Ronald Clyde Crosby, AKA Jerry Jeff Walker

It was on Country Sunday, a weekly feature on KILT-FM—my favorite rock&roll station, at the time—that I first heard Michael Murphy's Cosmic Cowboy...And even more significantly, Jerry Jeff Walker, who to me embodied best what that meant...I was 15, and never—as in, NEVER—listened to country music, which I regarded as being, at best, my parent's music, and at worst, the sounds that fascist rednecks made while making me ashamed to be southern...(It is a hard and bitter thing to understand so much so early, but I managed)...I guess the first song—the one that prevented me from switching the station, once the steel guitars and fiddles set in—was Redneck Mother, the likes of which I had never heard before...It was followed, during that two or so hours, by Gettin' By, London Homesick Blues, I Like to Sleep Late in the Morning, OD Corrall, Charlie Dunn, Harry-Ass Hillbillies, LA Freeway, and many others...And Murphy's Geronimo's Cadillac, as well as the aforementioned Cosmic Cowboy...The music was smart, funny, and it moved...Sometimes it was sentimental, sometimes thoughtful, but never mean and never small—it had a largeness of spirit, I guess you could say, that I did not perceive in country music I'd heard before...And it was undeniably Texas music—whatever thing it is I love about Texas was infused in those sounds...And in that largeness...It was from listening to these guys that I was able to connect to my roots—to find my way backward to the honest and soulful music of George Jones and Buck Owens, and more essentially to Ernest Tubb and Bob Wills and Hank Williams...Fact is, it is a part of who I am—a shade of red I can't scrub off my neck, dirt I can't clean from under my nails—and it was mainly Jerry Jeff who opened that up for me, who gave me an outlet that connected me to those I came from, and felt both joyful and real, on my terms...Also gave me a new kind of music to drive my parents nuts...(Pissin' in the Wind was a big, big hit at my house)...

This video is rather amazing...Jerry Jeff introduced by God's Original Quarterback, lookin like he could still play a little...