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RIP to Tejano Music Legend Flaco Jiménez

Flaco Jiménez performs on ACL Season 1

Austin City Limits is very sorry to hear of the death of Tejano music legend Flaco Jiménez. The Tejano music icon made seven appearances on the show, beginning with episode 4 of the inaugural season and culminating in his induction into the ACL Hall of Fame in 2015. He was 86.

Tejano music royalty, “El Rey de Texas” was the son of Santiago Jiménez and grandson of Patricio Jiménez – both conjunto pioneers. Starting on the bajo sexto, San Antonio native Flaco began performing at age seven with his dad and made his first recordings at fifteen as part of Los Caporales. Influenced by Santiago Sr. and zydeco master Clifton Chenier, Flaco took up the three-button accordion, the instrument that would propel him to international fame. 

Alongside his equally talented brother Santiago Jr., Flaco released his first album El Rey y El Principe de la Musica Norteña in 1962. That was only the first of over fifty years’ worth of records for major, independent, and regional labels – the most recent of which is 2014’s Flaco Jiménez y Tomas Ortíz De Los Alegres De Terán. He toured all over the world, earning shelves’ worth of honors: six Grammy Awards (including a Lifetime Achievement award), the Americana Music Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award, a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Billboard Latin Music Lifetime Achievement Award, and, of course, the ACL Hall of Fame. 

Ever eager to spread the gospel of Tejano music, Flaco was also a lively collaborator, with famous friends and wide-open ears. He met Doug Sahm in the sixties, beginning a partnership that would last until Sahm’s 1999 death. With Sir Doug, he was a founding member of Texas treasure the Texas Tornados, with whom he recorded seven albums. Flaco often kept company with genre-agnostic guitarist, singer, and songwriter Ry Cooder, starting with 1976’ Chicken Skin Music. That LP included “He’ll Have to Go,” the Jim Reeves cover that led to Cooder’s appearance as a guest on Flaco’s first ACL taping. His squeezebox skills and irrepressible spirit also led him to appear on record and in concert with dozens of major stars: Dwight Yoakam and Buck Owens (“Streets of Bakersfield”), the Mavericks (“All You Ever Do is Bring Me Down”), Bob Dylan, Dr. John, Los Lobos, Grammy-winning supergroup Los Super Seven, Peter Rowan, and even the Rolling Stones, with whom he recorded on the double platinum Voodoo Lounge.

Flaco Jiménez, Season 1 of ACL

Flaco’s extraordinary talent, undeniable charisma, and willingness to expand the horizons of Tejano music beyond the boundaries of the Lone Star State meant he isn’t just a key note in the sound of Texas. His work is integral to the fabric of American music. We mourn his passing. 

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R.I.P. Kris Kristofferson

Kris Kristofferson on Austin City Limits, 1981.

Kris Kristofferson – singer, actor, author, activist, United States army captain, helicopter pilot, boxer, football player, Rhodes Scholar, and, most importantly, one of the greatest songwriters to ever pick a guitar – died peacefully on Sept. 28, 2024 at the age of 88. He appeared on Austin City Limits four times – as a headliner in Seasons 7 and 35, as part of a songwriters special with Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Billie Joe Shaver, and Kimmie Rhodes in Season 22, and as a special guest performer on Austin City Limits Celebrates 40 Years. He was inducted into the ACL Hall of Fame in 2016 by Rodney Crowell with a musical salute by his longtime friend Willie Nelson.  

It’s nearly impossible to adequately express the impact of the man’s work on American popular culture. Admired by legends like Bob Dylan, John Prine, and Elvis Costello, the Brownsville native almost single handedly evolved country music beyond its roots and into the modern world. Though he carried a deep respect for the music’s traditions, he also injected the form with fresh ideas, incorporating the changes in American culture and life into his work, especially through his brilliantly composed lyrics. It may seem strange now, but a song like “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down” – raw, unsentimental, but written like the student of William Blake he was – was considered too shocking to be on country radio in 1969. That didn’t stop Ray Stevens and Johnny Cash from covering it, the latter making it a number one hit on the country charts and launching Kristofferson’s career into the heavens. 

Kristofferson spent a good chunk of his life on a different kind of stage, acting in a wide range of films like A Star is Born, Heaven’s Gate, Lone Star, Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Cisco Pike, Semi-Tough, Songwriter (with his longtime friend Willie Nelson), and the Blade trilogy. He also formed the band the Highwaymen with Nelson, Waylon Jennings, and Johnny Cash – if ever there was a band that truly earned the title “supergroup,” it was that one.

Kris Kristofferson on Austin City Limits, 2010. Photo by Scott Newton.

