Texas Music Source
Our guide to eighty years of Texas Music
(Page 6 of 6)
THE OUTLAW DECADE: 1971-1980
The seventies were a period of rebellion in Texas music—against the current national disco craze, against the syrupy, overwrought tendencies in the Nashville country scene, and against the status quo in general. The feeling was manifested best in the myth of the outlaws of country music, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings in particular. Willie and Waylon and many other songwriter-performers, including Johnny and Edgar Winter in their rhythm and blues-derived rock, ZZ Top with their hedonistic Tex-rock, and Joe Ely in his personal vision quest, were forging their own personal statements rather than simply following the dictates of the national market. Insisting on their roots, they drew inspiration from traditional performers like Flaco Jimenez and Lightnin’ Hopkins, who have always generated an enhanced version of the types of music they were raised on, be it country, conjunto, or blues.
Flaco Jimenez (1939-)
Birthplace: San Antonio
Genre: Tejano Conjunto
Influenced: Helped bring international attention to Texas’ rich Hispanic music tradition.
Other Sites: The Official Website of Flaco Jimenez
Recordings of Tejano music have always had a following among Hispanics all over the United States, but the awareness of the larger audience was slow to develop until the 1970s. Much of the credit for the subsequent surge in interest must go to Flaco Jimenez. Flaco’s renown as an experienced master musician in the regional style caught the ears of Chris Strachwitz of Arhoolie Records and exceptional blues guitarist Ry Cooder, which led to national tours and recording sessions on seminal albums. His subsequent recordings and collaborations took the sound of Tejano conjunto to an international audience.
Heir to a family tradition of accordionists going back to his grandfather Patricio, “Flaco” was named Leonardo by his parents, but as a performer quickly became known by his nickname, which means “skinny”. The young Flaco started out in the early fifties accompanying Don Santiago on the bajo sexto, the foundation instrument in the conjunto band. Together they recorded the local standard “Los Tecolotes” in 1955.
Soon thereafter Flaco formed his own band to play on radio KEXX as Leonardo Jimenez y su Caparoles. At the end of 1955 the sixteen-year-old Jimenez and fellow teenage musician Henry Zimmerle were recruited by the more experienced Mike Garza and Richard Herrera for a band that became known as Los Caminantes. Los Caminantes already had a regular program over radio KCOR in San Antonio and played at clubs throughout the area, but the band really took off after acquiring the services of the two young musicians. In May 1956 Los Caminantes first recorded on the local Rio label and gained a Thursday evening slot on San Antonio’s Channel 41, KCOR-TV. Within two years they were San Antonio’s favorite Tex-Mex band.
By 1958 Flaco realized he could make it on his own and left Los Caminantes to record on the same label that featured his father’s band. Popular enough during the sixties to make a good living playing largely around San Antonio, the young accordionist remained purely a local phenomenon until the seventies, when a string of recordings brought him international attention. San Antonian Doug Sahm, busting out of the Sir Douglas Quintet mode, tapped his talents for his 1973 album Doug Sahm and Band on which he played alongside Dr. John and Bob Dylan. Soon thereafter musical chameleon Ry Cooder recognized the energy of Jimenez’s style, took him on tour, and featured his accordion on the highly successful Chicken Skin Music (1976), as well as the albums Showtime (1976), The Border (soundtrack to the historic film, 1980), and Get Rhythm (1987). Meanwhile, Flaco’s solo talents led to recordings that have become benchmarks of Tejano music, starting with El Principe del Acordeon in 1977, and continuing with Flaco Jimenez y Su Conjunto and, with his brother Santiago, Jr., El Sonido de San Antonio (1980). The eighties saw further collaborations with Sahm, Cooder, and Linda Ronstadt as well as solo albums directed at a world audience, such as Tex-Mex Breakdown. In 1985 Flaco participated in the tribute album Homenaje a Don Santiago Jimenez, dedicated to the memory of his father, who died in 1984.
