Kinky Friedman was nation music’s most outstanding satirist. His 1973 debut album, Offered American, received him crucial acclaim, and the admiration of musicians together with Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson. Within the mid-Nineteen Eighties he started publishing thriller novels that have been as offbeat and droll as his music, and he later ran for elected workplace in Texas a number of instances.
Friedman, who has died of Parkinson’s illness aged 79, noticed himself as a part of a Jewish comedian custom though, in contrast to Don Rickles or Groucho Marx, he was too quirky and abrasive to enchantment to mainstream America. This famous, he wrote a number of excellent songs and cherished enjoying the a part of Kinky, the gruff Texan Jewish cowboy who mocked everybody.
He was born Richard Friedman in Chicago, the son of Thomas Friedman, a psychologist, and Minnie (nee Samet), a speech therapist. When Richard was 4, the household moved to Texas, the place his mother and father opened a summer season camp, Echo Hill, in hill nation close to Austin. A vivid little one, Richard demonstrated a ardour for chess and in 1951 was included because the youngest participant in a staff of fifty who challenged the US grandmaster Samuel Reshevsky in Houston. Friedman and all 49 teammates misplaced, however he recalled having fun with his first style of media consideration.
He graduated from Austin highschool in 1962 and earned a level in psychology from the College of Texas, Austin, in 1966. There, his curly hair received him the nickname “Kinky” and he shaped his first band, who launched one 45 satirising surf music. He served for 2 years with the US Peace Corps in Borneo and, on returning to Texas, arrange a sanctuary for stray canines at Echo Hill – animal rights would stay considered one of his passions.
Impressed by Nelson and Townes Van Zandt, Friedman started writing and singing nation songs that prompted each laughter and outrage. Main Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys (named in mocking homage to the western swing band Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys), he impressed audiences however was ignored by file labels. Commander Cody – vocalist of the nation rock band Commander Cody and His Misplaced Planet Airmen – launched Friedman to Vanguard Information, the impartial label that had launched Joan Baez, and this resulted in Offered American, a rustic album like none earlier than.
The title monitor describes an outdated, down-on-his-luck nation singer, whereas Trip ‘Em, Jewboy is a meditation on the 6 million Jews murdered within the Holocaust. If these songs have been critical, The Ballad of Charles Whitman and Get Your Biscuits within the Oven and Your Buns within the Mattress have been designed to offend (the previous involved a Texan mass assassin, the latter a rejection of feminist calls for for equality) – they usually did: at a live performance in Buffalo, New York, in 1973, a gaggle of offended ladies invaded the stage and compelled Friedman and the band to cease enjoying.
The crucial reward and publicity Offered American acquired prompted the file label ABC to signal Friedman for an eponymously titled album, launched in 1974. It reached No 132 within the US charts, a profession greatest for Friedman, and contained They Ain’t Makin’ Jews Like Jesus Anymore, a track based mostly on a bar-room encounter with a drunken racist that grew to become a Friedman staple. This time, opinions have been lukewarm – Friedman himself was disparaging of the album’s manufacturing – and he left ABC.
Dylan employed Friedman as a assist act for his US excursions after which engaged him as a part of the 1976 leg of his Rolling Thunder Revue tour. His third album, Lasso from El Paso, was recorded throughout the tour and issued on Epic. It could be his final album of largely unique materials for many years.
Friedman spent appreciable time in Nashville, the place he carried out on the Grand Ole Opry (he claimed he was the primary Jewish artist to grace the stage of nation music’s most revered constructing) and the place he labored as knowledgeable songwriter, having fun with the camaraderie, if discovering that his songs have been not often in demand.
Shifting to New York, Friedman received a loyal viewers together with his barbed stage spiel, and this inspired him to maneuver into writing books and performing standup comedy. In public, Friedman at all times wore a big Stetson hat and cowboy boots, whereas smoking enormous cigars – this was how he introduced Kinky to the world.
Greenwich Killing Time (1986) was the primary of 18 Kinky Friedman Mysteries based mostly round “the Kinkster”, a Sherlock Holmes-inspired detective. As with lots of his songs, Friedman’s novels have been wry satires that poked enjoyable at US taboos. Initially they received good opinions – when President Invoice Clinton endorsed Friedman as a novelist and invited him to the White Home, it gave him his best prominence – however, by the flip of the century, with gross sales declining, he returned his focus to music, frequently touring. He additionally revealed nonfiction collections that discovered him musing on Texas, the US, nation music and “political correctness” (which he hated).
From 2015 onwards, Friedman self-released a number of albums of latest songs. The final of those was Resurrection (2019), an album that demonstrated a extra mature, although nonetheless caustic, worldview. Friedman’s run for governor of Texas in 2006 ensured he bought a number of publicity – he performed up his Kinky persona on the marketing campaign path, and his insurance policies included investing in training and ending the dying penalty – however he received solely 12.6% of votes. Makes an attempt at getting elected to native authorities positions additionally led to defeat.
In 2019 he and his sister, Marcie, reopened Echo Hill as a summer season camp for kids of navy households.
Friedman is survived by Marcie and a brother, Roger.
