Leave Them Boys Alone

"Leave Them Boys Alone" is a song recorded by American country music artist Hank Williams Jr. with Waylon Jennings and Ernest Tubb. It was released in May 1983 as the second single from Williams' album Strong Stuff. The song reached number 6 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart. It was written by Williams, Dean Dillon, Gary Stewart and Tanya Tucker. The song is notable for its combination of two singers associated with the outlaw movement with a country legend from the honky tonk days and golden age of the Grand Ole Opry. Outlaw singers like Williams and Jennings saw themselves as taking country music back to its raw, honky tonk roots, and recording an up tempo song with Tubb (who would never have received radio airplay in the late 1970s and early 80's) and reaching #6 was a slap in the face to the proponents of the country pop sound. The lyrics of the song, much like Williams' Family Tradition echo the sentiment that the outlaw singers and their current escapades were predated by the hard living honky tonkers of the 1950s such as Hank Williams, Sr. and Ernest Tubb, prior to the music being fairly taken over by the Nashville Sound in the 1960s.