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Jerry Jeff Walker
American country singer (1942–2020) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Jerry Jeff Walker (born Ronald Clyde Crosby; March 16, 1942 – October 23, 2020)[3] was an American country and folk singer-songwriter. He was a leading figure in the progressive country and outlaw country music movement. He also wrote the 1968 song "Mr. Bojangles".[4]
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Early life
Walker was born Ronald Clyde Crosby in Oneonta, New York, on March 16, 1942. His father, Mel, worked as a sports referee and bartender; his mother, Alma (Conrow), was a housewife.[5] His maternal grandparents played for square dances in the Oneonta area[5] – his grandmother, Jessie Conrow, playing piano, while his grandfather played fiddle. During the late 1950s, Crosby was a member of a local Oneonta teen band called The Tones.[6]
After high school, Crosby joined the National Guard, but his thirst for adventure led him to go AWOL and he was eventually discharged.[5][7] He went on to roam the country busking for a living in New Orleans and throughout Texas, Florida, and New York, often accompanied by H. R. Stoneback (a friendship referenced in 1970's "Stoney").[8] He first played under the stage name of Jerry Ferris, then Jeff Walker, before amalgamating them into Jerry Jeff Walker and legally changing his name to that in the late 1960s.[7]
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Career
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Walker spent his early folk music days in Greenwich Village in the mid-1960s.[9] He co-founded a band with Bob Bruno in the late-1960s called Circus Maximus that put out two albums,[9] one with the popular FM radio hit "Wind", but Bruno's interest in jazz apparently diverged from Walker's interest in folk music.[9] Walker thus resumed his solo career and recorded the seminal 1968 album Mr. Bojangles with the help of David Bromberg and other influential Atlantic recording artists.[10][11] He settled in Austin, Texas, in the 1970s, associating mainly with the outlaw country scene that included artists such as Michael Martin Murphey, Willie Nelson, Guy Clark, Waylon Jennings,[5] and Townes Van Zandt.[12] "Jerry Jeff's train songs" (such as Desperados Waiting for a Train) were cited in the lyrics of Jennings and Nelson's 1977 hit song "Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love)".[13] On September 28, 1974, Walker appeared with Doug Sahm at Carnegie Hall's Main Hall.
A string of records for MCA and Elektra followed Walker's move to Austin, Texas,[9] before he gave up on the mainstream music business and formed his own independent record label. Tried & True Music was founded in 1986,[14] with his wife Susan as president and manager.[15][16] Susan also founded Goodknight Music as his management company and Tried & True Artists for his bookings.[15] A series of increasingly autobiographical records followed under the Tried & True imprint, which also sells his autobiography, Gypsy Songman.[17] In 2004, Walker released his first DVD of songs from his past performed in an intimate setting in Austin.[18]
Walker married Susan Streit in 1974 in Travis County, Texas.[3] They had two children: a son, Django Walker, who is also a musician, and a daughter Jessie Jane.[5] Walker had a retreat on Ambergris Caye in Belize, where he recorded his Cowboy Boots and Bathing Suits album in 1998.[19] He also made a guest appearance on Ramblin' Jack Elliott's 1998 album of duets Friends of Mine,[20] singing "He Was a Friend of Mine" and Woody Guthrie's "Hard Travelin'".[21][22]
Walker recorded songs written by others such as "LA Freeway" (Guy Clark), "Up Against the Wall Redneck Mother" (Ray Wylie Hubbard),[5] "(Looking for) The Heart of Saturday Night" (Tom Waits),[23] and "London Homesick Blues" (Gary P. Nunn).[5] He also interpreted the songs of others such as Rodney Crowell, Townes Van Zandt, Paul Siebel, Bob Dylan, Todd Snider, Dave Roberts, and even a rodeo clown named Billy Jim Baker. Walker was given the moniker of "the Jimmy Buffett of Texas".[24][25][26] It was Walker who first drove Jimmy Buffett to Key West (from Coconut Grove, Florida in a Packard).[27] The two musicians also co-wrote the song "Railroad Lady" while riding the last run of the Panama Limited.[27][28]
"Mr. Bojangles"
Walker's "Mr. Bojangles" (1968) is perhaps his best-known and most-often performed song.[3] It is about an obscure but talented alcoholic tap-dancing drifter who Walker had met who, when arrested and jailed in New Orleans, insisted on being identified only as "Bojangles".
Notable recordings of the song include a live version by his bandmate Bromberg on his album Demon in Disguise, a single by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band that charted at number 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1971 (also released on their album Uncle Charlie & His Dog Teddy). and its inclusion in medley on the 1974 debut self-titled album by Jim Stafford.
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Later years and death
Walker had an annual birthday celebration in Austin at the Paramount Theatre and at Gruene Hall in Gruene, Texas.[3] The party brought some of the biggest names in country music out for a night of picking[clarification needed] and swapping stories.[29]
He died from throat cancer on October 23, 2020, at a hospital in Austin, Texas, at the age of 78.[5][30][31]
Discography
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Albums
Source: AllMusic[32]
Singles
Source: AllMusic,[39] unless otherwise stated.
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Notes
References
External links
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