Two years ago, when Ramblin’ Jack Elliott was 90 years old, he fell off his buddy’s palomino while they were riding the trails in Bear Valley. Like any stoic cowboy, he climbed back on.
He’s not riding horses anymore, but he’s still singing the folksongs, hillbilly tunes and cowboy ballads that made him an icon for a who’s who of America’s music royalty. At 92, Ramblin’ Jack is not ready to ride off into the sunset.
This Sunday evening, he will make the journey from his humble Tomales Bay home, which he’s been renting for nearly three decades, to the Masonic Auditorium in San Francisco, where a host of his famous fans will pay tribute to him. Among them will be Jackson Browne, Steve Earle, Ricki Lee Jones and Maria Muldaur.
There’s a half-dozen special guests whose names won’t be revealed before the show. Even Jack hasn’t been told who all of them are, but the surprise could be a big one. His roster of friends and admirers includes Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Arlo Guthrie, Lyle Lovett, Bonnie Raitt, Emmylou Harris, Tom Waits, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson and many, many more.
As his old friend Johnny Cash once said of Jack: “Nobody has covered more ground. He’s got a song and a friend for every mile behind him.”
Jack’s nickname comes not from his countless days on the road but from his tendency to talk and talk. He’s a natural on stage, and an unrivaled storyteller with an easy connection to his audience. But Sunday’s show has given him some butterflies.
“I’m thrilled and a little nervous,” he said over a recent lunch at Nick’s Cove, one of his favorite local haunts. “I never get stage fright, but I’m nervous about this one because there’s a lot of famous people performing.”
A conversation with Jack is always full of twists and turns, winding like a country road from one memory to another. Some yarns get finished, and some just weave into another tale without arriving at their denouement.
There’s the time Grateful Dead guitarist and longtime West Marin resident Bob Weir fell through a skylight and into the green room where Jack was waiting to open for Lightnin’ Hopkins. (Bob snuck in because he was too young to drink.) There’s the time a San Anselmo barber cut Jack’s ear and couldn’t stop the bleeding. And there’s the story about that palomino, which turned out to be Jack’s last ride.
At age 90, he wasn’t as spry as he used to be. And he’s short—just 5-foot, 6-inches—an inch or two shorter than the towering figure he was in his prime. He got his knee caught on the saddle of that horse before he could pull himself upright.
His buddy Matt Murphy, the owner of the palomino, stepped over to offer a hand. His straw cowboy hat brushed against the horse’s neck and fell, startling the palamino, which tossed Jack face-first to the ground.
Jack was wearing a spiffy white shirt that day because he wanted to show respect to the horse.
“He just dusted himself off and got back in the saddle,” Mr. Murphy said.
Ramblin’ Jack became smitten with horses and cowboys when he was a 9-year-old kid growing up in Brooklyn and his parents took him to see a rodeo at Madison Square Garden. He was a curly-haired Jewish boy by the name of Elliott Adnopoz. His parents expected him to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a doctor.
Instead, Jack ran away in search of adventure at age 15. “I joined a traveling rodeo and worked as a groomer,” he said. “I slept on the ground in a tent with 60 horses.”
His first musical inspiration was a rodeo clown named Brahma Rogers. “He played banjo and sang cowboy songs and hillbilly songs,” Jack recalled. “He’d play between shows up in the stands to entertain us rodeo hands.”
At his parents’ urging, Jack returned to New York after three months, and not long afterwards got his first guitar, a flimsy thing with strings way above the fingerboard. “After playing for about three weeks, I grew elephant’s feet on my fingertips,” Jack said.
But he was a determined picker, and the folk music he loved was enjoying a renaissance centered in nearby Greenwich Village.
“This burgeoning scene was emerging right on our doorstep,” said Maria Muldaur, who lives in Mill Valley but grew up a block from Washington Square Park, where impromptu mini folk festivals would happen every Sunday. “People in the urban North were starting to discover and explore all kinds of American roots music.”
Jack was a regular on the scene, and he met Ms. Muldaur in 1962. They both attended hootenanny night at Gerde’s Folk City, a place where careers were made, and they’ve been friends ever since.
“There were a couple of songs of his that I just loved, and one of them was an old Jimmy Rogers song called ‘Sadie My Little Lady,’” Ms. Muldaur said. “He did a great yodel on that, and I just loved the chord changes.”
Jack’s relaxed style belies the complexity and creativity of his musicianship.
His tone and timing are unique, said Lowell “Banana” Levinger, an Inverness resident who has played many shows with Jack around West Marin, including one last weekend at Rancho Nicasio. Jack often strikes the strings a little early or a little late, according to his whims.
