“The Kinkster,” as he sometimes called himself, brought an outlaw spirit and vaudeville sense to politics, books and music, pushing the boundaries of good taste while chewing a cigar and donning a black cowboy hat — an accessory that barely hid the curly dark hair that inspired his nickname. “With a name like Kinky,” he once told a reporter, “you ought to be famous, otherwise it’s a social embarrassment.”
Beginning in the early 1970s, he performed with a satirical country band called Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys, releasing songs such as “They Ain’t Makin’ Jews Like Jesus Anymore” and “We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service to You.” He toured with Bob Dylan, played chess with Willie Nelson, and hobnobbed with presidents of both parties, befriending Bill Clinton as well as George W. Bush. When he visited the White House for a gala dinner in 1997, he brought a Cuban cigar as a gift.
“Mr. President,” he recalled telling Clinton, “don’t think of this as helping their economy – think of it as burning their fields.”
When he tired of touring and performing, Mr. Friedman turned to writing. He wrote a column in Texas Monthly for many years and cast a fictional version of himself as the cop hero in such novels as “Elvis, Jesus & Coca-Cola” (1993), “Armadillos and Old Lace” (1994) and “God Bless John Wayne” (1995). Like the real Mr. Friedman, the books’ protagonist lived in Greenwich Village for a time, traveling back and forth between New York and his family ranch in Texas.
The character doesn’t really know where to live. He ultimately hopes to “find the answer to the great and troubling question that has haunted humanity for centuries: what do I really want from life – horse manure or pigeon droppings?”
In his own life, Mr. Friedman chose to feed on manure. Living off his ranch, he became a beloved figure among a certain class of independent-minded Texans, with former Gov. Ann Richards, a Democrat, calling him “one of the great natural resources of Texas.”
Mr. Friedman was staunchly independent in his politics, resisting partisan labels even as he leaned toward the libertarian end of the spectrum. He first ran for office in 1986, launching a quixotic campaign to become a justice of the peace in Kerrville, near his ranch, and launched his run for governor nearly three decades later, all the while calling for the legalization of gambling, marijuana and same-sex marriage. “I support gay marriage,” he explained, “because I believe that homosexuals have a right to be as unhappy as the rest of us.”
His candidacy was initially treated as a joke, in part because Mr. Friedman himself seemed to treat it that way. He campaigned with a series of simple sentences: “How hard could it be? “, “It’s not Kinky, it’s my governor”, “I will sign anything but bad legislation. » “If you elect me the first Jewish governor of the state of Texas,” he declared, “I will reduce the speed limit to 54.95. »
But he became one of the few independents on the ballot — another independent, Carole Keeton Strayhorn, also got enough signatures to qualify — after pitching himself as a populist, truth-telling alternative to tired old politicians. He was joined on the trail by Jesse Ventura, the former professional wrestler whose successful run for governor of Minnesota inspired Mr. Friedman.
Facing Republican incumbent Rick Perry, who later served as energy secretary under the Trump administration, Friedman finished fourth, with 12 percent of the vote. While the outcome wasn’t quite what he wanted, he nonetheless seemed pleased with the publicity. “I won this election,” he often said, “everywhere except Texas.”
Richard Samet Friedman was born in Chicago on November 1, 1944, although he preferred to celebrate his birthday a day earlier, on Halloween. The eldest of three children, he grew up in Houston and on the Echo Hill Ranch, which his parents purchased and operated in the Texas Hill Country.
Mr. Friedman’s father sold potatoes from a cart before serving as a bomber navigator during World War II. He became a professor of psychology at the University of Texas, and Mr. Friedman’s mother was one of the first speech pathologists in the Houston public schools.
Although his parents were not musicians, they supported their eldest son’s idiosyncratic interests, taking him to play chess with Samuel Reshevsky when the Polish grandmaster was in Houston on tour. (Mr. Friedman, who was 7, said he let Reshevsky win “so as not to hurt him”). His sister said they also showed tolerance when Mr. Friedman was assigned to write a newspaper article about a high school football game, then turned in an article written entirely in Latin, “which was liked to two people and irritated many others.”
After graduating from the University of Texas at Austin, where he studied psychology and protested restaurant segregation in his spare time, Mr. Friedman traveled to Borneo in 1966, where he served for two years in the Peace Corps. He played guitar, wrote country songs and returned home to form Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys, a version of the western swing group Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys.
Performing in small-town bars as well as Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry, Mr. Friedman released more than a dozen albums, beginning with “Sold American” (1973). The record included several of his best-known songs, including “Ride ’Em Jewboy,” a country tribute to the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust, and “Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed,” a controversial country song in which he called on women to “take over the kitchen, free up the sink.”
“Sometimes Friedman’s songs ridiculed petty bigotry; sometimes these songs embodied that bigotry so fully that the line between parody and seriousness became meaningless; and sometimes these songs used a veneer of humorous irony and satire to traffic in audacious intolerance,” Rolling Stone journalist Jonathan Bernstein wrote in 2018.
Mr. Friedman often recalls a 1973 concert in Buffalo, where he said he and the band were attacked onstage by “a bunch of cranky lesbians” who reacted angrily to “Get Your Biscuits.” “Later that year, I received the National Organization for Women’s Pig Award,” he told the Buffalo News. “It’s an award I’m still proud of.”
In the 1980s, Mr. Friedman struggled with cocaine while living in New York, where he played weekly at the Lone Star Cafe before returning to Texas. “I’m a big believer in meeting your demons and overcoming them,” he told the New York Times in 1995. “I stopped because I had a lot of friends who were turning to Jesus at a time. frantic pace. I was completely depressed. »
“Coming back to Texas and the ranch saved my life,” he added.
Mr. Friedman returned to politics late in life, running unsuccessfully for state agriculture commissioner in 2010 and 2014. He also continued to write music, according to his sister, who said he had just finished a record, “The Motel 6 Poet.” composed of songs he wrote over the past year.
Besides his sister, he is survived by his brother, Roger.
A few years ago, Mr. Friedman and his sister turned their family ranch into a camp for children from Gold Star families, who lost a parent while serving in the military or working as a first responder. Mr. Friedman also ran an animal shelter on the property, throwing a Thanksgiving feast for lost and abandoned dogs who accompanied their guitar playing by howling and wagging their tails.
“I am married to the wind,” he once wrote, “and my children are my animals and the books I have written, and I love them all.” »