Kinky Friedman, Texas songwriter, satirist and folk hero, dies at 79

“The Kinkster,” as he sometimes called himself, brought an outlaw spirit and vaudeville showmanship to politics, books and music, pushing the bounds of good taste while chomping on a cigar and donning a black cowboy hat — an accessory that barely concealed the curly dark hair that inspired his nickname. “With a name like Kinky,” he once told a reporter, “you should be famous, or else it’s a social embarrassment.”

Beginning in the early 1970s, he performed with a satirical country band called Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys, releasing songs such as “They Ain’t Makin’ Jews Like Jesus Anymore” and “We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service to You.” He toured with Bob Dylan, played chess with Willie Nelson and palled around with presidents from both parties, befriending Bill Clinton as well as George W. Bush. When he visited the White House for a gala dinner in 1997, he brought a Cuban cigar as a gift.

“Mr. President,” he recalled telling Clinton, “don’t think of it as supporting their economy — think of it as burning their fields.”

When he tired of touring and performing, Mr. Friedman turned to writing. He had a long-running column in Texas Monthly and cast a fictional version of himself as the detective hero of novels including “Elvis, Jesus & Coca-Cola” (1993), “Armadillos and Old Lace” (1994) and “God Bless John Wayne” (1995). Like the real Mr. Friedman, the books’ protagonist lived in Greenwich Village for a time, moving back and forth between New York City and his family ranch in Texas.

The character is unsure what place to call home. Eventually, he hopes to “find the answer to the grand and troubling question that has haunted mankind through the ages: What is it that I really want out of life — horsemanure or pigeon [excrement]?”

In his own life, Mr. Friedman decided on the manure. Living off his ranch, he became a beloved figure for a certain brand of independent-minded Texan, with former governor Ann Richards, a Democrat, calling him “one of Texas’s great natural resources.”

Mr. Friedman was resolutely independent in his politics, resisting party labels even as he tended toward the libertarian side of the spectrum. He first ran for office in 1986, mounting a quixotic campaign for justice of the peace in Kerrville, near his ranch, and launched his long-shot bid for governor nearly three decades later, while calling for the legalization of gambling, marijuana and same-sex marriage. “I support gay marriage,” he explained, “because I believe they have right to be just as miserable as the rest of us.”

His candidacy was initially treated as a joke, in part because Mr. Friedman seemed to treat it that way himself. He campaigned on a series of one-liners: “How hard could it be?,” “He ain’t Kinky, he’s my governor,” “I’ll sign anything but bad legislation.” “If you elect me the first Jewish governor of the state of Texas,” he declared, “I’ll reduce the speed limit to 54.95.”

But he became a rare independent to make it on the ballot — another independent, Carole Keeton Strayhorn, also got enough signatures to qualify — after touting himself as a populist, truth-telling alternative to tired old politicians. He was joined on the trail by Jesse Ventura, the former pro wrestler whose successful run for Minnesota governor offered inspiration for Mr. Friedman.

Taking on Republican incumbent Rick Perry, who later served as energy secretary during the Trump administration, Mr. Friedman finished fourth, with 12 percent of the vote. If the result wasn’t quite what he wanted, he still seemed happy with the publicity. “I won that election,” he often said, “everywhere but Texas.”

Richard Samet Friedman was born in Chicago on Nov. 1, 1944, although he preferred to celebrate his birthday a day earlier, on Halloween. The oldest of three children, he grew up in Houston and at Echo Hill Ranch, which his parents bought and ran in the Texas Hill Country.

Mr. Friedman’s father had sold potatoes from a pushcart before serving as a bomber navigator during World War II. He became a psychology professor at the University of Texas, and Mr. Friedman’s mother worked as one of the first speech therapists in Houston public schools.

While his parents weren’t musical, they supported their older son’s idiosyncratic interests, taking him to play chess with Samuel Reshevsky when the Polish grandmaster was passing through Houston on a tour. (Mr. Friedman, who was 7, said that he let Reshevsky win “so as not to hurt his feelings.”) His sister said they were also tolerant when Mr. Friedman was assigned to write a newspaper article about a high school football game, then turned in a story that was written entirely in Latin, “which pleased two people and irritated many others.”

After graduating from the University of Texas at Austin, where he studied psychology and marched against segregated lunch counters in his spare time, Mr. Friedman went to Borneo in 1966, serving for two years with the Peace Corps. He played guitar, wrote country songs and returned home to form Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys, a riff on the western swing group Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys.

Performing at small-town bars as well as Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry, Mr. Friedman released more than a dozen albums, beginning with “Sold American” (1973). The record featured many of his best-known songs, including “Ride ’Em Jewboy,” a country tribute to the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust, and “Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed,” a controversial country ditty in which he called on women “to occupy the kitchen, liberate the sink.”

“Sometimes, Friedman’s songs lampooned small-minded bigotry; sometimes, those songs embodied that bigotry so fully that the line between parody and seriousness became meaningless; and sometimes, those songs used a veneer of humorous irony and satire to traffic in edgy intolerance,” Rolling Stone journalist Jonathan Bernstein wrote in 2018.

Mr. Friedman often recalled a 1973 concert in Buffalo, where he said he and the band were attacked onstage by “a group of cranked-up lesbians” that reacted angrily to “Get Your Biscuits.” “Later that year, I received the National Organization for Women’s male chauvinist pig award,” he told the Buffalo News. “It’s an award I’m still proud of.”

During the 1980s, Mr. Friedman struggled with cocaine use while living in New York, where he played weekly at the Lone Star Cafe before moving back to Texas. “I’m a big believer in meeting demons and conquering them,” he told the New York Times in 1995. “I gave them up because I had lots of friends ‘going to Jesus’ in rapid succession. I was totally depressed.”

“Coming back to Texas and the ranch saved my life,” he added.

Mr. Friedman returned to politics late in life, unsuccessfully running for state agriculture commissioner in 2010 and 2014. He also continued to write music, according to his sister, who said he had just completed a record, “The Poet of Motel 6,” composed of songs he wrote in the past year.

In addition to his sister, survivors include a brother, Roger.

A few years ago, Mr. Friedman and his sister turned their family ranch into a camp for the children of Gold Star families, who lost a parent while serving in the military or working as a first responder. Mr. Friedman also ran an animal shelter on the property, hosting a Thanksgiving feast for lost and abandoned dogs who offered a howling, tail-wagging accompaniment to his guitar playing.

“I’m married to the wind,” he once wrote, “and my children are my animals and the books I’ve written, and I love them all.”