It’s hard to believe how long ago it was that Jerry Jeff came to the show. I’d been buying up all his old vinyl records & was well into my fanaticism when I’d read that he’d be playing NYC, within a week’s time. I phoned his office & remember pitching my radio request to a friendly lady, probably his lovely wife, Susan. She must be a perfect woman to have roped-in a drifter like him. Jerry grew up in Oneonta NY & thumbed the country, earning the right to write his road songs. His albums are his journals, a running record of wins & losses, his lessons & regrets. “Mister Bojangles” his claim to fame, yet such a shame he never cracked Nashville! Probably Jerry ran from it, though surely he held the industry’s esteem. Austin TX became his home & he & his friends brought to it a fresh identity. Poets & pickers collided on its honky-tonks & gradually sculpted a new American idiom, “The Austin Sound.” Speaking with Jerry Jeff was an easy thing to do..
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