The nineties dawned with the classic collaboration of Freddy Fender, Augie Meyers, and Doug Sahm on The Texas Tornados, a huge international success, which was followed by the Tornados’ Zone of Our Own in 1991 as well as further work for Arhoolie Records on Ay Te Dejo En San Antonio and other albums.
Today, Flaco Jimenez continues to record and tour internationally with universal respect and appreciation, both for his unique talent and the tradition his playing represents. by Chester Rosson (January 1998)
Willie Nelson (1933-)
Birthplace: Abbott (near Hillsboro)
Genre: Progressive Country, Pop
Influenced: As a songwriter, created hits for many of Nashville’s greats and paved the way for many other serious songwriters in country music.
Other Sites: Willie’s Place
More than perhaps any other country and western artist, Willie Nelson can honestly claim “I did it my way.” From the early sixties Nelson impressed Nashville by writing a string of hits—most performed by more conventional artists—then left for Austin in the seventies, where he put together a progressive country cohort of “outlaw” exiles to remake country music in a more personal, less clichª-ridden way. Incidentally, Austin became a mecca for live music, and the recording industry found a new source for talent in Texas. In Austin, Nelson was able to pursue an interest in acting, make some memorable albums, and launch a series of annual family-style “picnics,” to which he invites the public. Nelson has become a colorful celebrity citizen of the capital city.
Raised in Abbott (Hill County) by their grandparents after disruption of the family by parental desertion and death, Willie and his sister Bobbie both developed an early interest in music. They sang gospel songs at the local Baptist Church, but true to the rural Texas spirit, Willie also played guitar and wrote cheating songs by the age of seven. At ten, Willie was playing with a local bohemian polka band. Pianist Bobbie’s marriage to fiddle player Bud Fletcher led to Willie joining his brother-in-law’s band at the age of 13. About the same time, he also revealed a lifelong fondness for singing duets, when an engagement with the king of western swing, Bob Wills, presented a first opportunity.
Willie Nelson spent his late teens and early twenties playing the honkie-tonks and dancehalls of central Texas, and in 1952 got married to a woman of Cherokee descent. Always on the move, the Nelsons spent time in San Antonio, Fort Worth, even Washington state, before returning to Texas to live in Houston. But as Nelson struggled to make a living as a beer-joint musician and sometime songwriter, his marriage began to founder and was eventually dissolved.
By the late fifties Nelson was ready for Nashville, but without the means to make the move. To finance the trip he sold rights to two songs to the owner of a Houston music school where he taught guitar: “Family Bible,” which soon became a hit for Claude Gray, and “Night Life,” which was later a huge hit for Ray Price. Once in Nashville, toward the end of 1960, things began to improve for Nelson. On the verge of starvation, Nelson was hired as a staff songwriter by the influential Pamper publishing house, which was co-owned by Ray Price.
By 1961 three of his songs—“Crazy,” sung definitively by Patsy Cline, “Hello Walls,” sung stalely by Faron Young, and “Funny How Time Slips Away” sung adequately by Billy Walker — were such big hits that they crossed over to the pop charts, an almost unheard-of phenomenon at the time. On the strength of these successes and a few demos, Liberty Records signed Nelson as a soloist, despite his unorthodox, bluesy style of singing. Willie’s first hit was a duet with his future wife Shirley Collie, which was quickly followed by his Top Ten solo “Touch Me.” He also joined Ray Price’s Cherokee Cowboys, taking up the bass for a time.
The year 1963 was a red-letter one for Willie, he married Shirley Collie, and was taken onto the cast of the Grand Ole Opry. He also began appearing regularly on Ernest Tubb’s syndicated television program. However, despite a contract with RCA overseen by Chet Atkins, who produced several of his albums (the best being Yesterday’s Wine), Nelson could only manage two more hits over the rest of the decade. By the end of 1970, RCA had dropped his contract, Shirley Collie had left him, and his Nashville home had burned. Nelson decided to return to Texas.
