Jerry Jeff Walker, Texas troubadour who wrote ‘Mr. Bojangles,’ dies at 78

Jerry Jeff Walker was singing in New Orleans coffeehouses and on street corners in 1965, when he was thrown in jail for public intoxication. It wasn’t the first time he had been drunk, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last, but as he sobered up, he heard his cellmate tell him a story that would change his life. He was an old man with years of sorrow behind him, a homeless street performer who had once been a dancer “at minstrel shows and county fairs throughout the South.” Like Mr. Walker, he didn’t go by his real name. He said he was called “Bojangles,” after Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, a renowned vaudeville and film dancer who died in 1949. Mr. Walker used the encounter as the basis for his song “Mr. Bojangles” Mr. Walker recorded the song in 1968, but it did not become a hit. By the early 1970s, with four albums and 10 years of struggle, he was ready to give up on the music business. He was leaving New York and was on his way to Florida for a fresh start. “A friend of mine was driving and I was asleep in the back seat,” he told the Richmond Times-Dispatch in 1994. “Somewhere in South Carolina, he woke me up and asked me didn’t I write that song ‘Mr. Bojangles.’ I said yeah, and he said, ‘I tell you what. For the last couple of hours it’s been on this station, and this one, and this one.’ He hit the button, and there it was again.” The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band recorded a version of “Mr. Bojangles” that reached No. 9 on the Billboard pop chart in 1971. It soon became recognized as a standard and was recorded by artists as varied as Nina Simone, Harry Belafonte, Dolly Parton, Sammy Davis Jr., Bob Dylan, Whitney Houston and George Burns. Mr. Walker, who went on to become a formative figure in what is known as “Texas outlaw” music and more generally Americana music, died Oct. 23 at a hospital in Austin. He was 78. He had complications from throat cancer and other ailments, said his wife, Susan Walker. For years, Mr. Walker had a reputation as a hard-living, rough-edged performer who drank heavily, used drugs and partied all night. He was also known for his generosity, helping to launch the career of Jimmy Buffett and performing the songs of other writers. Mr. Walker called himself a “Gypsy Songman” — the title of both an early song and his 1999 autobiography. One of his first albums, “Driftin’ Way of Life,” was something of a musical self-portrait, as he wandered from Greenwich Village, where he was part of the same folk music crowd as Dylan and Joan Baez, to New Orleans to Key West, Fla. He rode a motorcycle across Canada, then was on his way to California when he stopped in Austin in 1971 — and stayed for good...MORE