Kinky Friedman: Hissential Songs

The title track on Kinky's signature debut album was a simple portrait of a fading country star eventually recorded by Lyle Lovett and Glen Campbell. For some time, Friedman later explainedhe was disappointed that his heartfelt earlier ballads never gained him the attention that his light-hearted and controversially humorous songs did, “but then I stopped caring”. — JB

Kinky Friedman had dozens of stories he liked to tell, none more so than the legend of how Nelson Mandela listened to a tape of Kinky Friedman's Holocaust ballad (“the smoke from the camps is rising,” he sings) every night for three years while in prison at Robben Island. . “Although it sounds like something out of a Kurt Vonnegut novel,” Friedman once said of the story, “we've now verified it.” Willie Nelson recorded the ballad, and Dylan admired the song that Friedman said took “several continents and a decade to write” so much that he performed it. — JB

It is said in character from the point of view of small-minded Texans, Kinky's signature song is an exercise in hustling for its own sake. Some found it clever, some found it funny, many found it racist (Friedman spends much of the song cursing, dropping the n-word several times). Oblique he argued He “stirred up a false morality,” that the outrage he caused was his subject. This smear against political correctness hasn't aged well at all, and is a prime example of when Kinky's boundary-pushing didn't quite stick its landing. — JB

All Kinky Friedman which is needed to write the central element to Circus of Life was to show up at a Denny's. There he noticed the story he tells here: that of a homeless man begging for money in the middle of the night in a Dallas restaurant. By the time he got back to his hotel 30 minutes after leaving Denny's, Friedman had written the song. “Help him if you can/Help him if you can,” he sings. “When Jesus in Pajamas Stands at Your Table.” — JB

Friedman got a well-known phrase in the service industry and turned it over four-line vignettes. In the first, the narrator is refused a meal because of his appearance, while the second finds him expelled from the synagogue for being poor (“We reserve the right to refuse Services to you,” Friedman sings). The other lyrics are set in Vietnam during the war (military service, you see) and at the threshold of the pearly gates, where the Kinster's soul is locked out of heaven: “Our quota is full for this year for Texas Jews to sing. ». — JH

“The first super-choice country song ever written” is how Kinky often referred to his tender ballad, which rhymes with the “she” the song's protagonist leaves behind and becomes pregnant. Dakota. Like “Sold American,” “Rapid City” was a portrait of Kinky's often-overlooked serious storytelling chops, further evidenced by Dwight Yoakam's soulful 1999 version of the song. — JB

Over the course of a year when male troubadours were willing to show their sensitive sides, Friedman boldly parodied the burgeoning women's liberation movement and the ultra-traditional men who were offended by it. Set to a friendly Western swing arrangement, “Get Your Biscuits…” finds the tight-lipped male narrator complaining about “upset women” who “try to act like a man” and who “better take over the kitchen, free the shrink.” Friedman got his share, most famously when a group of what he called “bad lesbians” offended by the song forced one of his 1973 shows to end early. (That same year, the National Organization for Women nominated the tune for the Keep Her in Her Place Award.) — DB

Friedman wrote it centerpiece of his sold-out self-titled album after returning home from life in Borneo while in the Peace Corps. “Maybe the further away you are from the subject of your song, the clearer the writing becomes,” as he later put it. Further evidence that “Borneo” was one of the most developed songs in Friedman's career: Guy Clark and James McMurtry later recorded their own versions. — JB

The opening track Friedman's 2018 comeback song is an ode to the tenacity that left his name on Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson, features Mickey Raphael's signature harmonica and features the singer-songwriter's most serious version of Kinky Friedman Circus of Life. The chorus is a touching portrait of an old man surviving time with his three-legged dog: “There's no giving up on any of us.” — JB

Only Friedman would do that they have the balls to drop the story of the 1966 University of Texas tower that was shot to country beats. Operates; It depends on your comfort level. But Friedman pulls no punches as he tries to figure out what compelled former Marine Charles Whitman to go on a crow's nest shooting spree. “Most people just couldn't understand why he did it/And those who could won't admit it,” Friedman sings. Elemental satire. — JH