It's All Just Public Domain
A little bit of whimsy and a talent for interpreting the joy in living through music exited our worldly side of glory with the death of Jerry Jeff Walker. His passing was announced to me on Facebook by my boyhood friend, Terry Olivarii, who posted a picture of all his Jerry Jeff Albums. This prompted me to go to my vinyl stack and verify I have a couple Terry is missing. I raise Terry “CowJazz” and “Driftin’ Way of Life”. Oh well, JJ Walker would say It’s all Just public domain.
Jerry Jeff was a songwriter who wrote one perfect song and was probably on his way to being doomed to always be referred to as “Mr. Bojangles” when he stopped in Austin on his way to California in the early 1970s and never left. He wrote a lot of songs and lyrics that come to my mind, but never a song as purely constructed and timeless as the song written about an old shuffle dancer he met in a drunk tank in New Orleans. And that guitar intro…
Jacky Jack, as he sometimes referred to himself, was so much more than Mr. Bojangles. The New York native, born Ronald Clyde Crosby, morphed into Jerry Jeff Walker and became a larger than life Godfather of the Austin Outlaw Country Music scene in the 1970s. Willie Nelson gave the movement legitimacy with his Texas/Nashville country standard songwriting pedigree. Jerry Jeff … he gave the movement attitude and a wonderful lack of direction.
I like to sleep late in the mornin’
I don’t like to wear no shoes
Make love to the women while I’m livin’
And get drunk from a bottle of booze
Jerry Jeff may be the BEST imperfect singer I ever heard. He knew instinctively his throaty, whisky baritone would never fit in Nashville, where they have always liked male models they can drape in Cowboy hats and have them sing the notes perfectly as written while emptying the tune of soul. Somehow, this New Yorker could don a cowboy hat and a pair of Charlie Dunn boots and he was a Texan for life.
Jerry Jeff’s voice was world weary and perfectly suited for the song fare he championed. He made you believe and could sell the song. I saw him in Lubbock on a date with a sweet Texas Tech freshman cheerleader. Jerry Jeff sang “Night Rider’s Lament”, a song he didn’t write but owns forever. My date burst into tears because he seemed “like the most lonesome cowboy ever, like he doesn’t have a friend in the world”. Mike Burton wrote the song, but JJ Walker owned it as evidence by the tears.
Why do you ride for your money?
Why do you rope for short pay?
You ain’t getting’ nowhere
And you’re losin’ your share
You must of gone crazy out there
Ah, but Jerry Jeff had friends and he would introduce you to them on albums. He introduced me to Guy Clark with “Desperadoes Waiting on a Train”, Ray Wylie Hubbard with “Up Against the Wall Redneck Mother” and Gary P. Nunn with “London Homesick Blues (I want to go home with the Armadillo…)”. I learned to love all three of those guys and heard them all sing those three standards. Yet, my favorite version of all three is Jerry Jeff’s.
He made those introductions on the first Jerry Jeff Album I ever bought, Viva Terlingua, which is still probably the most memorable. Terlingua was the theme music for my Texas Tech daze. In my first senior year myself and two other Saddle Tramps rented a house from a Tech professor a couple of blocks off campus, directly across the street from the chairman of the Board of Regents. A way too classy neighborhood for the likes of us. On Saturday nights after football games, it was our party house. We would move our living room furniture out into the front yard so we could dance. Sangria Wine was both the theme song and drink of choice. The chair of the regents never came over and complained or called the cops on us. I guess he liked a little country music too.
Viva Terlingua was recorded live at Luckenbach, Tx., a hide 'n' seek antique town about 30 miles down winding farm and market roads from Boerne where my cowboy brother ran a horse ranch. It wasn't too many turntable spins before I wandered over to Luckenbach to seek the sage advice of Honda Crouch, who was a creative force who had bought a town that consisted mainly of just a beer joint and put it on the map. Of course, people kept stealing the signs to Luckenbach, so it was hard to keep it on the map. Jerry Jeff had listed Hondo as the inspiration for the album. I remember asking Hondo to tell me about Jerry Jeff and how they met.
"The first time I met Jerry Jeff, I knew he was hungry," he said, peeking out at me from under the brim of a purposeful battered hat to see if I was at all suspicious. Not being worldly, I took the bait and asked him how he knew Jerry Jeff was hungry. "He had a guitar, those guys are always hungry," Honda laughed, always the most pleased at his own jokes.
I may have short changed ole Scamp Walker by saying he only wrote one standard with Bojangles. He wrote a couple of others that are not as well known but deep in their own lyric. He’s written lines that have stuck with me as part of my daily life for these nearly 50 years since I first heard them.
Picture of my face, on the window pane
Is that a tear I see or is it rain…
-- Little Bird
Then there is the song about the power and destruction wheels can bring into a man’s life:
My brother chased A dream of wheels His whole life geared for the race As soon as he could He drove off for good His whole life was short, quick, and straight He only lived To spin those wheels And make that move over ground 'Til the steering failed And he crashed the rail And he laid there still for the sound Of the wheel that kept spinning 'round
--Wheel
Then there are those lyrics that aren’t sad at all but stick with you for the grin they bring along. I never go through the Dallas-Fort Worth airport without hearing the lines from “Winging It Home to Texas” running through my mind, about how their bags are lost again and the refrain: That Dallas airport sucks…” I have to agree about DFW. To my regret I don’t hang out in country bars these days. But when I did, lines from “Pissin’ in the Wind” would come to mind as offering an alternative to standing in a long line when you really have to go.
Jerry Jeff created longing with his songs. I had the old ghost town of Terlingua, Tx on my bucket list for 40+ years along with a pair of handmade boots made by Charlie Dunn in Cactus Saddlery in Austin. I checked off one longing thanks to longtime friends Alan and Madonna Kimball, who hosted Jan and I at their place in Terlingua last year and took us on a great tour of the Big Bend. I’m afraid now, when I might can afford a pair of handmade boots, I’ve waited too long and Charlie Dunn is gone. I guess one out of two isn’t bad odds and as the Rolling Stones tell us: you can’t always get what you want.
When someone passes who had a hand in writing lyrics and singing songs that were seminal in your life, one realizes your own fuse is a little shorter. You wonder what you can do now that the imperfect voice that resonated with you has been silenced by time. My furniture is a lot heavier and I’ve got a homeowner’s association that wouldn’t take kindly to moving everything out in the front yard. Maybe I’ll do just what I’m doing now, which is listening to a mega playlist off my phone of every Jerry Jeff song I can find on Apple Music. Maybe play Sangria Wine and raise a glass to Jerry Jeff Walker.
With apologies to Steven Fromholz, Somewhere the Man in The Big Hat is buying…
