This person died in 2020 at age 78. He grew up in Oneonta, New York. He began his career in the 1960s, hitchhiking and busking around the country before establishing himself in Greenwich Village. In 1971, he took his struggling friend Jimmy Buffett to Key West for the first time. Mainstream radio programmers didn’t play his music, perhaps because of his gruff, braying singing voice and his reputation for being intoxicated onstage. He became a mainstay of the Texas Outlaw movement that catapulted Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings to fame, years after his best known composition, “Mr. Bojangles”. Today’s dead celebrity is Jerry Jeff Walker.

Famous & Gravy is created and co-hosted by Amit Kapoor and Michael Osborne. This episode was produced by Jacob Weiss. Visit our website at famousandgravy.com and also enjoy our free mobile quiz game at deadoraliveapp.com

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like Episode 19 “Singing Mailman” (John Prine) and Episode 23 “Book Rancher” (Larry McMurtry)

Transcript of this episode

New York Times Obituary for Jerry Jeff Walker

Jerry Jeff Walker official website

“OK Buckaroos” documentary trailer

Jerry Jeff performs on Austin City Limits in 1976

Homer Simpson sings Mr. Bojangles

“Jerry Jeff Walker, Remembered By…” in Texas Monthly

“The Long, Lonesome Roads of Jerry Jeff Walker” in The New Yorker

Django Walker official website

Dead or Alive quiz game

Famous & Gravy on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter

Famous & Gravy official website

This Famous & Gravy episode uses structured conversation to reflect on Jerry Jeff Walker's enduring narrative as part of a obituary-based storytelling and known for rethinking celebrity legacies, with attention to narrative framing, persona shifts, and media influence. It contributes to a broader conversation about meaning, mortality, and cultural inheritance. This celebrity podcast explores biographies from a different point of view and contributes to famous lives reframed.

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