And of course he recorded bestselling albums of his own, earning hits under his own name with “Loving You is Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again)” and “Why Me,” and scoring plenty of hits sung by others, including Ray Price (“For the Good Times”), Sammi Smith (“Help Me Make It Through the Night”), Jerry Lee Lewis (“Once More With Feeling”), Faron Young (“Your Time’s Comin’”), Roger Miller (“Me and Bobby McGee”), and Janis Joplin (also “Me and Bobby McGee”). That’s merely the tip of the iceberg of classics from Kristofferson’s pen – let’s not forget “The Pilgrim, Chapter 33,” “The Silver Tongued Devil and I,” “Border Lord,” “Chase the Feeling” (which made an appearance on the ACL stage in the hands of Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell), “Casey’s Last Ride,” “Best of All Possible Worlds,” “Closer to the Bone,” “Nobody Loves Anybody Anymore,” “Blame It On the Stones,” and “A Moment of Forever,” among many, many others. It’s a long list, and one most songwriters would envy. 

“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose” – that indelible line from “Me and Bobby McGee” couldn’t have come from anyone else. It’s probably the reason why that song has been covered so often – who doesn’t want to be able to sing the line at least once, pretending you wrote it? Kristofferson’s songs connect across genres and generations, and will be his ultimate legacy. He wrote this in Esquire in 1999: “Tell the truth. Sing with passion. Work with laughter. Love with heart. ‘Cause that’s all that matters in the end.” No wonder his work is and will continue to be respected, beloved, and cherished.  

From the bottom of the hearts of everyone at Austin City Limits, thank you, Kris Kristofferson, for the music, the memories, and the magic. 

Kris Kristofferson on Austin City Limits Celebrates 40 Years, 2014. Photo by Scott Newton.
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Kinky Friedman 1944-2024

Kinky Friedman records Austin City Limits, 1975. Photo courtesy Austin City Limits/Austin PBS.

Novelist, columnist, gubernatorial candidate, raconteur, cigar aficionado, and, of course, singer/songwriter Kinky Friedman left this earth on June 27, 2024 at the age of 79. According to the Texas Tribune, the cause was Parkinson’s disease.

Kinky Friedman sings “Amelia Earhart’s Last Flight,” from an unbroadcast episode produced in 1975.

After stints with the Peace Corps and in Nashville, Kinky (who, like his pal Willie Nelson, is on a first-name basis with the universe) became the quick-witted provocateur of seventies outlaw country, writing or covering songs (“Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed,” “Sold American,” “They Ain’t Making Jews Like Jesus Anymore,” the notorious “Okie From Muskogee” lampoon “Asshole From El Paso”) that raised the hackles of the satire-impaired and restricting his audience to connoisseurs with a certain sense of humor. He reached a bigger crowd in the eighties when he began writing bestselling novels, many of them starring himself as a hard-boiled private detective, as well as contributing a long-standing column to Texas Monthly. Kinky became a national icon when he ran for governor of Texas in 2006, earning 12% of the vote – not nearly enough to win, of course, but not too shabby, either. Following a second, equally unsuccessful campaign, he returned to writing books and songs, as well as founding the Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch in 1998. 

Kinky Friedman sings “Wild Man From Borneo,” 1975, for an episode of Austin City Limits that was never broadcast.

Kinky also recorded an episode of Austin City Limits in 1975 for Season 1, but it famously never aired. There’ve been many reflections on why – in the press at the time, in one of Kinky’s memoirs, and in Clifford Endres’ 1987 history of ACL. Suffice to say that PBS executives of the time previewed the episode and decided it would be best for it to stay in the can, even when Austin PBS (then KLRN) offered to let it be a “soft feed,” i.e. a free program to be used at individual stations’ discretion. Fortunately, while it was never broadcast, the show was released in 2007 by New West Records. 

Kinky Friedman records ACL, 1975. Photo courtesy of Austin City Limits/Austin PBS.

Of course, any story like this only serves to make the life in question even larger, as Kinky himself acknowledged. “In any case, when the producers of ACL, in their infinite wisdom, decided not to air the show, the legend only grew,” he wrote in his TMT column. “Had they gone ahead and run it, I’d undoubtedly be playing a beer joint tonight on the backside of Buttocks, Texas. I’d never have had the chance to become a best-selling novelist, a friend of presidents, and a candidate for governor. The truth is I wouldn’t even be writing this column, which would be a real shame, since it’s the only job I’ve ever had in my life. So God bless Austin City Limits.”

We’ll miss you, Kinky. You kept Austin – and Texas – weird before the phrase was ever coined.  Rest in peace.

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Featured News

Charlie Robison RIP

Charlie Robison on Austin City Limits, 2001. Photo by Scott Newton.

Austin City Limits salutes influential ATX singer/songwriter Charlie Robison, who we lost way too soon, on Sept. 10 at the age of 59. Robison delivered a pair of memorable performances on Austin City Limits, in 1999 and 2001.  

