Richard Samet "Kinky" Friedman (November 1, 1944 – June 27, 2024) was an American singer, songwriter, novelist, humorist, politician, and columnist for Texas Monthly, who styled himself in the mold of popular American satirists Will Rogers and Mark Twain.
Friedman was one of two independent candidates in the 2006 Texas gubernatorial election. Receiving 12.6% of the vote, Friedman placed fourth in the six-person race.
Richard Samet Friedman was born in Chicago on November 1, 1944, to Jewish parents, Dr. S. Thomas Friedman and his wife Minnie (Samet) Friedman. Both of his parents were the children of Russian Jewish immigrants. When Friedman was young, his family moved to the Texas Hill Country where they opened a summer camp called Echo Hill Ranch.
Friedman had an early interest in both pop music and chess, and was chosen at age seven as one of 50 local players to challenge U.S. grandmaster Samuel Reshevsky to simultaneous games in Houston. Reshevsky won all 50 games, but Friedman was, by far, the youngest competitor.
Friedman graduated from Austin High School in Austin, Texas, in 1962. He subsequently earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Texas at Austin in 1966, majoring in psychology. He took part in the Plan II Honors program and was a member of the Tau Delta Phi fraternity. During his first year, Chinga Chavin gave Friedman the nickname "Kinky" because of his curly hair.
Friedman served two years in the United States Peace Corps, teaching in Borneo, Malaysia with John Gross. During his service in the Peace Corps, he met future road manager Dylan Ferrero, with whom he worked for the remainder of his life. Friedman lived at Echo Hill Ranch, his family's summer camp near Kerrville, Texas. He founded Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch, also located near Kerrville, whose mission is to care for stray, abused and aging animals; to date, the ranch has saved more than 1,000 dogs from animal euthanasia.
On June 27, 2024, it was announced that Friedman had died at his home at Echo Hill Ranch, Medina, Bandera County, Texas, from complications of Parkinson's disease. He was 79.
Friedman formed his first band, King Arthur & the Carrots, while a student at the University of Texas at Austin. The band, which poked fun at surf music, recorded only one single in 1966 ("Schwinn 24/Beach Party Boo Boo").
By 1973, Friedman had formed his second band, Kinky Friedman and The Texas Jewboys, which many took to be a play on the name of the famous band Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. In keeping with the band's satirical nature, each member had a comical name: in addition to Kinky there were Little Jewford, Big Nig, Panama Red, Wichita Culpepper, Sky Cap Adams, Rainbow Colours, and Snakebite Jacobs. More conventionally named roadie Jack Slaughter and road manager Dylan Ferrero rounded out the crew and provided most of the driving of the "tour bus", a Cadillac with 10-year-old expired license plates and a propensity to break down (but, according to Friedman, her talent lay in her ability to stop on a dime and pick up the change).
Friedman's father objected to the name of the band, calling it a "negative, hostile, peculiar thing", which gave Kinky even more reason to choose the name.
Arriving on the wave of country rock following on from Gram Parsons, The Band, and Eagles, Friedman originally found cult fame as a country and western singer. His break came in 1973 thanks to Commander Cody of Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, who contacted Vanguard Music on his behalf. Friedman released Kinky Friedman in 1974 for ABC Records, then toured with Bob Dylan in 1975–1976. His repertoire mixed social commentary ("We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service to You") and maudlin ballads ("Western Union Wire") with raucous humor (such as "Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed"). His "Ride 'Em Jewboy" was an extended tribute to the victims of the Holocaust.
One of his most famous songs is "They Ain't Makin' Jews Like Jesus Anymore," a song in which Kinky verbally and physically beats up a drunken white racist who berates blacks, Jews, Italians, Greeks, Irish people, and Sigma Nus in a bar, with lyrics such as,
Other Friedman tunes include "The Ballad of Charles Whitman," in which Friedman lampooned Charles Whitman's sniper attack from the University of Texas at Austin's Main Building tower on August 1, 1966. He also covered Chinga Chavin's "Asshole from El Paso", a parody of Merle Haggard's "Okie from Muskogee".
One of Friedman's most infamous concerts was a 1973 performance in Buffalo, New York; upon performing "Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed" (a song that lampoons feminism), a group of what Friedman described as "cranked-up lesbians" entered into a fight with the band and forced the concert to end early while Friedman and the band were escorted off stage. The National Organization for Women awarded Friedman the "Male Chauvinist Pig Award" later that year, an award Friedman took with pride. Friedman would not return to Buffalo until 2012. Another was at The Boarding House in early-March 1975 when an offended Buffy Sainte-Marie rushed on stage and snatched the war bonnet that Friedman was wearing while he and his band were performing "Miss Nickelodeon," a composition that spoofs the indigenous peoples of the Americas.
Friedman and his band taped an Austin City Limits show on November 11, 1975, which was never aired. According to the show's executive producer, Terry Lickona, this is the first and only time in the show's long history that an episode went unaired. Lickona told the Austin Chronicle "I've seen it many times – it's a very popular party tape among friends. I think it was a great show, and it might be as offensive today as it was back then."
In early 1976, he joined Bob Dylan on the second leg of the Rolling Thunder Revue tour.
Friedman was the musical guest on the Season 2 fifth episode of Saturday Night Live which aired on October 23, 1976. He performed his own composition "Dear Abbie".
Although hard to verify, given the number of Jewish-origin entertainers in country/hillbilly-tour circles (e.g. Gilbert Maxwell "Broncho Billy" Anderson), Friedman claims to have been the first full-blooded Jew to take the stage at the Grand Ole Opry.