courtesy of The Texas Music Museum (1948----) Birthplace: Amarillo Genre: Country-Rock Other Sites: Letter to Laredo Rough Guide to Rock: Joe Ely

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). 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, each has been re-released on CD.

In 1980 the band grabbed the attention of the British band The Clash, which picked up Ely and friends 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 partially by the 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 fans of his records a chance to hear what the talk of Ely being best heard live was all about. The album also impressed MCA enough 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 Ely and friends Terry Allen, Butch Hancock, Robert Earl Keen, Wayne Hancock, Jo Harvey Allen, and Jo Carol Pierce in 1995 was a labor of love that all involved put their hearts and souls into, only to receive a lukewarm response from theater audiences back East.