Jerry Jeff Walker – an American country music singer and songwriter. He is well-known for writing the 1968 song “Mr. Bojangles”. He never had a Top 40 pop hit yet the best-known composition of his one of the album became an enduring standard. He then became a pillar of the outlaw country movement.
As said, in his career that spanned over six decades, Mr. Walker never had a Top 40 pop hit. Though in his 1970s bloom, he and the Lost Gonzo Band, his loose-limbed team of backing musicians, made numerous definitive Texas bandit recordings.
Another one was “Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother,” a boozing, brawling anthem composed by Ray Wylie Hubbard that obliged on Mr. Walker’s 1973 album, Viva Terlingua.
Mr. Walker was receiving radiation and chemotherapy. It was announced in 2017 that he had donated his music archives, including photographs, tapes, and handwritten lyrics, to the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University.
What’s the update on Jeff?
Jeff Jerry Walker, the popular singer, and songwriter is no more here. He has died at age 78.
Jeff Walker passed away on Friday due to cancer, family spokesman John T. Davis told The Associated Press.
“He had fought throat cancer for many years, and some other health problems,” Davis said Saturday.
Jeff Rose from New York’s Greenwich Village community scene in the 1960s. He was one of the founding members of the band Circus Maximus. He moved to Texas in the 1970s. In 1972, he scored a hit with his version of the Guy Clark song “L.A. Freeway.”
In 1973, Jeff and the Lost Gonzo Band recorded an album live in Texas named Viva Terlingua that turned out to be a classic of the country-rock scene. Jeff had since launched more than 30+ albums.
In 1986, he created the independent music label Tried & True Music and released albums under it.
Walker was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2017, undergoing chemotherapy and radiation, he told the Austin American Statesman in 2018.
He told the newspaper, “I guess I took my singing for granted, and now I do not”.
It was stated that Jeff had donated more than 100+ boxes of his music archives to The Wittliff Collections at TSU, including tapes, hand-written lyrics, artifacts, etc…
Jeff’s survivors include his wife, Susan, daughter, Jessie Jane, and son, Django.
