I've Been Put Out, Shut Out, And Told To Stay Out, And Then Talked About, But I've Still Got You: Joe Tex For The Hall Of Fame!

"This is what rock and roll is all about," Rock And Roll Hall of Fame President Joel Peresman said to the coterie of music executives who had hung around after the ceremonies, eagerly hanging on to his every word. "Who would believe that Van Halen would have to wait so long for their just reward. But lucky for them, I'm in charge now. I spent a lot of good money on hairspray, skipped class to follow their tours, and learnt three whole power chords so I could play their tunes on my 'axe' in my bedroom. Such devotion! But now the whole world understands..."

Bidding his friends farewell, Mr Peresman gave final orders to security to dispose of Iggy and The Stooges. Picking up another sparkling flute of champagne, he trotted, giddily, up the steps and onto the now empty stage. It had been a good night...

... a cold draft blew threw the room. Joel span around, suddenly convinced that he was not alone. But there was nothing there, of course. How silly of me, he thought, nobody noticed. How could they possibly know what we have done? They worship who we say they should worship...

This time, he was spun around with such force he snapped the stem of the flute between his fingers. Yet the strength moving him was not his own.

I Gotcha!

"No!"

You Thought I Didn't See Ya Now, Didn't Ya?

"It's not possible..."

You Thought You'd Sneak By Me Now, Didn't Ya?

"This can't be happening..."

Uh huh, Huh!

"But they told me you only made that disco hit where you ain't gonna bump no more with no big fat woman..."

Uh huh, Huh!

"Please, I didn't know..."

Now Give Me What You Promised Me, Give It Here, Come On!

There was a scream, then the sound of broken glass. Then there was just the sound of running footsteps, an empty awards room, stale champagne, and a pile of gaudy trinkets...




The decision to omit Joe Tex from the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame this year astonishes me! How can Van Halen have a better claim, especially in a list of candidates that also included The Stooges as a far more credible 'rock' act? I blame MTV... Yet it continues to be the case that soul artists such as Joe Tex are all but invisible to the public at large, and their contributions to music totally ignored. Even those artists who do rise above into the collective consciousness are incompletely understood. One British tabloid (the formerly proud, campaigning, working-class Mirror) recently described the funeral of Mr James Brown and the public procession to view the casket as 'bizarre' and 'ghoulish' and 'grotesque'. Such commentators are in the most extreme form of denial about the origins of their popular music, yet seemingly revel in their ignorance.

The blogosphere is not immune to such frippery either. The same day as the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame announcement, one blog admirably featured Joe Tex and several admirable samples of his work, yet spared no expense to mock his comedic lyrical style, and even to denigrate his religion by mocking his name (termed 'El Reg Dwight' for some bizarre reason) and with numerous references to eating pork scratchings. Yusuf Hazziez deserves better than this.


Joe's music is much deeper that the comedy on the surface suggests. There is a serious aspect to many of his songs. The comedy comes from his keen powers of observation. Peter Guralnick puts into context the comedic aspects of Joe Tex's act in Sweet Soul Music:


"Perhaps humor was as good a way to handle the indignities of the road as any other... Removed by twenty [now forty] years, it is not always easy to remember just how grim those days really were ... Ballparks and taxicabs are segregated ...a book about black rabbits and white rabbits was banned... A drive is on to forbid 'Negro music' on 'white' radio stations... In the face of such opposition is it any wonder that many blacks should have fallen back on 'mother wit' as their first line of defence?..."

Joseph Arrington's conversion to Islam was also far from a flippant act. Many white people in the industry saw it as a sign of black activism, and thus a challenge to the established racial order of the day. In fact, it was a deeply personal search for spiritual answers, by a man who was not at all beholden to the allures of fame, and gave up his career to focus on his family and ministry. Now, of course, Joe's religion brings up other latent fears within some. How ironic that they would use comedy to protect themselves from it...

Today's song, from Joe's Dial recordings, shows the character of a man who had experienced ignorance and bigotry aplenty, yet was able to maintain his own sense of dignity and retain focus on the things close to him that meant something more...

Baby, if you be good, if you be good,
If you be good, baby, if you be good,
Listen!
I'll give you all the love and care that your heart desires
Yes I will...

Listen!
I've been lied on, stepped on, walked on, cheated on baby,
I've still got you.
I've been run down, knocked down , turned around and slapped down, baby
I still got you.

Listen!
A man would have to be crazy, to leave a good woman like you.
Coz you have got that certain little something,
That makes me forget all that I've been through...

I've been put out shut out, and told to stay out, and then talked about,
But I've still got you.
I've been beat up, cut up, shot up and told to shut up.
I still got you.

Listen again!
A man whould have to be crazy,
to leave a good woman like you,
Coz you have got that certain little something,
that makes me forget all that I've been through.

