Kinky Friedman, who grew to become a Texas people hero as a flamboyant singer-songwriter, satirist, raconteur and would-be politician, operating for governor in 2006 whereas jokingly declaring that he was neither pro-life nor pro-choice, however as a substitute “pro-football,” died June 26 at Echo Hill, his ranch exterior Medina, Tex. He was 79.
“The Kinkster,” as he generally referred to as himself, introduced an outlaw spirit and vaudeville showmanship to politics, books and music, pushing the bounds of excellent style whereas chomping on a cigar and donning a black cowboy hat — an adjunct that hardly hid the curly darkish hair that impressed his nickname. “With a reputation like Kinky,” he as soon as told a reporter, “you ought to be well-known, or else it’s a social embarrassment.”
Starting within the early Nineteen Seventies, he carried out with a satirical nation band referred to as Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys, releasing songs equivalent to “They Ain’t Makin’ Jews Like Jesus Anymore” and “We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service to You.” He toured with Bob Dylan, performed chess with Willie Nelson and palled round with presidents from each events, befriending Invoice Clinton in addition to George W. Bush. When he visited the White Home for a gala dinner in 1997, he introduced a Cuban cigar as a present.
“Mr. President,” he recalled telling Clinton, “don’t consider it as supporting their economic system — consider it as burning their fields.”
When he uninterested in touring and performing, Mr. Friedman turned to writing. He had a long-running column in Texas Month-to-month and forged a fictional model of himself because the detective hero of novels together with “Elvis, Jesus & Coca-Cola” (1993), “Armadillos and Outdated Lace” (1994) and “God Bless John Wayne” (1995). Like the actual Mr. Friedman, the books’ protagonist lived in Greenwich Village for a time, transferring forwards and backwards between New York Metropolis and his household ranch in Texas.
The character is not sure what place to name house. Finally, he hopes to “discover the reply to the grand and troubling query that has haunted mankind via the ages: What’s it that I really need out of life — horsemanure or pigeon [excrement]?”
In his personal life, Mr. Friedman selected the manure. Residing off his ranch, he grew to become a beloved determine for a sure model of independent-minded Texan, with former governor Ann Richards, a Democrat, calling him “one in every of Texas’s nice pure assets.”
Mr. Friedman was resolutely impartial in his politics, resisting occasion labels whilst he tended towards the libertarian aspect of the spectrum. He first ran for workplace in 1986, mounting a quixotic marketing campaign for justice of the peace in Kerrville, close to his ranch, and launched his long-shot bid for governor practically three many years later, whereas calling for the legalization of playing, marijuana and same-sex marriage. “I help homosexual marriage,” he explained, “as a result of I imagine they’ve proper to be simply as depressing as the remainder of us.”
His candidacy was initially handled as a joke, partially as a result of Mr. Friedman appeared to deal with it that method himself. He campaigned on a sequence of one-liners: “How onerous may it’s?,” “He ain’t Kinky, he’s my governor,” “I’ll signal something however unhealthy laws.” “If you happen to elect me the primary Jewish governor of the state of Texas,” he declared, “I’ll cut back the pace restrict to 54.95.”
However he grew to become a uncommon impartial to make it on the poll — one other impartial, Carole Keeton Strayhorn, additionally bought sufficient signatures to qualify — after touting himself as a populist, truth-telling different to drained previous politicians. He was joined on the path by Jesse Ventura, the previous professional wrestler whose profitable run for Minnesota governor supplied inspiration for Mr. Friedman.
Taking over Republican incumbent Rick Perry, who later served as vitality secretary throughout the Trump administration, Mr. Friedman completed fourth, with 12 % of the vote. If the outcome wasn’t fairly what he wished, he nonetheless appeared pleased with the publicity. “I received that election,” he typically mentioned, “all over the place however Texas.”
Richard Samet Friedman was born in Chicago on Nov. 1, 1944, though he most popular to have fun his birthday a day earlier, on Halloween. The oldest of three kids, he grew up in Houston and at Echo Hill Ranch, which his mother and father purchased and ran within the Texas Hill Nation.
Mr. Friedman’s father had offered potatoes from a pushcart earlier than serving as a bomber navigator throughout World Warfare II. He grew to become a psychology professor on the College of Texas, and Mr. Friedman’s mom labored as one of many first speech therapists in Houston public faculties.
Whereas his mother and father weren’t musical, they supported their older son’s idiosyncratic pursuits, taking him to play chess with Samuel Reshevsky when the Polish grandmaster was passing via Houston on a tour. (Mr. Friedman, who was 7, mentioned that he let Reshevsky win “in order to not damage his emotions.”) His sister mentioned they have been additionally tolerant when Mr. Friedman was assigned to write down a newspaper article a few highschool soccer sport, then turned in a narrative that was written completely in Latin, “which happy two individuals and irritated many others.”
After graduating from the College of Texas at Austin, the place he studied psychology and marched towards segregated lunch counters in his spare time, Mr. Friedman went to Borneo in 1966, serving for 2 years with the Peace Corps. He performed guitar, wrote nation songs and returned house to kind Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys, a riff on the western swing group Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys.
Acting at small-town bars in addition to Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry, Mr. Friedman launched greater than a dozen albums, starting with “Bought American” (1973). The document featured lots of his best-known songs, together with “Ride ’Em Jewboy,” a rustic tribute to the 6 million Jews killed within the Holocaust, and “Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed,” a controversial nation ditty wherein he referred to as on girls “to occupy the kitchen, liberate the sink.”
“Generally, Friedman’s songs lampooned small-minded bigotry; generally, these songs embodied that bigotry so absolutely that the road between parody and seriousness grew to become meaningless; and generally, these songs used a veneer of humorous irony and satire to visitors in edgy intolerance,” Rolling Stone journalist Jonathan Bernstein wrote in 2018.
Mr. Friedman typically recalled a 1973 live performance in Buffalo, the place he mentioned he and the band have been attacked onstage by “a gaggle of cranked-up lesbians” that reacted angrily to “Get Your Biscuits.” “Later that yr, I obtained the Nationwide Group for Girls’s male chauvinist pig award,” he informed the Buffalo Information. “It’s an award I’m nonetheless pleased with.”
Throughout the Eighties, Mr. Friedman struggled with cocaine use whereas residing in New York, the place he performed weekly on the Lone Star Cafe earlier than transferring again to Texas. “I’m an enormous believer in assembly demons and conquering them,” he informed the New York Occasions in 1995. “I gave them up as a result of I had a number of pals ‘going to Jesus’ in fast succession. I used to be completely depressed.”
“Coming again to Texas and the ranch saved my life,” he added.
Mr. Friedman returned to politics late in life, unsuccessfully operating for state agriculture commissioner in 2010 and 2014. He additionally continued to write down music, in keeping with his sister, who mentioned he had simply accomplished a document, “The Poet of Motel 6,” composed of songs he wrote up to now yr.
Along with his sister, survivors embrace a brother, Roger.
A couple of years in the past, Mr. Friedman and his sister turned their household ranch right into a camp for the kids of Gold Star households, who misplaced a father or mother whereas serving within the army or working as a primary responder. Mr. Friedman additionally ran an animal shelter on the property, internet hosting a Thanksgiving feast for misplaced and deserted canine who supplied a howling, tail-wagging accompaniment to his guitar enjoying.
“I’m married to the wind,” he as soon as wrote, “and my kids are my animals and the books I’ve written, and I like all of them.”
