Kinky Friedman & the Texas Jewboys

Kinky Friedman & the Texas Jewboys

Before he became the world's first redneck Borscht Belt noir novelist and the Man Who Should Have Been Texas Governor, Richard "Kinky" Friedman became a thorn in the side of country music. Composer of dangerous, obscene, and hilarious honky-tonk anthems like "Ride 'Em Jewboy" and "Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed," Friedman never met an enemy he couldn't make nor a sacred cow he wouldn't slaughter. Herein is his first demo tape from 1970, featuring the above-named hits and others like "The Ballad of Charles Whitman," rendered with sparser instrumentation than later versions and making these tunes sound more Western than country. At disc's end, you hear the delicious incongruity of Friedman on "The Grand Ole Opry" in March 1973, essaying "Carrying the Torch," Tompall Glaser introduction and all. Roy Acuff was likely giving birth to kittens in the wings over this spectacle.