October 1, 2021 —– Chart #111
Hello Musical Friends,
Welcome to Friday, fall weather and the 111th edition of Chart of the day. Today I give you one of my favorite artists from Texas. Well he actually didn’t start from Texas, but like a lot of us when he got there he called it home and never left. “Mr. Bojangles” is a song written and originally recorded by American country music artist Jerry Jeff Walker for his 1968 album of the same title. Walker said he was inspired to write the song after an encounter with a street performer in a New Orleans jail. While in jail for public intoxication in 1965, he met a homeless man who called himself “Mr. Bojangles” to conceal his true identity from the police. Mr. Bojangles had been arrested as part of a police sweep of indigent people that was carried out following a high-profile murder. The two men and others in the cell chatted about all manner of things, but when Mr. Bojangles told a story about his dog, the mood in the room turned heavy. Someone else in the cell asked for something to lighten the mood, and Mr. Bojangles obliged with a tap dance. The homeless “Mr. Bojangles”, who was white, had taken his pseudonym from Bill “Bojangles” Robinson (1878–1949), the best-paid Black entertainer of his era.
The song was first recorded by popular Austin performer Allen Wayne Damron during a live performance at the Chequered Flag folk club in Austin in 1967. Jerry Jeff Walker recorded his single version (with Bobby Woods, Charlie Freeman, Sandy Rhodes, Tommy McClure, Sammy Creason, and a string orchestra) in Memphis, Tennessee on June 7, 1968, and it was released by Atco Records (Atco #6594) on June 20. He also recorded a non-string version in New York City for his album Mr. Bojangles with David Bromberg, Gary Illingworth, Danny Milhon, Bobby Cranshaw, Jody Stecher, Donny Brooks, Ron Carter, Bill LaVorgna, and Jerry Jemmott. It was released by Atco (Atco #33-259) on September 25, 1968.
Since then, it has been recorded by many other artists, including US country rock band Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, whose version (recorded for the 1970 album Uncle Charlie & His Dog Teddy) was issued as a single and rose to No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1971.
Jerry Jeff Walker (born Ronald Clyde Crosby; March 16, 1942 – October 23, 2020) was born in Oneonta, New York, on March 16, 1942. His father, Mel, worked as a sports referee and bartender; his mother, Alma (Conrow), was a housewife. His maternal grandparents played for square dances in the Oneonta area – his grandmother, Jessie Conroe, playing piano, while his grandfather played fiddle. During the late 1950s, Crosby was a member of a local Oneonta teen band called The Tones.
After high school, Crosby joined the National Guard, but his thirst for adventure led him to go AWOL and he was eventually discharged. He went on to roam the country busking for a living in New Orleans and throughout Texas, Florida, and New York, often accompanied by H. R. Stoneback (a friendship referenced in 1970’s “Stoney”). He first played under the stage name of Jerry Ferris, then Jeff Walker, before amalgamating them into Jerry Jeff Walker and legally changing his name to that in the late 1960s.
Walker spent his early folk music days in Greenwich Village in the mid-1960s. He co-founded a band with Bob Bruno in the late-1960s called Circus Maximus that put out two albums, one with the popular FM radio hit “Wind”, but Bruno’s interest in jazz apparently diverged from Walker’s interest in folk music. Walker thus resumed his solo career and recorded the seminal 1968 album Mr. Bojangles with the help of David Bromberg and other influential Atlantic recording artists. He settled in Austin, Texas, in the 1970s, associating mainly with the outlaw country scene that included artists such as Michael Martin Murphey, Willie Nelson, Guy Clark, Waylon Jennings, and Townes Van Zandt. Walker was mentioned by name in the lyrics of Jennings and Nelson’s 1977 hit song “Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love)”. On September 28, 1974, Walker appeared with Doug Sahm at Carnegie Halll’s Main Hall.
A string of records for MCA and Elektra followed Jerry Jeff’s move to Austin, Texas, before he gave up on the mainstream music business and formed his own independent record label. Tried & True Music was founded in 1986, with his wife Susan as president and manager. Susan also founded Goodknight Music as his management company and Tried & True Artists for his bookings. A series of increasingly autobiographical records followed under the Tried & True imprint, which also sells his autobiography, Gypsy Songman. In 2004, Walker released his first DVD of songs from his past as performed in an intimate setting in Austin.
Walker married Susan Streit in 1974 in Travis County, Texas. They had two children: a son, Django Walker, who is also a musician, and a daughter Jessie Jane. Walker had a retreat on Ambergris Caye in Belize, where he recorded his Cowboy Boots and Bathing Suits album in 1998. He also made a guest appearance on Ramblin’ Jack Elliott’s 1998 album of duets Friends of Mine, singing “He Was a Friend of Mine” and Woody Guthrie’s “Hard Travelin'”.
Walker recorded songs written by others such as “LA Freeway” (Guy Clark), “Up Against the Wall Red Neck Mother” (Ray Wylie Hubbard), “(Looking for) The Heart of Saturday Night” (Tom Waits), and “London Homesick Blues” (Gary P. Nunn). He also interpreted the songs of others such as Rodney Crowell, Townes Van Zandt, Paul Siebel, Bob Dylan, Todd Snider, Dave Roberts, and even a rodeo clown named Billy Jim Baker. Walker was given the moniker of “the Jimmy Buffett of Texas”. It was Walker who first drove Jimmy Buffett to Key West (from Coconut Grove, Florida in a Packard). The two musicians also co-wrote the song “Railroad Lady” while riding the last run of the Panama Limited.
Jerry Jeff has always been one of my favorites. Mr. Bojangles put Jerry Jeff on the map and he stayed there a very long time. Sadly, Walker was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2017. He died of the disease on October 23, 2020, at a hospital in Austin, Texas. He was 78 years old.
Studio version:
Live on Austin City Limits in 1976: https://youtu.be/tYwaWd4BmmY
Keep rockin’ my friends,
Stan