Biography
16 September 1941, Corsicana, Texas, USA. Shaver was raised in Waco, Texas, and lost two fingers in a sawmill accident. In typically contradictory fashion, he took up bronc-busting as a safer job and started to learn guitar. An early song, ‘Two Bits Worth Of Nothing’, was written about his wife - a woman he has both married and divorced three times! Shaver spent some years in Nashville before Bobby Bare discovered him. He and Bare co-wrote his first single, ‘Chicken On The Ground’, for Mercury Records in 1970. Bare hit the US country charts with the simple, gutsy philosophy of ‘Ride Me Down Easy’ in 1973. Johnny Rodriguez did well with ‘I Couldn’t Be Me Without You’, while Tom T. Hall favoured ‘Old Five And Dimers’ and a song about Willie Nelson, ‘Willy The Wandering Gypsy And Me’. Waylon Jennings’ important Honky Tonk Heroes contained nine Shaver songs, including their co-written ‘You Ask...
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