The LAST of the SINGING COWBOYS

He tutored under Woody Guthrie and influenced a young Bob Dylan. Now 90, folk legend Ramblin' Jack Elliott reflects on his role in the postwar folk revival and a life spent making music.

- MARTIN MCQUA DE

HIS MENTOR WAS Woody Guthrie. His protégé was Bob Dylan. Between the two of them, Ramblin' Jack Elliott has been the Johnny Appleseed of song, sowing the nation's roots music in grounds both rural and urban. Although Dylan called him "the king of folk singers," Elliott defies categorization and exemplifies genres such as cowboy, hillbilly, bluegrass, blues, and rock.

He has been equally comfortable performing with Pete Seeger, Tom Waits, Flea, and Beck. Homages flow from adherents such as the Rolling Stones, former members of the Grateful Dead, Bonnie Raitt, Eric Clapton, and Bruce Springsteen. Among his accolades are two Grammys and the Presidential National Medal of Arts. Johnny Cash observed of Elliott, "Nobody has covered more ground. He's got a song and a friend for every mile behind him." That journey is the subject of A Texas Ramble, a recent documentary, and the earlier Ballad of Ramblin' Jack, by his daughter Aiyana. The scope extends, quoting Guthrie's anthem, "This Land Is My Land," which Elliott recorded, "from California to the New York Island/From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters."

Now 90, this ultimate maverick long ago fulfilled the dreams he first wove in Brooklyn's Flatbush neighborhood. "Brooklyn made me want to be a cowboy. I didn't groove there very well," he says. "I always wanted to be out west in the wide-open spaces, riding horses, working cattle, and singing 'Red River Valley' while picking my 12-dollar Collegiate guitar, made out of cigar boxwood. My mother bought it for me when I was 13, before I showed any interest, although I'd been listening to Gene Autry's Melody Ranch."