Joe Tex - Baby, Be Good (Dial 4086) 1968

Somewhere, I imagine, people who know, amongst them Buddy, Ahmet, and even James, are giving Joe a toast befitting to his contribution, and that's enough for him perhaps. And even down here, it isn't the end of the story. On October 26th 2006, someone named Phile wrote a comment in a blog elsewhere that read: "Where has Joe Tex been all my life?"

The details of the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame inductees 2007 can be found here. To campaign for Joe Tex's inclusion in The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame for 2008, write to:

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation

1290 Avenue of the Americas

New York,

NY 10104

Or leave comments for this post, to form a petition!

Buddy Killen: 1932 -2006

Buddy Killen, born Nov 13th 1932, Florence, Alabama; died Nov 1st 2006.

William Doyce Killen, born in Florence, not far from Muscle Shoals, moved to Nashville in 1950 aged 18 to start a career as a double bass player in the country music capital. It was here that he became involved in Tree Music, a song publishing company. In 1953, the manager of the radio station, Jack Stapp, asked him to work at his new publishing company. He would assess would-be songwriters and offer potential hits to performers. Buddy proved to be a great success.

In 1956 he was captivated when a schoolteacher, Mae Boren Axton showed him a song, Heartbreak Hotel, which he considered suitable for Elvis Presley. It established Tree Music as a major player and a grateful Stapp made Killen an executive vice-president. In the early 1960s, he discovered and recorded 15 year old Dolly Parton, before letting her leave her contract in 1964.

Killen was also a successful songwriter. In 1960, Killen wrote the US Top Ten hit Forever for the Little Dippers (an offshoot of the Anita Kerr Singers), and his compositions would include several country hits: Open Up Your Heart (for Buck Owens, 1966), I Can't Wait Any Longer (Bill Anderson, 1978), I May Never Get to Heaven (Conway Twitty, 1979), Watchin' the Girls Go By (Ronnie McDowell, 1981) and All Tied Up (Ronnie McDowell, 1986).

In 1960 he was introduced to Joe Tex. Buddy decided to move into rhythm and blues music. He admitted that he knew nothing about it when he made the decision, but it was his belief in the talent of Joe which confirmed his choice. Buddy Killen formed Dial Records in 1963, to promote Joe Tex as a recording artist. Four years of struggling to come up with a hit formula led Killen to look towards his Alabama home, and to book the Fame Studio in Muscle Shoals, to work with Rick Hall and his band. The session produced Hold What You've Got, which after Buddy had taken the reels for splicing and post-production, started a trail of hits up until Joe's retirment in 1970. They remained close friends up until Joe's death. Buddy Killen wrote Joe's comeback disco hit Ain't Gonna Bump No More (With No Big Fat Woman) in 1977.

Buddy and Tree Music continued to thrive, becoming the President and owner on Stapp's death in 1980. Eventually, in 1989, he sold the company, and set up his own agency called Killen Enterprises. He continued to work successfully with new artists such as OutKast up until his death.



Buddy Killen & Bill Anderson - I May Never Get To Heaven (Sample)

Juneteenth!

When I was very young, I heard the original rapper, Joe Tex, say these words:

"Reminds me of a time up in Navasota, Texas, eatin' barbeque an' drinking red soda water on the 19th of June ..."

I loved the syncopation. But what did it mean? I had no idea, but used to (still do) sing it over and over, like a mantra! Then one day, I discovered what every Texan knows, and what Joe is talking about. Tomorrow is Juneteenth!

For those outside the USA, I'll give some background to this celebration. On January 1st 1863, as part of his efforts to bolster a war effort that seemed to be in danger of stagnating or even turning against the Union, President Abraham Lincoln published the Emancipation Proclamation. The moment had not been ideal, but with the Confederate advances at least halted at the Battle of Antietam, he was unlikely to have a more propitious moment. Not fully converted himself to the concept of black equality, Lincoln was nonetheless now convinced of the important military role that black Americans could play, and Emancipation of slaves in territories taken back from the Confederacy was the means to harness that new source of fighting men for the Union cause. Perhaps he would allow black soldiers the right to vote after the war, he mused...

The Proclamation itself did not free a single person that day - it only applied to slaves in territory captured in the future, so not to people in places like Tennessee that had already been recaptured, or to the slave-owning Border states that had remained politically loyal to the Union. Nor was it the first opportunity for slaves to take freedom in the war: slaves had been crossing the lines on their own initiative since early on, and at Fortress Monroe, Virginia, overwhelmed by the numbers of black men and women making their way to his command, General Benjamin Butler gave it his sanction by dubbing the free men and woman 'contraband of war' and refusing to hand them back to their former masters. In fact, he had received some considerable pressure from Lincoln himself to abandon this unauthorised policy...

