Kinky Friedman

Within Texas circles devoted to singer-songwriters, rebels and nonconformists have long received support, yet few Lone Star country figures forged an entire livelihood from inventive provocation in the manner of Kinky Friedman. The performer who styled himself the Texas Jewboy could craft intelligent, insightful numbers about life’s underbelly, yet he gained widest recognition for sharply satirical pieces that thrived on inventive lowbrow wit and pointed social commentary. Tracks including “They Ain’t Making Jews Like Jesus Anymore,” “Asshole from El Paso,” “We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service to You,” and “Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed” saw Friedman thumbing his nose at political correctness long before the expression entered everyday speech. An artist fated to become a cult favorite instead of a mainstream hitmaker, he nevertheless cultivated devoted audiences across the United States and overseas, along with authentic celebrity in his home state of Texas—where he launched several tongue-in-cheek gubernatorial bids—and sustained a thriving second career as an author, most notably through a series of crime novels composed during the 1980s and 1990s. His opening trio of albums—Sold American in 1973, the self-titled Kinky Friedman in 1974, and Lasso from El Paso in 1976—sought to merge his boisterous mixture of country, rock, and boogie with major-label polish, whereas the bulk of his subsequent output surfaced on smaller independent imprints and frequently consisted of live documents that best preserved Friedman’s playful chaos in its most organic environment, exemplified by Old Testaments & New Revelations from 1992 and Live from Austin, TX from 2007, the latter drawn from a 1975 Austin City Limits episode that never aired. During the 2010s he resumed earnest recording with the comparatively reflective and subdued The Loneliest Man I Ever Met, issued in 2015.

Born Richard F. Friedman, the son of a University of Texas professor who reared his offspring on the family ranch known as Rio Duckworth, Friedman majored in psychology at the University of Texas at Austin and assembled his debut ensemble, King Arthur & the Carrots, while a student there; the outfit lampooned surf music and released a single in 1966. Following graduation he spent three years in the Peace Corps, stationed in Borneo as an agricultural extension worker. By 1971 he had assembled his next group, Kinky Friedman & the Texas Jewboys. True to the band’s satirical material, each member adopted a deliberately provocative moniker: Little Jewford, Big Nig, Panama Red, Rainbow Colors, and Snakebite Jacobs. Friedman received his first major opportunity in 1973 when Commander Cody reached out to Vanguard Records on behalf of the sharp-tongued newcomer. Vanguard signed him and released Sold American, which included guest contributions from John Hartford and Tompall Glaser. Its title track, a caustic account of an overlooked country singer perishing from alcoholism, scraped the lower reaches of the charts, yet the exposure proved sufficient to earn an invitation to the Grand Ole Opry.

In 1974 he cut an identically titled album for ABC Records. Produced by Los Angeles pop craftsman Steve Barri, the record bewildered any strictly country listeners Friedman might have drawn while pleasing his expanding core audience with satirical material such as his retort to anti-Semitism, “They Ain’t Making Jews Like Jesus Anymore,” alongside more introspective portraits of American misfortune like “Rapid City, South Dakota.” Mid-decade found Friedman and his band traveling with Bob Dylan on the Rolling Thunder Revue, after which he recorded his third album for Epic, Lasso from El Paso, featuring appearances by Dylan, Ringo Starr, and Eric Clapton. The Texas Jewboys disbanded three years afterward, prompting Friedman to relocate to New York, where he became a regular presence at the city’s country and roots venue The Lone Star Cafe. He issued Under the Double Ego on Sunrise Records in 1983.

Thereafter Friedman shifted his primary focus to literature, publishing his debut novel, Greenwich Killing Time, in 1986. Although he still made sporadic club appearances, his mystery novels—A Case of Lone Star, The Mile High Club, and Elvis, Jesus and Coca-Cola among them—became regular best-sellers, mixing fiction with autobiography by centering on a Greenwich Village private investigator named Kinky Friedman, a Texas singer drawn into escapades blending whimsy and metaphysics, often populated by real-life friends and associates from Texas and New York. The books rekindled interest in his music, resulting in two CD anthologies that gathered many of his 1970s and early-1980s compositions: Old Testaments & New Revelations in 1992 and From One Good American to Another in 1995. In 1999 Willie Nelson, Tom Waits, Lyle Lovett, and additional admirers interpreted Friedman’s songs on the tribute collection Pearls in the Snow: The Songs of Kinky Friedman; a second homage, Why the Hell Not … : The Songs of Kinky Friedman, appeared in 2006. Friedman posed nude and cigar in hand, in triplicate, on the cover of the Dallas Observer in 2003, parodying the Dixie Chicks’ nude Entertainment Weekly photograph from the same year, to accompany an article about his political ambitions. Vanguard issued a thirtieth-anniversary edition of Sold American, augmented by bonus tracks, that same year.

An unreleased 1973 live studio performance titled Mayhem Aforethought surfaced in June 2005, followed in October by the compilation They Ain’t Making Jews Like Jesus Anymore, which contained complete versions of Kinky Friedman and Lasso from El Paso. An Austin City Limits set from 1975, originally judged unsuitable for broadcast, finally reached the public via New West Records’ 2007 release Live from Austin, TX. Friedman reemerged in 2015 with his first full studio album since Lasso from El Paso, issued by Avenue A Records under the title The Loneliest Man I Ever Met; the collection contained several new originals plus renditions of songs by Tom Waits, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, and Willie Nelson, the latter also contributing as a guest. After Nelson urged him to resume songwriting, Friedman delivered Circus of Life in 2018, another warm, acoustic-focused effort. Former Bob Dylan and Levon Helm associate Larry Campbell produced Friedman’s subsequent studio album, Resurrection, in 2019. Kinky Friedman passed away on June 27, 2024, in Medina, Texas, at the age of 79.