'Little Whorehouse' writer Larry L. King dies

Though Larry L. King shared a name with a popular radio and TV host, the writer was a singular Texas raconteur who could be confused with no other.

A famed drinker and brawler, King will forever be best known for a 1974 Playboy story about the Chicken Ranch brothel in La Grange, which he helped turn into the hit musical "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas."
He spent more than half of his life living in Washington, D.C., but King's storytelling style always revealed his West Texas roots. One of his editors, the late, great Willie Morris, commented on King's "deep and abiding commitment to American and to authentic American values." King, a formidable figure in the 1960s "New Journalism," died Thursday in a Washington retirement home. He was 83.


"He was in the top caliber of Texas writers like Elmer Kelton and Larry McMurtry," said Kinky Friedman. "He was one of the funniest people I know. He has been bugled to Jesus. Anytime I use that phrase I swipe it from Larry L. King."
Lawrence Leo King was born New Year's Day 1929, in Putnam. He had said his mother wanted him to become a preacher, but she made the mistake of introducing him to the works of Mark Twain, with whom King shared a cutting wit.
King pursued writing in high school and in the Army, following a single year at Texas Tech, before covering crime and sports for newspapers in Midland and Odessa.