“You have to be very intuitive and almost get on a mental telepathy plane with him,” said Banana, a co-founder of The Youngbloods.
A mild stroke a few years ago restricted the movement in Jack’s left hand. After painstaking rounds of physical therapy, he’s playing again. “He had to relearn how to play, and he did it,” Banana said.
The curly black hair of Jack’s youth is white and straight now, but his eyes have the same twinkle. He’s been called the son of Woody Guthrie and the father of Bob Dylan—two artists he came to know in New York City.
He got Mr. Guthrie’s phone number through a friend and fellow musician who’d been invited to his house for a pickin’ party. Eventually, Jack wound up moving into the Guthrie house for two years in the early 1950s, soaking up everything his mentor could teach him.
After that, he spent five years busking in England and France, where very few people had seen anyone wearing a cowboy hat and cowboy boots. Jack made an impression and influenced a coterie of up-and-coming musicians, including Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.
When he was a young kid, Mr. Jagger, clad in a school uniform, saw Jack playing on a railroad platform an hour south of London. The very next day, Mr. Jagger bought his first guitar.
“That’s the day he fell in love with music,” said Mike Beck, a cowboy songwriter who has toured with Jack and known him for 37 years. “It’s a really great story.”
Several years later, one of Jack’s five ex-wives, June Hammerstein—who dated James Dean before she married Jack—got a job working for the Rolling Stones. When she told Keith Richards about their marriage, he put one of Jack’s records on the turntable and began playing along with it.
“I played a private concert for James Dean once,” Jack said. “I sang six or seven songs. I was leaning against my Model A and he was leaning against his Porsche.”
The day after Jack returned to New York in 1961, he met Bob Dylan, 10 years his junior. Both men had gone to visit Woody Guthrie, the godfather of the folk revival, in the hospital, where he lived the last years of his life.
Mr. Dylan had been visiting with Mr. Guthrie regularly for 10 months before he crossed paths with Jack. “I had no idea who he was, but he had listened to all of my records,” Jack recalled.
Mr. Dylan’s early songs sound remarkably like those of Ramblin’ Jack.
“Without Jack Elliott, Bob Dylan wouldn’t be Bob Dylan,” Banana said.
Years later, Jack joined the Rolling Thunder Revue, Dylan’s 1975 concert tour. Over the years, their relationship has had its ups and downs, but they’re on a good footing now. Jack visited with Dylan backstage after a 2022 concert in Oakland.
“They had about 15 minutes of private time and it was affectionate and loving,” said Venta Leon, a close friend in Tomales who accompanied Jack to the show.
Mr. Dylan looked Jack straight in the eye when he performed “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight,” singing the chorus with the same growl Jack delivers in his famous cover of the song.
Ms. Leon and her late husband, Bruce Bramson, knew Jack before he moved to West Marin in 1995. Jack’s then-wife Jan had taken a job working for the rock musician Jesse Colin Young, who lived in Inverness.
After spending a few months in their motor home at the Olema Campground, they drove up Highway 1 and stumbled upon the modest rental where Jack has lived to this day.
Jack loved that motor home, which he drove cross-country from show to show. Egged on by a former girlfriend, he once took it up to 105 miles per hour. “She was Canadian,” Jack said. “They like to go fast, especially in the snow.”
During his nearly three decades in West Marin, Jack has played a lot of music and made many friends.
“This is the longest he’s ever been anywhere,” Ms. Leon said. “He really treasures feeling like he’s part of a community.”
Scott and Julie Hochstrasser of Tomales, who live across the street from Ms. Leon, often bump into Jack around town. Mr. Hochstrasser sold his truck to Jack last year, and Ms. Hochstrasser once sang a Woody Guthrie tune for him, “I Ride an Old Paint.”
Jack corrected her lyrics, but he was gentle about it. “What a gracious gentleman he is,” she said. “He treats everyone like they’re special.”
The Hochstrassers are heading to the tribute show this weekend with 10 friends.
The show is being produced by Sweet Relief, a nonprofit that hosts benefit concerts for career musicians who need support with bills when their touring days are over. The tribute is the first of three marquee events marking its 30th anniversary.
After all his years of touring, Jack hasn’t put away a big enough nest egg to cover 92 years of rambling. He’s always been more interested in telling stories and having adventures than making money.
He’s won a couple of Grammys and a National Medal of the Arts, but the Masonic show will be special.
“We couldn’t think of a better way to kick off our 30th anniversary than by paying tribute to this legend who also exemplifies the struggles of the touring musician,” said Aric Steinberg, a Sweet Relief spokesman. “Seventy-two years of touring is a mind-blowing number. Jack’s a real treasure.”