Kinky Friedman
Richard Samet "Kinky" Friedman was an American singer, songwriter, novelist, humorist, politician, and columnist for Texas Monthly, who styled himself in the mold of popular American satirists Will Rogers and Mark Twain.
Friedman was one of two independent candidates in the 2006 Texas gubernatorial election. Receiving 12.6% of the vote, Friedman placed fourth in the six-person race.
Biography
Richard Samet Friedman was born in Chicago on November 1, 1944, to Jewish parents, Dr. S. Thomas Friedman and his wife Minnie Friedman. Both of his parents were the children of Russian Jewish immigrants. When Friedman was young, his family moved to the Texas Hill Country where they opened a summer camp called Echo Hill Ranch.Friedman had an early interest in both pop music and chess, and was chosen at age seven as one of 50 local players to challenge U.S. grandmaster Samuel Reshevsky to simultaneous games in Houston. Reshevsky won all 50 games, but Friedman was, by far, the youngest competitor.
Friedman graduated from Austin High School in Austin, Texas, in 1962. He subsequently earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Texas at Austin in 1966, majoring in psychology. He took part in the Plan II Honors program and was a member of the Tau Delta Phi fraternity. During his first year, Chinga Chavin gave Friedman the nickname "Kinky" because of his curly hair.
Friedman served two years in the United States Peace Corps, teaching in Borneo, Malaysia with John Gross. During his service in the Peace Corps, he met future road manager Dylan Ferrero, with whom he worked for the remainder of his life. Friedman lived at Echo Hill Ranch, his family's summer camp near Kerrville, Texas. He founded Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch, also located near Kerrville, whose mission is to care for stray, abused and aging animals; to date, the ranch has saved more than 1,000 dogs from animal euthanasia.
On June 27, 2024, it was announced that Friedman had died at his home at Echo Hill Ranch, Medina, Bandera County, Texas, from complications of Parkinson's disease. He was 79.
Music career
Friedman formed his first band, King Arthur & the Carrots, while a student at the University of Texas at Austin. The band, which poked fun at surf music, recorded only one single in 1966.By 1973, Friedman had formed his second band, Kinky Friedman and The Texas Jewboys, which many took to be a play on the name of the famous band Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. In keeping with the band's satirical nature, each member had a comical name: in addition to Kinky there were Little Jewford, Big Nig, Panama Red, Wichita Culpepper, Sky Cap Adams, Rainbow Colours, and Snakebite Jacobs. More conventionally named roadie Jack Slaughter and road manager Dylan Ferrero rounded out the crew and provided most of the driving of the "tour bus", a Cadillac with 10-year-old expired license plates and a propensity to break down.
Friedman's father objected to the name of the band, calling it a "negative, hostile, peculiar thing", which gave Kinky even more reason to choose the name.
Arriving on the wave of country rock following on from Gram Parsons, The Band, and Eagles, Friedman originally found cult fame as a country and western singer. His break came in 1973 thanks to Commander Cody of Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, who contacted Vanguard Music on his behalf. Friedman released Kinky Friedman in 1974 for ABC Records, then toured with Bob Dylan in 1975–1976. His repertoire mixed social commentary and maudlin ballads with raucous humor. His "Ride 'Em Jewboy" was an extended tribute to the victims of the Holocaust.
One of his most famous songs is "They Ain't Makin' Jews Like Jesus Anymore," a song in which Kinky verbally and physically beats up a drunken white racist who berates blacks, Jews, Italians, Greeks, Irish people, and Sigma Nus in a bar, with lyrics such as,
Oh, they ain't makin' Jews like Jesus anymore,
They ain't makin' carpenters that know what nails are for
Other Friedman tunes include "The Ballad of Charles Whitman," in which Friedman lampooned Charles Whitman's sniper attack from the University of Texas at Austin's Main Building tower on August 1, 1966. He also covered Chinga Chavin's "Asshole from El Paso", a parody of Merle Haggard's "Okie from Muskogee".
One of Friedman's most infamous concerts was a 1973 performance in Buffalo, New York; upon performing "Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed", a group of what Friedman described as "cranked-up lesbians" entered into a fight with the band and forced the concert to end early while Friedman and the band were escorted off stage. The National Organization for Women awarded Friedman the "Male Chauvinist Pig Award" later that year, an award Friedman took with pride. Friedman would not return to Buffalo until 2012. Another was at The Boarding House in early-March 1975 when an offended Buffy Sainte-Marie rushed on stage and snatched the war bonnet that Friedman was wearing while he and his band were performing "Miss Nickelodeon," a composition that spoofs the indigenous peoples of the Americas.