Back home, Nelson saw the possibility of developing a new audience, especially after appearing at the Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin. Growing his hair long and dressing in a casual style that was worlds away from the rhinestone glitter of Nashville, Willie was able to relax and express himself. Atlantic Records’ Jerry Wexler, a longtime fan, took notice of the new Willie and signed him up for his company’s new country music division. Willie Nelson’s first of several concept albums, Shotgun Willie, was an artistic success that sold well when it was released in 1973, despite its lack of obvious hits. Phases and Stages in 1974 was also a critical success but didn’t further his career.
That long-awaited recognition came after Nelson’s switch to Columbia in 1975, when he produced Red Headed Stranger, which became his first number one hit, eventually selling a million copies. Meanwhile, RCA had compiled the famous Wanted! The Outlaws album, which featured Willie, Waylon Jennings, Jessi Colter, and Tompall Glaser as rebels in the interest of “progressive country,” a concept that the public embraced by the millions. Combined, the two albums served to launch Willie Nelson. The Troublemaker, a gospel album that Willie had recorded at the same time as Shotgun Willie, was also released in 1976 and added to his mystique, as did 1978’s Waylon and Willie.
But in 1978 the release of Stardust, a collection of classic American pop songs, made it clear that Willie Nelson’s appeal was more than that of a country singer with rock inclinations. The sales soared to four million copies over the next two years, and Nelson became a bonified pop music icon.
As the seventies progressed, Nelson also got into the production of mass gatherings at the enormous Fourth of July extravaganzas, followed in the eighties by the Farm Aid concerts to help embattled farmers. Movies seemed the logical next development to his fame, with 1979’s The Electric Horseman (featuring “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys”), being perhaps not only the first but the best of the lot.
Superstardom has also allowed the indulgence of Nelson’s love for singing duets. Merle Haggard, Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Cash, Leon Russell, Julio Iglesias, Ray Price, Hank Pierce, Faron Young, and many others have all taken their turns alongside Willie. A contretemps with the IRS—to the tune of $16 million in back taxes—threatened to put Willie in the poorhouse in 1991, but he persevered by offering a mail-order collection that was lapped up by fans. The matter was settled in 1993.
Willie’s romance with the public continues: he played the role as the songwriter alongside Dustin Hoffman and Robert DeNiro, in 1997’s movie Wag the Dog, has become a fixture at the Ozark Theater in Branson, Missouri, and has released further albums of pop standards. It seems like the older he gets, the more Willie Nelson takes on. by Chester Rosson (January 1998)
Sam “Lighnin’ Hopkins (1912-1982)
Birthplace: Centerville
Genre: Blues
Influenced: Blues guitarists throughout the world
Other Sites: Profile of Texas Blues Legend Sam “Lighnin’ Hopkins
One of the most prolific of blues recording artists was Houston’s Lightnin’ Hopkins. In the sixties and seventies, Hopkins brought a special form of country-urban blues to the growing white audience of blues fans across the U.S. and Europe. His guitar style, which ranged from the dogged repetition of traditional country blues to dead-heat ferocious boogie was appreciated by connoisseurs, but it was his poetic spontaneity—the creation of vibrant images of a lifetime of experience—that touched and amazed everyone who heard him. Born in rural East Texas, Sam Hopkins was raised with a blues heritage. He learned to play the guitar from his brother John Henry, and a cousin, Alger “Texas” Alexander, a role-model whose style of singing (recorded on the Okeh label of “race records”) young Sam learned to imitate.
Sam Hopkins’ long career might be said to have begun around 1920 when he climbed onto the platform at a church social in Buffalo, Texas, and picked up the blues beat along with the legendary Blind Lemon Jefferson. Jefferson stopped abruptly and yelled, “Boy, you got to play it right!” Sam accepted the admonishment as encouragement, and spent much of the next two decades practicing his art wherever he could, for whatever people would offer. Drinking, women, and the blues were his life, and traveling the small towns and big city night spots with Texas Alexander, Hopkins honed a natural poetic genius that transformed his rough life into art.
