“Waylon Jennings is a hoss.” The words came from one of the hangers-on in a coach’s office adjoining the gymnasium of a Catholic junior high school in Gallup, N.M. I was sitting around, waiting to meet the man himself and I pondered those words as they applied to the renegade country singer who is this year’s prime candidate for crossing into popular music. Why not a “hoss,” I decided. That’s a term that hasn’t found much favor anywhere in recent years, even in the South and West where it originated.

Still, it’s an expressive handle that, in its original sense, seems to fit him like his black leathers: hoss, ft, a dominant masculine individual, a man who knows what he wants and will take no shit, a man’s man. An anachronism, too, I decided as I waited for him.