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Jerry Jeff live at Gruene Hall on Sept. 13.

A decent résumé for a guy who seemed destined to live hard, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse. His recent explanation for playing one of his most popular songs, "Mr. Bojangles," in differing styles and tempos through the years is a fitting reflection on his life. "It goes through evolutions; that's part of what music is about," he said. "We're not just machines out there."

The phone rings, and Jerry Jeff Walker grabs the receiver and grumbles hello. The phone has been ringing frequently in the past hour since Walker sat down in his Austin home with Fort Worth Weekly for an interview -- the likes of which he disdains and typically avoids.

Walker doesn't cater to news people and entertainment writers, although he wasn't above manipulating them early in his career. He might be good for the occasional colorful quote on the fly, but he dislikes answering stale questions or keeping appointments (other than his concerts). As he wrote in his 1999 autobiography, Gypsy Songman, if you don't want him to do something, tell him he has to do it.

Walker was rebellious early, a poor student who preferred playing basketball and hanging out with older guys in pool halls, cigarettes dangling, prowling for girls. He developed a love of music by listening to his parents' jazz-oriented albums, and he learned to play guitar on an old Harmony borrowed from a neighbor. The cheap instrument was difficult to play, and he later switched to a ukulele. His first job as a professional singer was playing ukulele and singing at limbo contests on the beach in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where he and a friend had hitchhiked.

He ditched his birth name, Ron Crosby, in favor of Jerry Ferris after he left home for good in the early 1960s and moved to New Orleans. He was pursuing adventure -- and AWOL from the National Guard -- and left his old identity behind. He chose Jerry Ferris because someone in New York had given him a fake ID with that name. A few years later, he cleared up his problems with the National Guard and wanted to start fresh. This time, he chose the name Jeff Walker. He liked the sound. But his French Quarter friends and lovers rejected his new name and continued to call him Jerry.

Jerry Jeff Walker. The name would soon break the confines of New Orleans, spread to Texas, and then ignite the country's imagination. Austin was musical Mecca, and Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, and Jerry Jeff Walker were the three kings of Outlaw music, the next musical phenomenon to follow '60s rock and Woodstock.

In 1970s Austin, the native New Yorker kept quiet about his roots and his real name and, with the help of a New York manager, used the media to help craft the Jerry Jeff persona as a Lone Star rabble-rouser. Early on, his media savvy was more sophisticated than that of his peers. "People raised in the South, it's ingrained that you don't toot your own horn or ring your own bell," Inmon said. "Humility is prized. Up north, in populated areas, you have to be aggressive to survive. You have to promote yourself. This was ingrained in Jerry Jeff. When he came down here and realized that a lot of these people were just humble good ol' boys, he could promote himself and have a great effect because nobody else was promoting themselves much."

Walker and his manager created a myth, although myth and reality weren't far apart. The tall, broken-nosed bard might have been a city boy from up north, but his true nature was a beer-drinking, hell-raising, boot-wearing, guitar-picking rascal who seemed every bit as Texan as Willie and Waylon -- or Sam Houston and Lyndon B. Johnson, for that matter. "By keeping his origins and given name quiet, they invented this Texas character," Inmon said. "It was only after he had been established as a Texas icon that he let it out that he was not really from here."

It's Friday, Sept. 13, and Walker is waiting the last few hours before a gig at his favorite venue, Gruene Hall, the oldest and probably most distinctive dance hall in Texas. This night he's playing with a drum-bass-guitar backing, and he'll continue to use the band for 40 or so gigs next year, but 2003 will also usher in a return to solo performances, something he excels at but has drifted away from in the past decade. "I've been talking to friends -- Guy Clark who does a lot of it, and John Prine -- just feeling out what is out there and what's going on," he says. "I'm going to play the One World Theater [in Austin] in January and probably record that show and do some solo stuff and mix in even possibly some old standards."

Recording in front of friends or fans, rather than building songs layer by layer in a studio, appeals to Walker's spirit of unstructured fun. Parts of the seminal 1973 album Viva Terlingua were recorded live, and a few of the songs were written on the spot. It remains a symbolic statement of Outlaw music. "Viva is still the definitive progressive country Outlaw record," Hubbard says. "It really was progressive. It captured the time and the era. It was musically unique."

Viva Terlingua shaped the musical direction of many current Texas Music artists, including Pat Green, who is often called a latter-day Jerry Jeff. "I really enjoyed that whole feel, that whole vibe," Green told the Weekly recently. "It seemed to be loose, not polished, and I really liked that. They were playing fun music, and it matched with my personality."

The looseness of live recordings has marked Walker's sound for years. Live at Gruene Hall in 1989 gained him a new generation of fans after a bleak period in the 1980s, when he was struggling to regain his health and remain financially solvent.

The January live performance at One World Theater with original songs sprinkled among pop standards could spark more attention. Walker's sole recording of a pop standard, "My Buddy," from 1977's A Man Must Carry On album, is one of his most touching moments. "Live recording has sort of been my forte," he said. "I've done as many live recordings as I have studio recordings. I like it because I can concentrate on entertaining the audience. The studio is the only place you ever play a song five times in a row."

Walker is restless during our interview -- tidying his desk, fidgeting in his chair, and answering phone calls or turning them over to his dynamic wife and business manager, Susan Walker, who takes the calls in another room. His office contains a computer, a guitar, and books. French doors open to a shaded patio, picnic table, and swimming pool. The house is comfortable and sprawling, with plenty of hardwood, rustic décor, books, large photos of his relatives and famous friends, and a courtyard that reveals his love of Caribbean scenery.

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