After a stint in the Houston County prison farm in the mid-thirties for what biographers ambiguously refer to as his “excesses,” Sam Hopkins moved to Houston where he teamed up with a piano player named Wilson “Thunder” Smith, a pairing that called forth the nickname “Lightnin’,” which stayed with Hopkins for the rest of his life. The two soon left Texas to find a recording contract in Los Angeles. Aladdin, a “race records” label, gave them a small contract, but they found they couldn’t make a living in LA. Thunder and Lightnin’ returned to Houston, where Lightnin’ recorded his first modest hit, “Short-haired Woman,” on Gold Star. Although many other recordings followed—a total of 43 for Aladdin alone between 1946 and 1948, and 48 for Gold Star—with the notable exception of “Shotgun Blues,” which went to number five on Billboard charts in 1950, they met with little interest from buyers. Not until the blues revival of the late fifties and early sixties did Hopkins’ music see the wider exposure that catapulted him from a local favorite in the black neighborhood blues clubs of Houston and East Texas into a sought-after recording artist and opening act for such rock bands as the Grateful Dead.
The first step in that process occurred in 1959, when Sam Charters recorded Lightnin’ for Folkways, producer of his first album, The Roots of Lightnin’ Hopkins. Soon thereafter, Chris Strachwitz heard Lightnin’ in a Houston club and decided to found a new recording label, Arhoolie (Hopkins’ early recorded material done for Gold Star is available on Arhoolie). In less than a year, Lightnin’ was introduced on the folk circuit, playing to a young, appreciative white audience at the University of California in Berkeley. Houston radio deejay and folk enthusiast Mack McCormick took up Lightnin’s management and arranged tours that culminated in the early sixties at Carnegie Hall, where he performed concerts with the likes of Pete Seeger and Joan Baez. Beginning in 1960 Lightnin’ also made a series of recordings for Prestige-Bluesville, as well as recordings for many other labels, including Arhoolie and Verve, many of which have been rereleased on CD. Highlights of his subsequent career include his 1964 trip overseas with the American Folk Blues Festival and the invaluable prize-winning documentary film by Les Blank, The Blues According to Lightnin’ Hopkins in 1968.
By the seventies, Hopkins was an established blues master, touring Europe and appearing in a command performance before the Queen of England. He continued to record, but after a 1970 auto accident, Hopkins preferred to play in the small Houston clubs he knew so well. According to one biographer, Lightnin’ had recorded at least 85 albums by the time of his death from throat cancer in 1982. by Chester Rosson (January 1998)
ZZ Top
Billy Gibbons (1949-, Houston)
Dusty Hill (1949-, Dallas)
Frank Beard (1949-, Houston)
Genre: Electric Blues
Other Sites: ZZ Top Home
Although all the ZZ Top players were born the same year, the band came to life with the seventies. By far the most successful Texas group over the next two decades, ZZ Top has had more than $200 million in box office receipts and sold around 50 million records in a career that now extends into its 28th year.
Lead guitarist Billy Gibbons was the catalyst of the group. Son of a bandleader and a mom who doubled as an executive secretary, Billy was a guitar prodigy. By eighteen he had a successful single release, “99th Floor,” and had also released an album. In 1967 his band the Moving Sidewalks was opening in Houston for such hot national acts as the Doors and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. But toward the end of the decade, Gibbons and a couple of musicians from the Moving Sidewalks broke away to form a new band they called ZZ Top, whose name evoked associations with legendary Blues singer Z.Z. Hill and Zig-Zag roll-your-owns.
After getting off to a rough start with a southern boogie-and-blues recording that went nowhere, Gibbons acquired a couple of new partners in Dallasites Frank Beard and Dusty Hill, drummer and bass respectively, from the band American Blues. About the same time the newly staffed ZZ Top acquired its current manager, Bill Ham.
