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 …
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Polka Dot Slim. Pork Chops. Babe Stovall. Re-Pete. They are the nicknames of African American street performers who worked the New Orleans’ French Quarter in the early and mid-1960s. One of them is likely Jerry Jeff Walker’s “Mr. Bojangles.” The true identity has remained mysterious. Was it really about an old man Walker met in …
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Tales of a pilfered puppy in Nashville, campfire songs in Ohio, sangria wine in Coconut Grove. Jerry Jeff Walker was remembered with affection and honored in song at an outdoor memorial tribute concert for 1,000 fans and friends in Luckenbach on Saturday. The sold-out event vividly brought to life and fleshed out stories which dwell …
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The earliest known surviving set of Jerry Jeff Walker’s handwritten lyrics for “Mr. Bojangles” exist because a plucky young guitar repairman in New Jersey asked Walker to write them down so he could learn the song. Walker wasn’t yet a star in 1968. But he did have an amazing folk song on the radio in the …
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The recording was unearthed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in January 2018, more than a half century after it was made. The audio captured on the portable reel-to-reel tape machine – a German-made UHER 4000 Report-L popular in the early 1960s – is still clear and crisp. “I’m gonna do the whole thing,” announces Jerry Jeff …
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It’s been nearly 50 years since the birth of the outlaw country music scene in Texas. At the beginning of the 1970s, it was known as progressive country, redneck rock and cosmic cowboy music. Its earliest proponents were Michael Martin Murphey, B.W. Stevenson, Jerry Jeff Walker, Doug Sahm, Freda & the Firedogs with singer Marcia Ball …
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In June of 2018, The Wittliff Collections’ curator of Texas Music, Hector Saldaña sat down for a candid conversation with Texas music legend Jerry Jeff Walker and his wife / manager Susan. This event was in celebration of The Wittliff’s exhibition, “¡Viva Jerry Jeff: The Origins and Wild Times of a Texas Icon.” Music was …
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SAN MARCOS, TX – Legendary Texas music artist Jerry Jeff Walker has donated his archive to The Wittliff Collections. Walker’s archive is a major acquisition for the newly-formed Texas Music Collection, and comprises more than 100 boxes of materials spanning Walker’s entire career, featuring master tapes, photographs, hand-written lyrics and artifacts. Throughout his career, Walker …
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