This is about Jerry Jeff Walker who passed away recently. But, I start with Willie Nelson because the two names are never very far apart for me.
Growing up in Southern California I was the only Willie Nelson fanatic at Torrance High School. I was 14 years old when Willie’s Red Headed Stranger album came out. As Nashville haplessly tried to emulate disco (but with a twang), out of nowhere a 42 year old hippie-looking-guy from Texas comes out with a sparse concept album filled with western ballads and swing tunes. The first time I heard “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” on AM Radio (remember that?) I was riding in my Mom’s car on the way home from Lucky Supermarket. I was in my early days of buying my own music but I knew I had to have that record. I bought it and played it until the vinyl crackled with evidence of my love.
As I collected Willie’s records, probably the happiest product of my obsession was that Red Headed Stranger made me want to pick up the guitar that I had tried to learn to play a few times over the years. My cool new guitar teacher parked his dying Carmengia in our driveway because the only way it would start was if he rolled it downhill and popped the clutch. When he walked through our front door, he was momentarily disoriented when I told him that the first song I wanted to learn was “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.” Not “Stairway to Heaven” or “Smoke on the Water” or any of the usual requests from his students. He obliged and even allowed later that it was a better song than he expected at first blush (These days, I think he listens to more country music than I do. More on him in a future blog entry).
Shortly after Red Headed Stranger, Willie, Waylon Jennings, Jessie Colter and Tompball Glaser came out with an album entitled Outlaws. The record was intended to showcase artists that bucked the “Nashville Sound” and thus were “Outlaws” within the country music genre. They did a tour to support the album. My sister took me to the Hollywood Bowl to see the show and, from the first note of “Whiskey River,” I was captivated. It was my first concert and the first of about a dozen times that I saw Willie. That concert was my first experience with country music that hinted at rock. A lot of it had to do with the raucous crowd but there was also a free-wheeling feel to the music that, as advertised, strayed liberally from Nashville’s confines.
After that first concert, the same sister bought me Ridin’ High by Jerry Jeff Walker for my birthday. I had never heard of Jerry Jeff Walker nor did I know that he wrote “Mr. Bojangles.” Neither did my sister. But the guy she was dating at the time told her that if I liked country music, I would like Jerry Jeff.
By the standards of country music at that point in time, Ridin’ High was not country music. I quickly realized, however, that it was my music. Country music with the big sound of rock and roll (not to be confused with modern country music which is, by and large, pop with a dash of country). To be sure, there was pedal steel guitar (which I love) but also electric guitars, horns, twin drummers and vocals filled with joy, grit and pathos. Jerry Jeff delivered what Willie hinted at—music with a complete disregard for musical boundaries that, somehow, unabashedly had its roots in country music.
I saw Jerry Jeff open for Willie several times. You never knew what you were going to get at a Jerry Jeff show. He was notoriously unreliable because he was reliably addled. But some nights were pure magic. I remember one night at the L.A. Sports Arena when the band walked off so that the pedal steel player, the late Leo Leblanc, could play a solo. As Leblanc made his way into a medley of patriotic songs culminating in “America the Beautiful” (not what the crowd was expecting!), Jerry Jeff wandered back onstage to linger just out of the spotlight and listen. It was clear he wasn’t there to rouse the crowd to a patriotic fervor but just to enjoy Leblanc’s mastery of the steel guitar. The crowd of real and fake hippies and cowboys gradually rose to their feet as one, momentarily sober with appreciation and reflection. Jerry Jeff didn’t reclaim center stage until the standing ovation for Leblanc played itself out. It was one of the most generous moments I’ve ever seen the leader of a band give another member. Then, Jerry Jeff barreled into 45 minutes of “Hill Country Rain”, “Gettin’ By”, “LA Freeway” and, of course, “Up Against the Wall Redneck.” It wasn’t 0 to 60 in record time. It was 60 to 120.
Jerry Jeff was a nightmare for his record label because he shunned convention at every turn. With royalties still pouring in from “Mr. Bojangles,” he didn’t really need the “record company.” So, while the record company prayed for another hit, Jerry Jeff recorded songs that made him feel something. More than any other artist, when I play a Jerry Jeff song on my guitar, I feel something because his song selection was so completely detached from artifice or agenda. By “Jerry Jeff song” I mean songs that he wrote or didn’t write. He was a great interpreter of other people’s songs as well as a gifted songwriter. When I heard that Jerry Jeff died in October, I sat down in the Music Room and started playing all of his songs that I knew. It ended up being a long session.
Both Willie and Jerry Jeff gradually drifted into being icons of the “Outlaw” music movement associated with Austin, Texas. They certainly deserved the label and did a lot to solidify the audience for that genre. But, when an artist becomes a symbol the days of groundbreaking music are probably behind him. I think it was best captured when someone asked Willie why he didn’t write songs anymore. He answered that it was hard to write songs when you’ve got money and you’re not miserable anymore. (He was also asked around the age of 65 when he would retire. He asked in return, “All I do is sing and play golf, which one would I give up?”)
For one mediocre guitar player, however, Willie and Jerry Jeff’s impact was profound. They gave me a body of music that I have consistently returned to over the years. Willie saved traditional country music in the nick of time. For better or worse, Jerry Jeff caused country music to loosen up. For better, some have built on that legacy. For worse some have taken the license he granted into the more synthetic aspects of pop.
The songs on Willie’s and Jerry Jeff’s albums from the 70s and early 80s have long been my musical ground zero. Whether I have been happy or sad, renewed or exhausted, clear eyed or confused, I have turned to the guitar and, more than anything else, Jerry Jeff tunes. Back in October I relished once again losing myself in the gift of his music. It is always elastic with possibilities.
Here’s a few videos of my sons and me playing some of my Jerry Jeff favorites. The first is a Mike Burton song about Alaska, then a Guy Clark song and, finally, my favorite Jerry Jeff song that he actually wrote.
Enjoy and, as Jerry Jeff liked to say, “Never let a day go by.”
