JERRY JEFF WALKER - Walker's Collectibles

Jerry Jeff Walker
Walker's Collectibles
MCA, 1974 

I was really getting reacquainted with my record collection and was cruising with this blog for a couple of months during the initial COVID shutdown and my immediate work furlough.  Then I got called back to work.  Then my in-laws moved in which (along with my mom - who was already here) meant seven people cramped into our house for three months.  There was not a lot of time or space to turn on the stereo.

I've been picking up my listening pace over the last week.  I've meant to restart Coronavinyl for even longer.  Since it all began with a post following the death of John Prine, it only made sense to me this afternoon to restart it following the loss of Jerry Jeff Walker.

Walker's Collectibles is certainly not Jerry Jeff's most popular record.  As far as I can tell, it has never been reissued on CD (no small feat at this point!) and is not available digitally.  To take it all in, you're going to need to find a used vinyl copy.  Luckily, that shouldn't set you back more than a few buckaroos.

Walker's Collectibles probably isn't Jerry Jeff's best record, either.  But I'll be damned if it isn't my favorite.  It's a ramshackle parade of everything Jerry Jeff and his backing Lost Gonzo Band had to offer -- Dixieland swingers, Texas tearjerkers, CCR-meets-Stonesy rockers, and drunken a-cappella gospel messes.  There's so much going on that I can see how it's overlooked.  But I love it all so much.

The biggest reason I've pulled this record out of my shelves so frequently over the years is the raucous version of David Blue's "I Like to Sleep Late in the Morning."

I used to have a once-a-month DJ night at The King and I Thai, which was an incredible lounge situated in the basement level of an apartment building on the outskirts of downtown Minneapolis.  Some of the best memories of my late twenties go something like this: three hours of playing my records, endless free drinks, and putting on a ten-minute James Brown song so I had time to devour the most delicious green curry on the planet.  (Or at least the upper Midwest.)  Then, after last call, I'd drop the needle on "I Like to Sleep Late in the Morning" and crank the volume as the lights inside the restaurant turned on.  Then I'd drunkenly lug a thirty-pound box of records for around four blocks to my future wife's Loring Park apartment.

I like to sleep late in the morning

I don't like to wear no shoes

Make love to the women while I'm livin'

Get drunk on a bottle of booze

Jerry Jeff represented the closing credits in those mini-movies of my life.  I don't really know if anyone else was watching.  I tend to over-romanticize nostalgia.  Even nostalgia that I didn't experience.  When I look at the photos on the front and back covers of Jerry Jeff's albums while listening to the party atmosphere so present in his music, it's not hard to place myself right in the middle of a jam-session in a 1974 Texas roadhouse.  Yet, I've never even been to Texas.

Thanks the all the great records, Mr. Walker.  Sleep as late as you want.

About my copy:
MCA 450

Purchased used while working at the ol' store.  I couldn't help but to buy every decent condition Jerry Jeff Walker record that came through the door, even if we already had too many copies in overstock.  Someone was going to need them eventually.