HeTalkedOfLife
TalkedOfLifeVilleJerry Jeff Walker died last Saturday.
If you want to learn how, exactly, a guy from New York named Ronald Clyde Crosby came to be known as Jerry Jeff Walker back when he was just a kid looking for a gig in New Orleans, well...
Head on over and check out Todd Snider's tribute to Walker that he recorded live, in one long take on the weekend.
...“The mid-’70s in Austin were the busiest, the craziest, the most vivid and intense and productive period of my life,” Mr. Walker wrote in his memoir.
“Greased by drugs and alcohol, I was also raising the pursuit of wildness and weirdness to a fine art,” he wrote. “I didn’t just burn the candle at both ends, I was also finding new ends to light.”...
Luckily, as the seventies began to wind down, Walker met the love of his life, Susan Streit, and settled down.
Not long after he settled on his new moniker, Jerry Jeff spent the night in a New Orleans drunk tank. A few hours later he stepped out into the morning light with a hangover and a song in his back pocket about an old dance man he now 'knew' that would make him rich. The tune also give him the freedom to become one of the founding members of the Cosmic Cowboy movement with a bunch of soon-to-be-country-outlaws in Austin in the early 1970's.
Not long thereafter Walker got all his friends together to record their songs however and wherever they wanted which, of course, was antithetical to the then still pre-Americana 'country' music business at the time.
And all through those wild years he also raged against the dying of any and all light:
...“The mid-’70s in Austin were the busiest, the craziest, the most vivid and intense and productive period of my life,” Mr. Walker wrote in his memoir.
“Greased by drugs and alcohol, I was also raising the pursuit of wildness and weirdness to a fine art,” he wrote. “I didn’t just burn the candle at both ends, I was also finding new ends to light.”...
Luckily, as the seventies began to wind down, Walker met the love of his life, Susan Streit, and settled down.
Sort of.
Todd Snider tells an amazing story about the time he and Walker stumbled out of a bar at three in the morning in Santa Fe, New Mexico sometime in the late '90's.
As the pair walked backed to their hotel they heard the unmistakable opening bars of Mr. Bojangles being played on a banjo off in the distance.
So they changed direction, went around a corner and up the next street where they found an old busker, empty hat on the emptier sidewalk at his feet.
They listened to the old guy play Bojangles in its entirety and then, without a word of explanation, Walker pulled all the cash money he had from his all pockets and dropped it in the empty hat before heading back off into the night with a dumbfounded Snider in tow...
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Switched to an 'Evening Audio' because I keep hearing about how these things are good for falling asleep to...Not entirely sure how I feel about that, but what the heck...
You want Snider's story, for real, of meeting the old busker with his idol in the middle of the night?...It's here.
And, for the record, if there is only one thing I can ever convince you of at this little F-Troop-list blog it is that you will not regret clicking through on that link directly above...Seriously...I absolutely promise that it will surprise you, amaze you and, if you are even remotely alive, make you very, very happy....OK?
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8 comments:
Good stuff. Saw Jerry Jeff in Vancouver in the late seventies.Time flies.
chuck--
Indeed it does. Check out that last link - it will do your head and your heart good.
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I saw Jerry Jeff at the Commodore in the late 70's. He was smashed for the show (of course everyone else was too) and it was a terrific, memorable nights. Those days I was working in a bar while going to University and picked up extra money cleaning the toilets. I used to put on Jerry Jeff (and John Prine) at full volume while I scrubbed. Always played "Pissing in the wind" (and "Up against the wall redneck mother")! Makes me feel old to see another legend pass.
Glen--
Wow. That sounds like a heckuva memorable show. Redneck Mother is all killer no filler for sure.
Stay tuned for more of Mr. Prine's stuff...
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OMG, that is amazing! thank you. Thankfully we have video and film so these times can be recorded and we can remember and see.....
e.a.f.--
Given how much of what the Cosmic Cowboys did occurred in the '70's and '80's it's amazing how much footage there is of them.
Townes Van Zandt is another good example of that.
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Was not until I turned 40 that country music began drawing me in. Walker was the King of the Country Dogs who’ll never allow me to escape its circle. Wish I’d seen him in person but those old records of his ain’t ever going to die.
Beer--
Never, ever going to die, indeed.
Now go watch TSnider's tribute!
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