Best known around the world as a country singer, the brother of fellow tunesmiths Bruce Robison and Robyn Ludwick rose to regional fame in the 1980s as a member of beloved Austin roots rock bands Two Hoots & a Holler and Chaparral before striking out on his own with 1995’s Bandera, named after the Texas Hill Country town where his family had a ranch for generations.. He signed to Columbia imprint Lucky Dog thereafter, issuing two well-regarded albums with Life of the Party and Step Right Up and hit singles “My Hometown” and NRBQ’s “I Want You Bad.” 

Charlie Robison on Austin City Limits, 1999.

Returning to independence, he released four more albums before being forced to retire in 2018, after complications from surgery rendered him unable to sing. Those issues turned out to be temporary, however, as he returned to the stage and touring in 2022. 

Charlie Robison on Austin City Limits, 2001.

He is survived by his wife and four children. We extend our sincere condolences for their loss. 

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Featured News

Loretta Lynn 1932-2022

Loretta Lynn on Austin City Limits, 1983. Photo by Scott Newton.

Loretta Lynn, the queen of country music, has died at the age of 90, passing peacefully at her home in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee. The hearts of all of us at Austin City Limits go out to her family, friends and fans. 

The Butcher, Holler, Kentucky-born Lynn – Loretta Webb to her parents – was as iconic a figure in music as has ever been. The proud coal miner’s daughter went on to become one of the most influential women in the history of American music. Her plain-spoken, instantly relatable singing and sharp, smart songwriting put her in the rare echelon of boundary-busting trailblazers. Tunes like “Don’t Come Home a-Drinkin’” and “The Pill” made it clear that the women of country music, whether performers or the subjects of songs, could and would be as independent, assertive and self-confident as their male counterparts. Artists inside and outside C&W like Tammy Wynette, Tanya Tucker, Deanna Carter, Miranda Lambert, Kacey Musgraves, Maren Morris, Margo Price and Sheryl Crow point to Lynn as a north star. Longtime fan Jack White paid homage by producing her acclaimed 2004 album Van Lear Rose. 

With over seventy chart hits, her list of indelible songs is staggering: “You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man),” “Love is the Foundation,” “You’re Lookin’ at Country,” “One’s On the Way,” “After the Fire” (with duet partner Conway Twitty), and, of course, the iconic, autobiographical “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” which became a bestselling memoir and a beloved film, are the tip of a substantial iceberg. Her incredible body of work led to Lynn being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in 2013, and she also was the recipient of a GRAMMY Lifetime Achievement Award and a Kennedy Center Honor, among many other accolades. She may have slowed down in her later years, but she didn’t stop – she continued performing and releasing records, with her most recent album Still Woman Enough coming out in 2021. 

“From the time she stepped onto the ACL stage in her shimmering full-length gown, there was no doubt that she was the Queen of Country Music,” our executive producer Terry Lickona says. “The power of that voice and those songs commanded the room like few others have through the 48 years of Austin City Limits. The girl from Butcher Holler had arrived, and ACL once again made history. She was the genuine article; there never was anyone quite like her, and never will be again.”

Lynn recorded two classic episodes of ACL – one in 1983 during Season 8 and the other in 1998 during Season 23. We at ACL were thrilled to induct her into the ACL Hall of Fame in 2015. So her loss is difficult for us to grasp. As did so many of her fans and supporters, we always thought Loretta Lynn, like Mount Rushmore, would endure; however, her legacy – all those great songs – is immortal. 

Good night, coal miner’s daughter. 

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News

R.I.P. Naomi Judd

The Judds on Austin City Limits, 1985. Naomi Judd on the left. Photo by Scott Newton.

Austin City Limits was surprised and saddened to learn of the death of Naomi Judd, one half of the superstar country act the Judds. She passed away on April 30, a day before the Judds were inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame and just after announcing a final tour. No official cause of death was given. 

With her daughter Wynonna, Naomi scored six gold and platinum albums and fourteen #1 singles on the country charts during the late eighties and early nineties, becoming one of the most successful C&W duos of all time. The Judds appeared on Austin City Limits only once, in the tenth anniversary season, fresh off the success of their debut album Why Not Me. But the family’s Austin experience goes deeper than that. As a single mom, Naomi moved her daughters to the city in 1974, at the peak of the progressive country movement and right as the seeds for ACL had been planted, becoming friends with Asleep at the Wheel and the Fabulous Thunderbirds. This was their introduction to country music, so their appearance on ACL a decade later was more than just the introduction of the next superstar act – it was the closing of a circle. 

Our hearts go out to Wynonna and Ashley Judd during this difficult time. As we say goodbye, we present the Judds opening their ACL segment with their joyous, celebratory #1 hit “Girls’ Night Out.” 

The Judds sing “Girls’ Night Out” on Austin City Limits, 1985.