But over the next two years the Proclamation began to have its effect as Grant and Sherman's armies made their progress through the South. Rumours concerning the Emancipation Proclamation began to circulate amongst southern slaves, and more were encouraged to take their freedom. Many made their way to the North to enlist as Union soldiers.

One part of the Confederacy lingered on for a few months after all the rest had capitulated - Texas. On 19th June 1865, General Gordon Granger read out General Order No.3, which announced the Emancipation Proclamation in Galveston. At that time, approximately 250,000 slaves resided in the state. From this date, they were slaves no more. Yet, still, slavery would persist in Kentucky and the other Border States until the passage of the 13th Amendment.

Celebration amongst black Texans went on for days. However, would the Union guarantee them civil or political rights? Would they be able to play an active role in the Reconstruction of their state? In the first few years after 1865, there were positive signs, black office-holding was achieved; black sheriffs, black mayor in Donaldsonville, Louisiana, black members of state legislature, black congressmen Joseph Rainey, and black senator Hiram Rhodes Revels.

But by 1883, only John Lynch remained as an elected member of Congress. Gradually, after 1876, new alliances of southern whites began to form, and in the 1890s, not even the black-white solidarity that had helped buttress the Farmers' Union and Populist movement could prevent to imposition of new 'jim crow' laws and segregation espoused by new Democrat demagogues who fused issues of the southern white poor with racialism.

Yet throughout these years, celebrations of June 19th continued, dubbed Emancipation Day in those times, particularly in Texas, Louisiana, and the black-belt districts of Oklahoma and Arkansas. Black leaders in Houston purchased land for an Emancipation Park in 1872, and a similar thing happened in Austin in 1906. It was even condoned by the segregationist administrations, in certain places allowing black Americans entry to white-only leisure facilities for the day. There is some debate as to whether the form and conventions of 'Juneteenth', as it became know in the 1920s, was being manipulated to depoliticise it.

Despite, or because of this, the celebration survived, and after the changes of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, it began to gain greater recognition. Texas made Juneteenth an official holiday in 1980, and the President blesses the event as a 'special day'. This year, events are being held in at least a dozen countries. It has developed into a celebration of the meaning of freedom, and a day of remembrance for those who had it taken from them. It is as important today to think of those things as back in 1865.

Ok, enough history lessons for today - get some friends and family together, make yourselves comfortable, cherish each other, tell stories and sing songs, open up some strawberry soda and share some good food. Who better to get us in a party mood than Joe? Meanwhile, the Zion Harmonizers do a wonderful rendition of the song which has become the anthem of this day.

Joe Tex - Men Are Gettin' Scarce (Dial 45-4063) 1968
The Zion Harmonizers - Lift Every Voice And Sing (Mardi Gras Records) 1993

Find out about how Lift Every Voice And Sing was written by listening to this NPR report by Dave Person. You can find out more about the song at NPR: At The Creation.

More information about Juneteenth can be found at the official Juneteenth website, along with ideas for celebrating and information about events across the USA and other countries. www.AfriGeneas.com also has in-depth information about Juneteenth and other African-American heritage.

The inspiring Professor Ira Berlin has organised a Juneteenth photo article at the Oxford University African-American Studies Centre website.

Find more versions of Lift Every Voice And Sing listed at http://creativefolk.com/blackhistory/lift.html. The Women of The Calabash do a great version.

Further historical details in this article provided from the seminars of Prof. Eric Foner, and by Dr Adam Smith of University College London. Also, the ghost of Mary Lincoln has visited me in a spiritual vision (well, the comments section, anyway) to remind me that I had written Declaration instead of Proclamation all through this post!...

Historical Juneteenth photographs, from Florida and Austin Texas c. 1900-1905

Contemporary celebrations of Juneteenth

Soul Country: Joe Tex

Yusef Hazziez, born Joseph Arrington Jr, better known as Joe Tex, was a pivotal figure in the development of southern soul music. His contribution has often been underrated, appropriated or simply ignored, as Joe often claimed in his frequent on-stage and off-stage battles with James Brown for the title of Soul Brother No. 1. Joe played a vital part in linking country music with gospel and blues in the new ‘soul’ form of r&b (in a more unified manner than Ray Charles’ renditions of country tunes). Later on, Joe would influence funk and the vocal cadences of rap. When Peter Guralnick offered up the monicker ‘clown prince of soul’, attempting to highlight Joe’s good humour and positive approach to the music, he inadvertently skewed the way in which Joe Tex’s music would be judged for many years.

