After overpowering a woodsy Beatles song (You've Got To Hide Your Love Away from
their Help album),Waylon quickly
follows up with the title song where it all comes together for him. With Love
of the Common People, his resonant baritone and larger than life persona
perfectly match its
ascending arrangement and overt theme of social justice --presaging Elvis
Presley’s In the Ghetto by two long trying years in America. This pivotal song reached #3 on the 1967 country
charts and was said to have gone all the way to #1 in Navajo country. On a
popular culture level, Waylon would later go on receive more exposure and notoriety
with his ‘70s “outlaw” work, his big screen appearance in the Sesame Street
movie Follow that Bird and his "Theme
from The Dukes of Hazzard (Good Ol'
Boys)" which played in millions of living rooms each Friday night in the
early ‘80s. However, on this relatively unheralded
album centered on its aforementioned title song, Waylon is able to lovingly
stir individual listeners while also raising their consciousness to the plight
of others.
