Kinky Friedman, the eccentric country singer-songwriter whose musings, novels, one-liners and quixotic gubernatorial run made him a folk hero, died Wednesday at age 79 at his home in Texas.
“Kinky Friedman stepped on a rainbow at his beloved Echo Hill surrounded by family & friends,” a statement on X read announcing his death. “Kinkster endured tremendous pain & unthinkable loss in recent years but he never lost his fighting spirit and quick wit. Kinky will live on as his books are read and his songs are sung.” The cause of death was Parkinson’s disease, according to Texas Tribune.
Friedman’s oddball magnetism and “fearless Texas chutzpah,” as his friend Taj Mahal once described it, in his writings, stump speeches, songs, and interviews, cemented him as a media darling and a songwriter’s songwriter who befriended several presidents (George W. Bush, Bill Clinton) and considered Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson some of his closest friends.
In 2006, Friedman ran a longshot and humorous campaign for governor of Texas, managing to earn 12 percent of the vote. “I got my last will and testament worked out,” Friedman said in 2014, in one of his favorite catchphrases. “When I die, I’m going to be cremated and the ashes are to be thrown in Rick Perry’s hair.”
Richard Samet Friedman was born in 1944 in Chicago, the son of two Jewish progressives who soon moved the family to Houston and began operating Echo Hill Ranch, a summer camp that Friedman’s family would run for decades and that Kinky would call home for much of his life.
