By Hector Saldaña
He was a gypsy songman passin’ by. His whole life was a song.
Amid the excitement of the major new exhibit at The Wittliff Collections at Texas State University in San Marcos celebrating Jerry Jeff Walker’s landmark 1973 album “¡Viva Terlingua!” and the buzz around the all-star concerts at Luckenbach this summer comes the news that Walker’s 1999 book “Gypsy Songman” is now available as an eBook.
Hard copy editions of the autobiography are not easy to find and usually only available at inflated prices.
Original “Gypsy Songman” cover
“The original hard copies of the book are rare as hen’s teeth now,” joked Earl Casey, the longtime news executive who served as chief researcher and co-author of “Gypsy Songman.” He is also a close family friend.
Walker’s and Casey’s voluminous archives are preserved at The Wittliff and are the source materials for “Gypsy Songman.” The book’s title comes from one of Walker’s earliest and best songs. Its lyrics described a busker who could find a stage on every corner and willing to share a song for dime or a smile.
“¡Viva Terlingua! The Big Bang of Texas Music” in the Texas Music Gallery at The Wittliff celebrates Walker’s quintessential outlaw album recorded in Luckenbach with the Lost Gonzo Band in August 1973. The discovery of more than an hour of unreleased music from the iconic album plays in the gallery. The exhibit runs through June 2025.
Equally notable, next year marks mark 60 years since the New York-born folk singer first hitchhiked to Austin. The story is told in “Gypsy Songman” but it’s fun to retrace the deep dive into the archives that Casey made when researching the story and interviewing Walker.
One example: notes that Walker jotted down in February 1992 for his 50th birthday concert program. The handwritten notes were written on Tried & True Music stationary.
Gypsy Songman typed lyrics
“The Hill country is my home. I’ve known it since I first hitchhiked into Austin in 1964. To say Jerry Jeff is not a Texan is to say chile piquins aren’t hot,” Walker wrote.
“By the time I left high school in 1960, I was not well formed. I left Oneonta in 1961 and stepped into the turbulent ’60s. Through civil rights and folk music and family rock groups, I stumbled along my merry way reinventing myself.”
Walker revealed that as a young man, he’d dreamed about joining the United States Merchant Marines or living in Ireland or living in the Caribbean. “But one thing I know for certain,” he wrote, “Austin, Texas is my home.”
And Texas music was better for it. Walker and the Lost Gonzo Band are one of the foundation blocks and originators of outlaw country and Americana,
The legendary singer-songwriter wrote his story by hand. What makes it so remarkable and engaging is the honesty and passion in which he undertook the project – warts and all. Author and screenwriter Bud Shrake wrote the foreword.
Walker died in October 2020.
His wife and business manager Susan Walker attested to that dedication in an email blast to his fans: “Jerry Jeff spent countless hours that stretched into weeks and months in the late ’90s writing and editing.”
“Gypsy Songman” is available as an eBook for $8.99 from Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other online book retailers.
Connect here: https://www.amazon.com/Gypsy-Songman-Jerry-Jeff-Walker-ebook/dp/B0CDNBDTDW
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/gypsy-songman-jerry-jeff-jeff-walker/1003583163