This is an act of pure advocacy.
Solomon Burke, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, Joe Tex – what do these four all have in common? Well, they were all charter members of the near-mythic (no, I mean really mythic, as in “some mythic creature”) Soul Clan, who recorded just one side of one picture-sleeve 45 – without Otis, who had died, without Pickett, who had had an emotional flare-up – but were conceived by Solomon, in typical Solomonic fashion, as a force that might have changed the world. Well, they did – with their music. And three of them are enshrined in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Only Joe Tex, who is on the ballot this year for what well may be the last time, remains excluded.
The first time I saw Joe Tex he was on the same bill with Solomon and Otis (Solomon was the headliner) in a 1964 Soul Summer Shower of Stars, and he more than held his own. As an entertainer, who took great delight in his ability to give pleasure to his audience and in their evident delight with him. As a songwriter and exemplar of mother wit, dispensing healthy dollops of good humor mixed in with sharp shards of his own earthy philosophy. (Check out songs like “Anything You Wanna Know” or “Grandma Mary” on his brilliant, entirely self-penned album, Buying a Book.) As an effortless performer, endlessly enchanting his audience with his easy onstage manner, lithe dancing, and microphone manipulations. Not for nothing was he known as the Dapper Rapper.
But in the end, what made Joe Tex an intrinsic member of the Soul Clan, dues paid up in full and in perpetuity, was his dedication to Deep Soul (think James Brown’s “Lost Someone,” Solomon’s “The Price,” Otis’s “These Arms of Mine”). Just listen to his breakthrough hit, “Hold What You’ve Got” or, for that matter, “The Love You Save,” self-written like nearly every one of his hits and much of his album material, and see if you can resist the pathos and deep-seated feeling at the heart of his music.
So I’m asking for your vote, the last vote left to us in this Year of Jeremiah (I wonder what Solomon would have to say about that): VOTE JOE TEX FOR THE ROCK & ROLL HALL OF FAME.
And now I’ll turn over the lectern to Brother Joe.
Mr. C Speaks:
I second that emotion.
And just to reinforce the point: there’s a three-part, black-and-white YouTube clip of the full Joe Tex Show, live in Sweden 1969 and complete with explosive sound, that provides a rare visual glimpse of the stage mastery of Joe Tex. Part 3 opens with an original take on Henson Cargill’s #1 country hit, “Skip A Rope,” and ends with a burning version of Joe’s signature “Skinny Legs and All,” a highly eccentric Top 10 pop hit in 1968. Joe and his band, led by ferocious drummer Clyde Williams, turn “Skip a Rope,” a socially aware composition with a nursery rhyme structure, into a Sam Cooke kind of rave-up, complete with horn voicings lifted from any number of late Cooke uptempos. It’s that same odd mix of sass and soul that made Joe Tex so different from any other soul singer, while at the same time declaring his commonality, that same utterly unique talent which was on display night after night, whether in Sweden or on the endless string of clubs and stages that Joe Tex inhabited. “Original,” like “genius,” is a much-abused appellation, but Joe Tex fully deserves both titles. VOTE JOE TEX