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

We used to talk about Don Covay – me and Joe (Mr. C to you), Peter Wolf, and Freddy Blue.

He was the shadow king – not because he was any less of a talent than any of the other great soul singers, he was just different in that his talent was expressed primarily through his pen. Well, through his writing, through his

scheming and dreaming.

We used to kid around – was it Don or was it Mick? They sounded so much alike, particularly, of course, on “Have Mercy” (“Have mercy, baby – have mercy on…ME”). Which one of them took his style from the other?

Peter was the one who knew him best, who shared adventures and eventually songwriting credits with him. (Someday the world will beg loud and sweetly enough to persuade Peter to write about those adventures –whether with Don, or Alfred Hitchcock, or Tennessee Williams, or Van, or Bob, in an elegant, Christopher Isherwood-styled memoir.)

I think it was Solomon who first introduced me to Don. He said in that inarguably (I mean, who was going to argue with Solomon) persuasive voice of his, “Pete, you got to meet the guy. I mean, come on. ‘You’re Good for Me.’ ‘Tonight’s the Night.'” And he reeled off a string of Don’s hits – and some I’d never heard of – as if he were sharing the secret of the universe with me. Which of course, he was, in his own deeply allegorical Solomonic way.

Don was truly a free spirit. The Soul Clan, in all its permutations, both real and highly imagined, was perhaps the fullest extension of that freedom. With Solomon he was forever the warm, witty, irrepressible younger brother (even though I think he was in fact older). Each got such a kick out of the other’s eccentricities and foibles – but there was never any question who was in charge.

Sadly, Don’s warm, antic spirit never fully translated on stage – maybe it just couldn’t be harnessed. For all of his discipline as a songwriter and a recording artist, Don simply didn’t seem to possess the ability to pace himself. “He never,” said Solomon sorrowfully (but I’ve got to say, mirthfully, too), “knows when to stop.” But his music, of course, will unquestionably live on – and on – and on – well, just listen to it, and tell me he didn’t hit an eternity note.

The last time I spoke to Don, Peter and I called him up at the care facility outside Washington D.C., where he had been living since his stroke of eleven years before. Not every day was a good day, Don said, but this one was, and while his speech had been affected, his spirit shone thorough. He talked a little about his breakthrough as a songwriter, how after talking to his idol, Sam Cooke, he finally came to embrace his vocation. “Write about what you know, write about what you’ve experienced, write about what you observe,” Sam told him. “Write about natural things – you’ve got to come out of the future and get back to the past, to what you knew when you were a little kid.” Most important of all, Sam said, “All you got to do is be yourself.”

And that’s what Don became in his writing, his own pure, pluperfect and incontrovertible self. It was in that realization that he wrote “Have Mercy,” his first real Don Covay song. And after that he never looked back – his goal was, simply, to express himself, following whatever path his muse took him, never feeling the need to explain, just to express – himself.