By February 1970 the group was ready for its first gig—at the VFW Hall in Beaumont, a typical venue, as it turned out, for the next couple of years. Not that the band ever lacked for exposure. They averaged more than 200 appearances each year, rocking the teen-packed houses with the powerfully amplified electric blues-boogie style that became their concert trademark. Toward the end of that year, London Records brought out ZZ Top’s First Album, which was modestly well received at the time. But the fans loved their Rolling Stones-knockoff hit single “Francine,” taken from the second album, Rio Grande Mud, which was released in 1972.
An appearance that year at the University of Houston’s football stadium drew 38,000 fans to hear the band share the stage with Blue Oyster Cult, the Doobie Brothers, and Savoy Brown. The sheer size of the audience showed the group what was possible, and became a harbinger of even bigger crowds to come. The group’s next album, 1973’s Tres Hombres, with its raunch-rock boogie “La Grange,” finally made the band known to, if not beloved by, the rock critics. It also made possible the 80,000 attendance at ZZ Top’s next big shindig at the University of Texas’ Memorial Stadium in Austin in 1974, a rough and raucous gathering that ended rock concerts at the stadium for the next 25 years. Although ZZ Top had been on the road practically from the group’s inception—Tres Hombres proceeded to sell a million copies and the next two albums Fandango! and Tejas did the same —it became clear that ZZ Top was ready for a really big tour.
For almost two years (1976-77) ZZ Top was on the road with its World Wide Texas Tour, an unparalleled rock extravaganza that sought to take the icons of Texas—including a menagerie of longhorns, brooding vultures, and a buffalo—to the world. And the crowds came in unprecedented numbers, with ticket sales of more than a million.
After a long rest during which all three band members went their separate ways while their manager severed relations with London and negotiated a contract with Warner Brothers, the group reunited in 1979. During the interim Gibbons had experimented with electronic music and more lyrical modes of expression, in the interest of expanding the band’s approach and potential appeal. The result of the transferred collaboration was Deguello, the most adventurous album to date, an effort which also went platinum.
With Gibbons and Hill sporting the impressive beards they had nurtured during their break, the band lost no time taking to the road again with the “Hot Rod Tour,” which lasted from late 1979 through most of 1981 and extended the band’s new sound to Japanese and European audiences. El Loco, an album with more experimentation, followed in 1981 with disappointing sales.
But 1983 brought Eliminator, ZZ Top’s monster album, which sold 5 million copies that year and eventually 11 million in the U.S. alone. One thing that may have made the huge difference in sales was the string of clever videos that promoted the album on MTV. When 1985’s Afterburner turned out to be a comparatively slow mover, ZZ Top took another long break before releasing Recycler in 1990. Although not nearly the hit that Eliminator turned out to be, Recycler kept the band in front of the public. In 1993 they were able to arrange a five album, $35 million contract with RCA, under which ZZ Top has produced two respectable album efforts since, 1994’s Antenna and 1996’s Rythmeen, which Texas Monthly ’s Joe Nick Patoski called “the band’s best in a decade.” Still one of the best concert tickets around, ZZ Top continues to draw big crowds worldwide. by Chester Rosson (January 1998)
Johnny and Edgar Winter
Johnny Winter (1944-)
Birthplace: Leland, Mississippi
Other Sites: Johnny Winter’s Official Web Site
Edgar Winter (1946-)
Birthplace: Beaumont
Other Sites: Edgar Winter’s Official Web Site
Genre: Blues-Rock
In the late sixties and early seventies, Johnny and Edgar Winter were the quintessential white boys of the blues, their pale faces and white hair contrasting eerily with how completely they had absorbed the idiom of the great black bluesmen. Early in their careers they received praise and attention from East Coast music critics, unlike their Texas compadres, ZZ Top. As Johnny and Edgar both received recording contracts and pursued their separate careers, Johnny overshadowed his younger brother commercially, but both siblings had strong followings among blues-rock aficionados and continue their recording and concert appearances today.
