Confessions of a Maddog: A Romp through the High-flying Texas Music and Literary Era of the Fifties to the Seventies

by Jay Dunston Milner

Jay Milner was part of a generation of Texas writers whose heyday lasted from the late 1950s through the 1970s. The group was comprised of Billie Lee Brammer, Edwin “Bud” Shrake, Gary Cartwright, Dan Jenkins, Larry L. King, Pete Gent, and (peripherally) Larry McMurtry and Willie Morris. From the musical scene there were “picker poets,” as Milner calls them, such as Willie Nelson, Jerry Jeff Walker, Guy Clark, Billy Joe Shaver, and Waylon Jennings. Some of the primary works coming from this generation of writers include Brammer’s The Gay Place , Shrake’s Strange Peaches , Cartwrights’s Confessions of a Washed-up Sportswriter , Kings’s The Whorehouse Papers and None But a Blockhead , Jan Reid’s The Improbable Rise of Redneck Rock , and Willie Nelson’s album Phases and Stages .

248 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1998

Reviews

[Suzi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I took a couple of classes from the author when I was at TCU in the 1960s. This is a TCU Press book. I was such a fan of Willie Morris and the other liberal writers of the 1960s. Not so much a fan of the music. I moved away and missed much.

[McKenzie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little piece of Hondo Crouch at the end made this book almost perfect. Anyone with interest in the roots of Texas outlaw country should pick this book up and enjoy the ride. It’s a literary and music genre that should keep living on.