band (whether the Strangers or this augmented group) was his indulgence, the gigs were his way of paying for it. We’ll have to do a complete set of Merle Haggard originals at some point, but here we have perhaps the greatest songwriter of our time – of any time? of his genre – of any genre?) singing the songs of one of his musical heroes with just as much genuineness and pure emotion as he would bring to any song of his own. Don’t miss Merle when he comes to town. It may not always be this good, but lately, with his nineteen-year-old son Ben playing lead guitar, he has been consistently more engaged than I have seen him in a long time.

JAMES TALLEY: Scenes From Life (A Triptych)

“Are They Gonna Make Us Outlaws Again?”

I wish we had something from the time that this was first recorded (“Are They Gonna Make Us Outlaws Again?” came out on James’ wonderful second album, Tryin’ Like the Devil, in 1976) – but, you know, the song is pretty timeless, isn’t it? And I don’t know that this relaxed rehearsal approach isn’t as poignantly to the point as a more polished (or youthful) version. This is the Greatest Number One Hit That Never Was. It should have/could have/would have been a big hit for Merle or Johnny Cash if they had ever recorded it (it was such a natural for either one – and they came close). Hell, it should’ve been a Number One hit for James Talley. You won’t find a better Woody Guthrie take-off from any other source, and like so many of Woody’s songs it’s just as applicable today, if not more so. The populist strain has always been defeated in the political arena by big money and bad intentions – but you can’t defeat the music.

STONEY EDWARDS: A Simple Little Dream

“Hank and Lefty Raised My Country Soul”

Stoney was a stone original – I know, I know, I’m sorry. It was something on which he prided himself to the point that when a psychiatrist friend offered to teach him to read, he refused on the basis that it might alter his view of the world. (“I’m glad I can’t read,” he said. “It scares the shit out of me sometimes how close I came to being an educated man. When I think of how many things that’s written about [is] copied – well, I can’t copy anybody else. What I write has to be true.”) Well, I don’t know how far I would take this, but Stoney was as natural a philosopher as anyone I’ve ever encountered, and while he may never have achieved the popular success of Charley Pride, his chief and just-about-only rival in the African-American corner of commercial country music (though we shouldn’t forget O.B. McClinton), and although as far as I know his oil well in Oklahoma never came in, it seemed like he led a truly fulfilled life. As evidenced by this extremely lo-def video, which captures so much of the unpretentious charm and enthusiasm of a true country original.