Something of a wunderkind musician, Johnny Winter first played clarinet (his orthodontist objected) before picking up his father’s ukulele. On dad’s advice he switched to the guitar at the age of eleven. Johnny was introduced to the blues of Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf by a Beaumont deejay who befriended him and passed on some blues licks. Soon Johnny began showing up at the black rhythm and blues clubs around Beaumont, sometimes asking to sit in.
In 1959 Johnny formed his first band, Johnny and the Jammers, utilizing the talents of his younger brother Edgar. At local Gulf Coast Recording they recorded a single, “School Day Blues,” which had some local airplay, the first of many others under various pseudonyms. Edgar Winter was progressing much along the same track, playing piano and later taking up the saxophone, both instruments essential to the pop, rhythm and blues, and jazz that Edgar would later play as a pro, first with his brother and then on his own. After a brief stint at Lamar Tech in Beaumont, Johnny took off for Chicago to take in life in the big city, listen to the Chicago blues masters, and to play the current “twist” rock in a friend’s band called The Gents. But by 1963 he was back in Texas, playing and recording with a series of bands with interesting names like Johnny Winter and the Black Plague, It and Them, Insight, and the Traits, sometimes with his brother Edgar. These years showed steady growth, with Johnny Winter releasing several local hits and appearing in the Houston area as a warmup for national acts. Meanwhile, Edgar opted for college and played with a college jazz band toward the end of the sixties.
The pivotal year for Johnny was 1968, when he was playing regularly with bassist Tommy Shannon (who would later join Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Double Trouble) and John Turner in a trio called Winter. Winter recorded a demonstration disc at a studio in Austin that was later released as The Progressive Blues Experiment. After an article in Rolling Stone praised the recording, Johnny received a six-figure contract and released his “debut” album, Johnny Winter, in 1969. Edgar rejoined the band for the spate of appearances that followed. Besides club dates, Johnny was booked into all the major festivals, including Denver, Newport, Atlantic City, even Woodstock (though he didn’t appear on the Woodstock albums), and the Texas Pop Festival. His more rock-oriented album, Second Winter, was also issued that year. The seventies opened with Johnny playing with a new lineup, including former members of The McCoys and guitarist Rick Derringer, and was billed as “Johnny Winter And.” All the albums were commercial successes.
Edgar Winter was also making a name for himself, impressing audiences with his singing as well as with his sax and keyboard work. By 1970 he, too, had a recording contract, had split from his brother’s band, and had produced a first album that carved out a measure of artistic independence, titled Entrance. That album enabled Edgar to form his own touring group, Edgar Winter’s White Trash, which resulted in the well-received album of the same name, released in 1971. The next album however, a live album titled Roadwork, was the swan song of White Trash. After the group’s breakup, Edgar put together the team that produced the two million-selling They Only Come Out at Night, which contained the hit single “Frankenstein,” a perennial crowd-pleaser that appeared in the movie Wayne’s World II.
Though at this point both the Winter brothers would have seemed to be doing quite well, Johnny Winter was in fact facing a serious health problem, addiction to heroin. After the 1971 release of Johnny Winter And, Winter took a two-year break to recover before returning with Still Alive and Well. The next several albums wavered noticeably, but an international tour and 1976’s Together (with Edgar Winter) put him on the right track. About the same time Johnny took time to help out his old hero Muddy Waters by producing and arranging a series of albums that restored the elder bluesman to the level of his glory days. That exercise seemed to prime Johnny Winter for two of the best albums of his career, Nothing But the Blues (1977) and White Hot and Blue (1978).
