Kinky Friedman was country music’s most prominent satirist. His 1973 debut album, Sold American, won him critical acclaim, and the admiration of musicians including Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson. In the mid-1980s he began publishing mystery novels that were as offbeat and droll as his music, and he later ran for elected office in Texas several times.
Friedman, who has died of Parkinson’s disease aged 79, saw himself as part of a Jewish comic tradition although, unlike Don Rickles or Groucho Marx, he was too quirky and abrasive to appeal to mainstream America. This noted, he wrote several outstanding songs and loved playing the part of Kinky, the gruff Texan Jewish cowboy who mocked everyone.