Friedman and his band taped an Austin City Limits show on November 11, 1975, which was never aired. According to the show's executive producer, Terry Lickona, this is the first and only time in the show's long history that an episode went unaired. Lickona told the Austin Chronicle "I've seen it many times – it's a very popular party tape among friends. I think it was a great show, and it might be as offensive today as it was back then."
In early 1976, he joined Bob Dylan on the second leg of the Rolling Thunder Revue tour.
Friedman was the musical guest on the Season 2 fifth episode of Saturday Night Live which aired on October 23, 1976. He performed his own composition "Dear Abbie".
Although hard to verify, given the number of Jewish-origin entertainers in country/hillbilly-tour circles, Friedman claims to have been the first full-blooded Jew to take the stage at the Grand Ole Opry.
In February 2007, Sustain Records released a compilation of the songs of Kinky Friedman sung by other artists called Why the Hell Not... The compilation includes contributions by Dwight Yoakam, Willie Nelson, Lyle Lovett, and Kelly Willis.
On July 20, 2007, Friedman hosted the Concert to Save Town Lake to honor the memory of Lady Bird Johnson and her efforts to protect and preserve the shores of Town Lake in Austin, Texas.
On April 27, 2011, Friedman launched his Springtime for Kinky Tour in Kansas City, Missouri, at Knuckleheads Saloon; it included dates in Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Kentucky before heading towards the East Coast. This was followed by a tour of Australia with Van Dyke Parks.
Writing career
After his music career stalled in the 1980s, Friedman shifted his creative focus to writing detective novels. His books have similarities to his song lyrics, featuring a fictionalized version of himself solving crimes in New York City and dispensing jokes, wisdom, recipes, charm, and Jameson's whiskey in equal measure. They are written in a straightforward style which owes a debt to Raymond Chandler. The Kinky character views himself as a latter-day Sherlock Holmes and he is aided in his investigations by his close friend Larry Sloman aka Ratso who assumes the role of Dr. Watson.He authored two novels that do not star the Kinky Friedman character: Kill Two Birds and Get Stoned and The Christmas Pig.
Friedman also wrote a regular column for the magazine Texas Monthly from April 2001 to March 2005 which was suspended during his run for governor of Texas. In 2008, Texas Monthly brought his column back on a bimonthly basis.
Two books have been published collecting some of these nonfiction writings, as well as previously unpublished ones: Scuse Me While I Whip This Out and Texas Hold'em. He has also published a travelog and an etiquette guide.
Friedman's early books have been republished by Friedman's own Vandam Press as ebooks. During March and April 2011, Vandam released seven of Friedman's early titles including: Greenwich Killing Time, A Case of Lone Star, Musical Chairs, When The Cat's Away, Frequent Flyer, Roadkill and the rarely seen Curse of the Missing Puppet Head. Elvis Jesus and Coca-Cola, God Bless John Wayne, Blast From The Past, Armadillos and Old Lace, and two nonfiction books, Drinker With A Writing Problem and Heroes of A Texas Childhood were released in 2011. E-book releases are announced on Friedman's X feed and Facebook page, "TheRealKinkster".
Friedman also announced the upcoming release of all Vandam Press titles as unabridged audio books "read by the author".
The recurring character "Rambam", a New York private investigator and friend of the Friedman character in the books, is based on the real-life investigator Steven Rambam, who acted as a technical advisor for the real Friedman. Old Peace Corps friend and long time road manager Dylan Ferrero is also a recurring character in Kinky's mystery novels; his character is known for only speaking in rock and roll quotes, a trait taken from real life.
Politics
In 1986, Friedman ran for justice of the peace in Kerrville, Texas, as a Republican but lost the election.In 2004, Friedman began an ostensibly serious, though colorful, campaign to become the governor of Texas in 2006. One of his stated goals is the "dewussification" of Texas. Among his campaign slogans were "How Hard Could It Be?", "Why The Hell Not?", "My Governor is a Jewish Cowboy", and "He ain't Kinky, he's my Governor".
Friedman had hoped to follow in the footsteps of other entertainers-turned-governors, including Jimmie Davis, Jesse Ventura, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Ronald Reagan. Jesse Ventura even campaigned with Friedman for his election. When the campaign finance reports came out after the second quarter had ended, Friedman had raised more funds than the Democratic nominee, former Congressman Chris Bell.
On election day, Friedman was defeated, receiving 12.6% of the votes in the six-candidate matchup.
Friedman released a statement on October 15, 2013, announcing his intent to again run for Texas agriculture commissioner as a Democrat. Friedman previously ran for the post in 2010, losing in the Democratic primary.