Just like the lead character in his classic composition “Mr. Bojangles,” Jerry Jeff Walker steps to a different tune. He gave himself the perfect title when he wrote his autobiography Gypsy Songman. Some consider “gypsy” a euphemism for irresponsible, some consider it eccentricity, and some call it artistic license, but whatever you want to label it, it was the fuel that provided the fire in Walker to write the songs he wrote. Walker writes from his own experience. He can take a microcosm of a thought and elaborate enough for its poetry to shine through. Gypsy indeed – this is a man who even chose his own name.
Born Ronald Clyde Crosby in 1942, the youngster grew up in Oneonta, New York, surrounded by music. His grandmother played piano, his parents loved to dance and he spent hours listening to their Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong records. It was his grandmother who bought him his first guitar at Christmas when he was 12 and he learned a few chords from the man who owned the local pizza parlor.
The “Jerry” part of his name came from a false I.D. he got when he was 19, since the drinking age was 21. For several years, he went by the name on that card–Jerry Ferris. After going AWOL from the National Guard in the early ’60s, and settling in New Orleans (officially moving to Texas in 1971), he chose a new name. He liked the name Jeff and then partly as a tribute to a black jazz pianist he had befriended, Kirby Walker, he chose the surname of Walker. The friends who knew him as “Jerry” couldn’t make the switch as easily, so Ronald Crosby, aka Jerry Ferris, became Jerry Jeff Walker.
CHECK PRICE NOW!
Read Full Review >>
