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Kinky Friedman
Biography
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Who else could have written a country song about the Holocaust
("Ride 'Em Jewboy" about a human being kept in a cage
as part of a circus ["Wild Man From Borneo"])? Outrageous
and irreverent but nearly always thought-provoking, Kinky Friedman
wrote and performed satirical country songs during the 1970s
and has been hailed the Frank Zappa of country music. The son
of a University of Texas professor who raised his children on
the family ranch, Rio Duckworth, he was born Richard F. Friedman.
He studied psychology in Texas and founded his first band while
there. However, King Arthur & the Carrots -- a group that
poked fun at surf music -- recorded only one single, in 1966.
After graduation, Friedman served three years in the Peace Corps;
he was stationed in Borneo, where he worked as an agricultural
extension worker.
By 1971 he had founded his second band, Kinky Friedman &
the Texas Jewboys. In keeping with the group's satirical songs,
each member had a deliberately politically incorrect name: they
called themselves Little Jewford, Big Nig, Panama Red, Rainbow
Colors, and Snakebite Jacobs. Friedman got his break in 1973
thanks to Commander Cody, who contacted Vanguard Music on behalf
of the acerbic young performer. That was the year he and his
group made their debut album, Sold American, featuring
John Hartford and Tompall Glaser. The title track, a bitter tale
of a forgotten country singer dying an alcoholic death, barely
made it onto the charts, but Friedman did attract enough attention
to be invited to the Grand Ole Opry. In 1974, he recorded an
eponymously titled album for ABC Records. Produced by Los Angeles
pop helmsman Steve Barri, the album dissolved whatever pure country
listenership Friedman might have had but delighted his growing
hard core of fans with satirical pieces such as his response
to anti-Semitism, "They Ain't Making Jews like Jesus Anymore."
Along with the satires Friedman offered quieter sketches of American
hard luck such as "Rapid City, South Dakota." In the
mid-'70s, Friedman and his band began touring with Bob Dylan
& the Rolling Thunder Revue. In 1976 he made his third album, Lasso From El Paso, featuring Dylan and Eric Clapton.
The Texas Jewboys disbanded three years later, and Friedman moved
to New York, where he often appeared at the Lone Star Cafe. In
1983, he released Under the Double Ego for Sunrise Records.
After that, Friedman turned primarily toward writing, although
he continued to make occasional nightclub appearances. He has
written for Rolling Stone and Texas Monthly magazines and, most
famously, has become a writer of unique and outrageous mystery
novels such as Greenwich Killing Time, A Case of Lone
Star, and The Mile High Club. Equal parts whimsy and
metaphysics, the books blur fiction and reality. They feature
a Jewish country singer turned Greenwich Village private eye
named Kinky Friedman, who sometimes returns to his native Texas;
other characters are drawn from Friedman's circle of friends
in both New York and Texas. Many of Friedman's songs of the 1970s
and early '80s were collected on two CD compilations, Old
Testaments and New Revelations (1994) and From One Good
American to Another (1995). In 1999, the likes of Willie
Nelson, Tom Waits, and Lyle Lovett covered Friedman's music on
the tribute album Pearls in the Snow: The Songs of Kinky Friedman,
and a second tribute volume was planned. In 2003 Friedman appeared
in a nude, cigar-smoking triplicate on the cover of the Dallas
Observer magazine, in a parody of the Dixie Chicks' nude Entertainment
Weekly pose of that year.
~ Sandra Brennan & James Manheim, All Music Guide
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Kinkajou Records, P.O. Box 121253, Nashville, TN 37212
615-321-0033
Email: kinkajou18@aol.com
Nationally Distributed by Select-O-Hits (Memphis, TN)
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