Jerry Jeff Walker wrote “Mr. Bojangles.” He made ¡Viva Terlingua! in Luckenbach and helped turn Austin into a place where songwriters could live by their own rules. And for a stretch of his life, he was also a man that American Express took to court over $90,000 in charges run up on the road.
The person who pulled him out of that hole was not a record executive or a lawyer. It was his wife, Susan.
The Bills From the Wild Years
Between 1972 and 1978, Jerry Jeff Walker cut eight albums and played as many as 200 dates a year. He later admitted the whole run was fueled by drugs and alcohol. The road spending matched the lifestyle: hotel rooms, plane tickets, meals, and a traveling entourage that grew to as many as 50 people in the wildest days.
American Express sued him for $90,000 in charges. The IRS came after back taxes. After he lost his recording contract in 1982, the tax bill was still waiting. According to a 1987 profile in People magazine, he eventually settled with the IRS for $150,000.
His next two albums, Reunion in 1981 and Cowjazz in 1982, did not sell the way his 1970s records had. Venues were drying up and performance fees were flat. The outlaw legend was running out of road.
The Promise on Super Bowl Sunday
The turnaround started with a promise. On Super Bowl Sunday in 1984, Jerry Jeff Walker vowed to stay off hard liquor and hard drugs until the next Super Bowl. When that Super Bowl came, he made the same promise again, and he kept renewing it every year. In time, he took up jogging and golf.
That same year, Susan Walker became his manager.
Susan Streit had grown up in the small North Texas town of Vernon and graduated from the University of Texas. She married Jerry Jeff in December 1974 at the general store in Luckenbach, with Hondo Crouch standing as best man.
Fifty People, One House
Her first big decision was about the crowd that followed her husband everywhere. Susan told People magazine plainly why it had to go:
“I didn’t want that bunch of people around my house, around my children.”
The entourage was cut loose. So, for a time, was the band. For about three years, Jerry Jeff Walker worked as a solo act, just a man and his guitar, which kept the costs down.
A 24-Song Cassette Called Gypsy Songman
In 1986, Jerry Jeff and Susan Walker launched Tried & True Music. It was a record label, a management office, a booking agency and a publishing operation, all built to serve exactly one client. It ran out of their home in Austin.
Susan did most of the business work. She gathered up the scattered pieces of a twenty-year career and taught herself contract law, copyright, music publishing, booking policies and road logistics.
There was one immediate problem. Jerry Jeff Walker’s earlier albums were out of print, and the industry was moving from vinyl to CD. As the Texas State Historical Association put it, “They had no records to sell.”
So they made their own. Gypsy Songman was a 24-song collection, mostly acoustic, released on cassette so it could be sold at his solo shows. It was his first album since Cowjazz. Susan also arranged for it to reach select record stores and a fan club of about 10,000 members.
In 1987, Rykodisc, a young label from Salem, Massachusetts, picked up Gypsy Songman and released it on CD around the world. That deal became the distribution arrangement for future Tried & True records.
From 250 Shows a Year to 60
By the summer of 1987, the change was hard to miss. Jerry Jeff Walker had gone from roughly 250 shows a year to about 60, mostly in smaller rooms. He worked a week, then took two weeks off. And he told People magazine he was earning more than he ever had in the wild years.
Susan Walker once joked about her new job. She said she could lie by the pool and answer the phone as well as anyone at the William Morris Agency.
The Tried & True Warriors
In the early 1990s, Susan built the fan base the old-fashioned way. Periodic newsletters went out from the Walker family to listeners who became known as the Tried & True Warriors. By the mid-1990s the label had moved onto the internet and email. Over the years the small operation handled his bookings, tour promotion, merchandise, travel, publishing and publicity, and released more than a dozen albums.
Jerry Jeff Walker died on October 23, 2020, at 78. Susan, his wife of 46 years, organized his memorial concert in Luckenbach. Opening the show, she reminded the crowd that the two of them had married at the general store there.
Did you ever see Jerry Jeff Walker play one of those smaller solo shows? We would love to hear about it.