Jerry Jeff Walker Brought the Magic

Silver hair, a ragged shirt, and baggy pants: Walker sitting in at Antone's in 2008 (Photo by Todd V. Wolfson)

There's a famous photograph by onetime Austin photographer Ken Hoge of Roky Erickson, Doug Sahm, and Jerry Jeff Walker onstage together locally at Gemini's in 1977. There may be no better encapsulation of Austin in the Seventies than that photo.

An ecstatic Erickson stands center on the mic caught in mid-scream as Sahm sweats through his pearl snap shirt on guitar while playing bandleader. The cowboy-hatted Walker, meanwhile, blows harmonica to the side. It's Austin's psychedelic birth howl, cosmic cowboy soul, and progressive country songwriting tumbling together on a single stage.

In the annals of Austin music history, Jerry Jeff Walker carved his own unique place. He catalyzed what would become the progressive country movement with his 1973 album ¡Viva Terlingua!, setting off a new wave of Texas-inspired songwriting that revolutionized country music alongside the outlaw influences of Willie Nelson's Shot­gun Willie and Waylon Jennings' Honky-­Tonk Heroes, released that same year.

¡Viva Terlingua!, recorded live in Hondo Crouch's Hill Country hideaway of Lucken­bach, became the hallmark of a distinctly Texan style: rowdy but laid back, where nothing mattered except the music and a good time (read "!Viva Belize!," Music, Sept. 7, 2007). The lines of influence from that recording can't be understated. They span Gary P. Nunn's iconic Austin City Limits theme song "London Homesick Blues" to the Red Dirt country on the rebellious back of Ray Wylie Hubbard's "Up Against the Wall Redneck Mother."

In addition to Nunn and Hubbard, the album introduced the world to Guy Clark's songwriting with Walker's take on "Desper­ados Waiting for a Train."

"We didn't know what we were going to do," Walker recalled of the seminal recording session to the Chronicle in 1993. "We didn't even have the songs. I wrote 'Gettin' By' there that afternoon. Gary P. taught me 'London Homesick Blues' that afternoon. I said, 'Instead of me learning the words, you just sing it and I'll sing on the choruses.'"

Given Walker's championing other songwriters, it's fitting the troubadour's biggest success came from someone covering him. His "Mr. Bojangles," written in 1968, became a Top 10 Billboard 1971 hit in the hands of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. By the time Walker settled in Austin in the early Seventies, he had royalty money to burn and the party ensued.

Born Ronald Clyde Crosby in Oneonta, N.Y., in 1942, the singer didn't fully realize his sound until he landed in Texas. Walker perfected easy-going melodies that could hold revelations both simple and profound. That songwriting style served him well, allowing songs like "Sangria Wine," "Gettin' By," and "Pissin' in the Wind" to settle smoothly alongside the later-career earnestness of "Song for the Life" and "Because of You."

Walker's performances became rare following throat cancer in 2017, but at his annual Texas Bash at the Paramount The­atre for his birthday in 2018, the songwriter determinedly took the stage amid enthusiastic appreciation, kicking off the evening with a poignant rendition of "Laying My Life on the Line" (revisit "Jerry Jeff Walker in a New Key," Music, March 26, 2018).

"But here I am out here tonight, playing the songs that I like.

'Cause the magic is bringing each song you're singing.

Your whole life's laid out in lines.

Well, I'm laying my life on the line."

Jerry Jeff Walker passed away in Austin Friday evening, Oct. 23, at the Dell Seton Medical Center. He was 78. He is survived by his wife Susan, daughter Jessie Jane, and musician son Django Walker.