Jerry Jeff Walker

Before there was Willie, before there was King George, there was Jerry Jeff Walker.

The scamp. The cosmic cowboy. The redneck mother. The gonzo god of outlaw country.

Whatever hard-earned nickname one prefers, they hardly capture the breadth or impact of the legendary and pioneering singer-songwriter, troubadour and storyteller.

Fifty years ago, Jerry Jeff grabbed the spotlight with his first solo record, “Mr. Bojangles.”

He wrote the timeless, uplifting portrait of humanity and dignity in one fell swoop on a yellow legal pad. It came in the wee hours in Austin in late 1966. He had lived it. Down and out, just like the song.

Jerry Jeff had finally written his “Yesterday,” his “You Really Got Me,” his “Blowin’ in the Wind,” his “My Way.” But he wasn’t finished. The best was just down the dusty road.

Five years and a handful of albums later, Jerry Jeff Walker had captured lightning in a bottle and shaped Texas music forever.

Keepers of the flame Lyle Lovett, Robert Earl Keen, Jack Ingram and Pat Green tip their hats to him. Hell, it’s a straight line from Walker’s enduring “¡Viva Terlingua!” album with the Lost Gonzo Band from August 1973 to today’s Americana, Texas music, red dirt, bro-country and countrified folk.

And always in his hip pocket, a song – either one of his own or the musical poetry of Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, Michael Martin Murphey, Gary P. Nunn, Tom Waits and Ray Wylie Hubbard.

It’s admittedly a most unlikely tale.

A rebellious, good-looking ukulele-playing, folk-song loving kid and small-town high school sports star graduates, joins the New York Army National Guard, goes AWOL, becomes a hitchhiking street singer living under an alias for years, joins and quits a psychedelic acid rock band, and writes a timeless song about being jailed with a wise old drifter in New Orleans. It’s the break he needed to take over the Austin music scene and become a wild country music star.

In the 1970s, his party animal ways were mythic. Author Jan Reid once described him as “the closest thing Austin had to Hank Williams.” His loner’s swagger, mischievous smile, genuine good looks, distinctive voice and musicianship made him the total, if mercurial, package.

As he celebrates his 76th birthday and the 50th anniversary of his greatest musical milestone, Jerry Jeff Walker is a little beat up but still ridin’ high. He is a weathered titan out of a Larry McMurty novel, the “Sam the Lion” of Texas music.

The story is still unfolding, and the world is looking at Jerry Jeff Walker with fresh eyes.

Newly discovered recordings from the summer of 1964 and December 1965 reveal an impressionable folk artist in his formative years keenly aware of civil rights issues, inequality, and the plight of African Americans in segregated America.

It’s that combination of sensitivity and vulnerability, road-worn adventure and folk singer defiance that he brought to Texas music. The legend can’t happen without those ingredients.

Jerry Jeff fronted the Lost Gonzo Band the way Bob Dylan fronted The Band. Anything could happen, and it often did.

He remains a tried and true source of fascination and inspiration for fans and musicians alike.