After their own glory days in the seventies, both Winter brothers seemed to slow down, putting out fewer albums and touring less. Both found their real strengths in the blues-rock spectrum, with Johnny gravitating toward the blues and Edgar toward rock. Edgar, ever the innovator, was one of the first artists in his genre to use the synthesizer to the fullest, both in his recordings and on the concert stage. Johnny has steadily held to the electric blues-rock style that his fans crave. Among his later albums, 1984’s Guitar Slinger and 1991’s Let Me In stand out. Edgar Winter’s 1996 album, The Real Deal, was his most ambitious in years, bringing together many of the artists with whom he had collaborated throughout his career, including Rick Derringer, Leon Russell, and, of course, brother Johnny Winter.
Both Winters continue to tour today, with loyal fans critiquing the latest concerts on the Internet, voicing concerns about Johnny’s health, reassuring each other that the brothers are at the top of their form (or maybe just below), and some making extravagant claims for their heroes. Not bad for a pair of rockers who started out in their early teens and are now well into their fifties. by Chester Rosson (January 1998)
Waylon Jennings (1937-2002)
Birthplace: Littlefield
Genre: Country Western
Other Sites: The Official Site for Waylon Jennings
Waylon Jennings was the original outlaw of country, and the first to tire of posing as a bad boy. But the outlaw image served to make Waylon Jennings a media personality and star, just as it did Willie Nelson. His record sales skyrocketed with the release of Wanted: The Outlaws and made possible a lengthy career that continued into the nineties until ill health forced him into semi-retirement.
Jennings was no newcomer to the music scene when he led the so-called Outlaw rebellion against the Nashville country music establishment in the early seventies. In fact, although Ernest Tubb was his boyhood hero as he was growing up in Littlefield and Lubbock, Buddy Holly was the friend who produced Jennings’ first recording, “Jole Blon,” in 1958. Son of a dancehall guitarist, Jennings was hired to play bass with Buddy Holly’s Crickets on the ill-fated tour that ended Holly’s promising career. Jennings gave up a seat on the doomed plane to the Big Bopper.
For a time after the crash, Jennings went back to Lubbock and took a job broadcasting but soon returned to music. He moved to Phoenix and formed a group, the Waylors, which played regularly at the Phoenix Club for two years, starting in 1964. The gig led to a first album, Waylon Jennings at J.D.’s and a second unfocused folk, pop, country, rock album titled after the Bob Dylan song “Don’t Think Twice” it contained that was just good enough to get the attention of producer Chet Atkins at RCA.
Waylon’s luck—and experience—paid off with his first country music recording for the label, “That’s the Chance I’ll Have to Take,” which made the country charts. With 1971’s Singer of Sad Songs, the melancholy tendency in his voice was used to good effect. But as he continued to have hits in the heavily arranged style of Nashville in that period—“Love of the Common People” and “Only Daddy That’ll Walk the Line”—he grew dissatisfied. He was living a lifestyle, complete with long hair, which was a disputed option for a country star at the time. But the main issue was over control of production, which included the selection and arrangement of music. Jennings discovered the songs of Kris Kristofferson and included them on The Taker/Tulsa (1971). He also liked Billy Joe Shaver’s songs, putting them on Honky Tonk Heroes (1973).
By some accounts, the persona Jennings projected in such songs as “Ladies Love Outlaws,” and “Lonesome, On’ry and Mean,” combined with album jacket photos of Jennings’ dark clothing and deeply lined face, led directly to the outlaw image of the RCA collection Wanted: The Outlaws. Others see it all as a marketing ploy. Whatever the truth of the matter, the 1976 album went platinum, a first for a country music album. Featuring the talents of Willie Nelson, Jessi Colter and Tompall Glaser, it also represents a turning point from Jennings’ driven career to a more relaxed period of music-making among friends. A series of Waylon and Willie collaborations was followed by further collaborations with Kris Kristofferson, and that other man in black, Johnny Cash—all of which sold well. Other projects that might not otherwise have been possible under the old Nashville restraints include the autobiographical A Man Called Hoss (1987), The Eagle (1990), and the wonderfully funny, Too Dumb for New York City—Too Ugly for L.A. But if Waylon was an outlaw, he also had a gentler side, which came out in such songs as “Luckenbach, Texas,” and the song that questioned, “Don’t You Think This Outlaw Bit’s Done Got Out of Hand?”
