Review of 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

Authors

Kent Blaser, Wayne State College

Date of this Version

1999

Comments

Published in Great Plains Quarterly 19:4 (Fall 1999). Copyright © 1999 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Abstract

The title Confessions of a Maddog carries a reference that most readers will not recognize: the "Maddogs" were an assortment of Texas writers and musicians, rowdy "good-old-boys" (and a few girls), who in the 1960s created a social circle-Maddogs, Inc.-complete with official membership cards and a slogan. Milner's book is part autobiography, but mostly a memoir/reminiscence of a particular time and group of people. Billie Lee Brammer, Larry L. King, Bud Shrake, Dan Jenkins, Peter Gent, Gary Cartwright, and Milner himself led the somewhat motley crew. Musician Jerry Jeff Walker was a regular participant. More famous individuals, including Willie Nelson, Larry McMurtry, and Anne Richards, had brief or peripheral roles.