I just wanted to jump in here and say that it’s Jerry Jeff Walker’s birthday, and he has been one of the primary dudes I jam since I was 14 or so, so he helped make me a pretty weird kid. He wrote his famous song Mr. Bojangles while in jail in New Orleans, and has a host of other solid hits with equally classic backstories. He has always been a folk singer, and hitchhiked, busked and rambled throughout the 50s and 60s until he helped found the outlaw country movement in the 1970s. He tells old stories on stage
He had the first ever “live” album not recorded in a studio when he hauled recording equipment to the Luckenbach dance hall, which was back then an empty place he liked to get drunk at with his friends and Luckenbach’s inaugural mayor, Hondo Crouch.
His music helped me grow, regress, understand the world and myself and wallow in it all.
Stoney – blows Mr. Bojangles away, best story song he does in my self-acclaimed expert opinion.
Pot Can’t Call the Kettle Black – just a fun song, and I still can’t to this day say “pot can’t call the kettle black” to someone without singing it like this and dancing a little jig.
I Feel Like Hank Williams Tonight – literally the best song to get your
Alright, he has a lot more songs that are great, but I realized I would just be adding to this all day instead of something I need to be doing. He is 77 and in not great health, so if you get the opportunity to see him you better hop on it.
Who are some of the people that you were crazy about when you were young?
Janis Joplin. As a kid, even now, I see myself in her weird. I could always hear my anger, ugliness, and hope echo in her wails.
that’s a great one, she had so much soul and so much angst. Her voice does reverberate everything and carries it through you.
I see your “I Feel Like Hank Williams Tonight,” and I raise you a true wallowing sesh with, “Today I Started Loving You Again.” I remember spending 100 bucks of my own money on the Merle Haggard box set, which was a lot to me as a 12 yr old kid. He definitely helped form my appreciation of songwriters and storytellers. Thankfully I did get to see him play with Willie once upon a time.
I had that box set to! but at 20, you were a lot more of an extreme fan than I was at 12, I was too busy stealing Afroman songs off napster, I wouldn’t get into the old country until 13 or 14. He was a great storyteller and writer, “the poet of the common man”. “Today I started loving you again” is such a doozy of a song, he has some truly great ones. I should definitely make a post about that. Thanks! and glad you got to see him and Willie, must have been an awesome show.