Jerry Jeff Walker

A fine songwriter and performer of songs, who would on occasion not be sober enough to perform any-- in which case he would start telling stories, and that was even better.

But that's not what I have to say-- I want to tell you one little thing about the kind of man he was. He played here a lot-- had spent a lot of time here off and on, and came back now and again to play familiar rooms. Which put the two of us in the same room maybe a dozen or fifteen times over six or eight years. The very first time, he came off stage after the first set, spotted my pack of cigarettes on the table in front of me, shook one out, and lit it and walked on.

But he memorized me. From then on he'd pick me out where ever I was near the end of a set, come off stage, and make a bee line to me because he had me pegged as a guy with cigarettes who wasn't miserly with them. About the third or fourth time I wasn't sitting, I was walking around, and he came up to me and asked, and I shook one out, and he put it in his mouth and looked to me for a light, and I handed him a pack of matches and said "I'll give you one but better if you light it yourself;" meaning "you are bumming a smoke from me, but I am not volunteering to be a celebrity sycophant." and I'm pretty sure he got the subtext and approved the sentiment.

Anyway so this went on for a while, this kind of odd low key tobacco-darshon acquaintance/friendship and then one night at the Bull of the Woods, I was just lighting the last cigarette in the pack when somebody busted a string and they cut the set short to repair it, and Jerry Jeff steps up to my table, grabs the pack, shakes it, and discovers it is empty.

I shrugged and he went on through the crowd searching another victim. I got in a conversion for five or ten minutes, and presently here comes Walker back again, blowing smoke-- and picks up my pack and puts two cigarettes in it!

He was perfectly prepared to bum my last one; but when there wasn't one, he felt obligated not only to hit up somebody else, but to hit them up on my behalf, too!

He was Scamp Walker and Jacky Jack Doubletrouble for sure-- but he was a rare gentleman about it, and that counts to me anyway.