Kinky Friedman, Texas musician and iconoclast, dies at 79

Kinky Friedman, the Texas iconoclast whose credits included musician, author, humorist and gubernatorial candidate, died this week from complications with Parkinson’s Disease. He was 79. The news came via his official X/Twitter account: “Kinky Friedman stepped on a rainbow at his beloved Echo Hill surrounded by family & friends. Kinkster endured tremendous pain & unthinkable loss in recent years but he never lost his fighting spirit and quick wit. Kinky will live on as his books are read and his songs are sung.”

Born in Chicago on Halloween of 1941 to Russian Jewish immigrants, Richard Samet “Kinky” Friedman moved to the Austin area with his family at a young age where he took to chess and music at an early age; he released three country albums in the mid-’70s and was part of Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue Tour in 1976. (His band was called The Texas Jewboys.) In the 1980s he turned to writing with a series of noir-ish detective novels and in the early 2000s had a regular column in Texas Monthly.

He began dabbling in politics in the ’90s and in 2004 he made a bid for Texas Governor, using such slogans as “How Hard Can it Be?” and supporting the legalization of marijuana. He ran for governor a few times but never won. He never gave up on music through all this, with his most recent album being 2018’s Circus of Life.

Kinky, you were one of a kind. Rest easy.

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