In this post, I’ll bring together some of the events of Joe’s early life and career, to show how country music and rhythm & blues influences developed in his music…

The son of Joseph Arrington, Sr., and Cherie Jackson, Joe was born at Rogers, Texas, on August 8, 1935. He moved to Baytown at age five with his mother after her divorce from his father and attended school there. While Joe attended the segregated G W Carver School, his neighbourhood contained both black people and working-class whites. To drum up custom for his shoeshining and paper round, Joe performed song and dance routines for neighbours, performing rhythm & blues and country songs, while trialing his own compositions. He also sang in the school choir and the McGowen Temple church choir. In the evenings, Joe worked at KREL Radio in Baytown, as Jivin’ Joe, alongside country-orientated disc-jockeys such as Cowboy Dickie Rosenfeld. Joe was playing the songs of black acts such as the Spiders, Lloyd Price and Johnny Ace alongside songs by Hank Williams… Joe had imbibed a variety of musical influences from gospel and blues, doo-wop, rock n’roll and country.

During his junior year of high school, Joe entered a talent search at a Houston nightclub. He took first prize over such performers as Johnny Nash, Hubert Laws, and Ben E. King-imitator Acquilla Cartwright. He performed a skit called "It's In the Book" and won $300 and a week's stay at the Hotel Teresa in Harlem. There, Arrington performed at the Apollo Theater. During a four-week period he won the Amateur Night competition four times(allegedly being told not to come back again...)

After graduating from high school in 1955, he returned to New York City to pursue a music career. While working odd jobs, including caretaking at a Jewish cemetery, he met talent scout Arthur Prysock, who paved the way for him to meet record-company executive Henry Glover and get his first record contract with King Records in 1955.

At King Records, Joe felt that he was in the shadow of their bigger artists Hank Ballard, Little Willie John, and especially James Brown. Joe claimed that he wrote Willie John’s hit Fever, and that, struggling with debts, he had sold the tune to Otis Blackwell, something that Blackwell denies. Joe recorded a number of humourous songs such as Davey You Upset My Home and Pneumonia, more out of a need to prove he could make money as a songwriter for the company. He moved to Ace Records in New Orleans in 1957, But again, as an artist he was encouraged to focus on comedy songs, mimicking Little Richard and Fats Domino. Joe was looking for a new start, to develop his own style. His songwriting here was later recognized when James Brown covered his tune Baby, You’re Right in 1961 and scored a No. 2 r&b hit.

Buddy Killen, a former bass player at the Grand Ole Opry, saw Joe Tex in Nashville and was amazed by his performance skills. He signed Joe up to his new Dial Records in 1961, and in a way, due to his inexperience with rhythm and blues, he allowed Joe the space to develop his music. Killen said in an interview with Barney Hoskyns:

“Out of just trying to expand my horizons a little, I started signing black writers and artists…I didn’t know anything about r&b…but it slowly rubbed off on me…”

At first, Joe focused on gospel-influenced ballads, with songs such as Meet Me In Church. They didn’t make much impact, and Killen went with Joe down to the little-used Fame Studio in Muscle Shoals, Killen's hometown, in 1964. Killen recalls the night of Nov 6th 1964:

“We’d worked seven hours on a song called ‘Fresh Out Of Tears’ … I suggested to Joe that we try a couple of lines from this new song he’d written, using straight country chords …”

The recording did not go smoothly, Joe complaining at one point “Man, I don’t know nothing about harmony!”, and Buddy having to overdub and splice the best takes together, but the finished record, Hold What You’ve Got, was a new form of country-tinged southern soul, more raw and less church-based than Solomon Burke's Just Out Of Reach. It reached No. 5 on the pop charts, the first soul record ever to do so. According to Joe in an interview with Gerri Hershey in 1982:

“You wanna know my secret for getting a cross-over hit? I used the same formula every time – half soul musicians, half country.”

Of the Fame musicians that day, drummer Roger Hawkins had toured with Cousin Wilbur, Grand Ole Opry comedian; Albert 'Junior' Lowe on bass was a country player;Kelso Hurston returned from Nashville to play guitar on the track.

Within the song were influences that in particular would guarantee its success amongst the record-buying public in Texas and Louisiana. Catherine Yronwode has noticed the similarities of Joe’s song to the "swamp pop" ballads of Louisiana music, as performed by Cookie & The Cupcakes and others. The piano style of Ronnie Wilkins was perhaps influenced by this. Indeed, some sources claim that Joe developed much of the ‘rap’ in the heart of song while performing Etta James’ All I Could Do Was Cry in Baton Rouge, and performing in that city may have given him some musical ideas.

Joe’s phrasing was also extraordinary, combining the earnestness of southern preaching with playfulness, and incorporating a talking rhythm that has been likened to traditional African story-telling techniques and black toasting traditions. The history of rap and hip-hop would owe a lot to Joe Tex… but that's another story!

Joe Tex - Hold What You’ve Got (Dial 45-4001) 1964

Information in this post was gathered from books and liner notes by Barney Hoskyns, Catherine Yronwode, Johnny Williams, and the Handbook of Texas. I found out more about how similar Joe Tex’s lyrical style is to black toasting at Louisiana Folk Life.