Billy Joe Shaver (August 16, 1939 – October 28, 2020)
A year during which we lost so many great songwriters got even gloomier after Shaver’s passing. The Corsicana, Texas native left behind such lyrical masterpieces as “Old Five and Dimers Like Me” and “I’m Just an Old Chunk of Coal (But I’m Gonna Be a Diamond Someday).” To give you an idea of the “Wacko from Waco’s” impact on American popular culture, he wrote most of the songs on Waylon Jennings’ outlaw country benchmark Honky Tonk Heroes (1973) and appeared on the silver screen along with his friend Robert Duvall in The Apostle (1996).