In 1993 both Johnny Cash and Jennings had heart attacks and arranged to recuperate in adjacent hospital beds. They also announced that they would not be working together as the Highwaymen in the future. Chester Rosson (January 1998)
Joe Ely (1947-)
Birthplace: Amarillo
Genre: Country-Rock
Other Sites: Official HomePage of Joe Ely On Line Since 1983
Widely regarded in Texas as the most unjustly ignored rocker-songwriter of his generation, Joe Ely has been praised by an international critic as “one of the most completely realized artists in popular music in the nineties.” Appreciated by live music fans across the state (especially in his childhood hometown of Lubbock and his current hometown of Austin), Ely has had a good reputation among critics, but his records have sold mostly to Texas fans. In recent years, he has branched out a bit, collaborating on movie soundtracks for Meat Loaf and John Cougar Mellencamp. There seems to be no rhyme or reason for the lack of attention elsewhere.
Joe Ely grew up in Amarillo and Lubbock, putting together his first band at the age of 13. He dropped out of high school at 16 to see the country—and Europe, as it turned out —working as an itinerant musician and at whatever odd jobs turned up.
With some of the wanderlust knocked out of him by the early seventies, Ely was once again back in Lubbock, where he got together with friends and fellow songwriters Jimmie Gilmore and Butch Hancock in a group they dubbed The Flatlanders. Some of their music was recorded, but just a couple of songs were released at the time. When nothing came of the recordings, and the group dispersed, Ely decided to form a new band with Jesse Taylor on guitar, Lloyd Maines and Steve Keeton on drums, and Gregg Wright on bass, with accordionist Ponty Bone sitting in. The band soon got a contract from MCA and recorded three albums: Joe Ely (1977), Honky Tonk Masquerade (1978) and Down on the Drag (1979). All regarded as musical successes by the critics, these albums also failed to attract the public in sufficient numbers outside of Texas. Fortunately, with the growing appreciation of Joe Ely’s talents, all have been re-released on CD. All three are made up laregely of the songs created by the members of the Flatlanders: Ely, Gilmore, and Hancock, a pattern that has continued throughout Ely’s career.
In 1980 the band grabbed the attention of the British band the Clash, which picked Ely and friends up as an opening act and took them on tour across the U.S. and back to England. Although constantly praised as a fine live band, Ely and crew just couldn’t get the recordings to move. Fronting a reshuffled band, Ely had even more critical success with 1981’s Musta Notta Gotta Lotta which should have sold well on the strength of the clever title alone. A 1984 album, Hi-Res also languished, perhaps because of the strong conceptual element that was originally intended to be conveyed at least partially by an accompanying video.
A new band made up of Ely, David Grissom, Jimmy Pettit and Davis McLarty developed a tight playing style that can be heard on the 1987-88 recordings Lord of the Highway and Dig All Night packed with songs written by Ely. And things began to look up for Ely and the band after the release of Live at Liberty Lunch (1990), which gave records fans a chance to hear what all the talk of Ely being best heard in live concerts was all about. The album also impressed MCA to sign up the act once more, and the subsequent releases have been relatively good sellers. Letter to Laredo, a 1995 release, promises to be a classic.
Although superstardom still eludes Ely, recent collaborations with Meat Loaf on his film Roadie and with John Cougar Mellencamp on his film Falling From Grace have been a solace, and led to song deals for other movie soundtracks for producers and directors including George Harrison (Pow Wow Highway) and Robert Redford (The Horse Whisperer). Chippy, a CD taken from the stage musical written and performed by friends Ely, Terry Allen, Butch Hancock, Robert Earl Keen, Wayne Hancock, Jo Harvey Allen, and Jo Carol Pierce, was a 1995 labor of love that all involved put their hearts and souls into, only to receive a lukewarm response from theater audiences back East. by Chester Rosson (January 1998)
My Library
