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Joe Ely, a singer-songwriter and foundational determine in Texas’ progressive country-rock scene, has died. He was 78.
In accordance with a press release from his representatives, Ely died Dec. 15 at residence in New Mexico, from issues of Lewy Physique Dementia, Parkinson’s illness and pneumonia.
Ely had an expansive imaginative and prescient for nation and rock, heard on singles like “All My Love,” “Honky Tonk Masquerade,” “Laborious Livin’,” “Dallas” and “Fingernails.” Born in 1947 in Amarillo, Texas, Ely was raised in Lubbock earlier than shifting to Austin and kicking off a brand new period of nation music within the area, one which mirrored each punk and the heartland rock of the period again into the roughhousing nation scenes they got here from.
After founding the influential band the Flatlanders with Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock (which dissolved quickly after recording its 1972 debut), he started a solo profession in 1977. He launched a number of acclaimed albums, together with 1978’s ambitiously rambling “Honky Tonk Masquerade,” earlier than discovering his widespread peak on 1980’s harder-rocking “Stay Photographs” and 1981’s “Musta Notta Gotta Lotta.”
Ely, beloved for barroom poetry that punctured nation music’s mythmaking, was a prepared collaborator throughout genres. He befriended the Conflict on a tour of London and sat in on the band’s periods recording their epochal “London Calling” LP. He later toured extensively with the group, singing backup on “Ought to I Keep or Ought to I Go,” and incomes a lyrical tribute on “If Music May Discuss” — ”Nicely there ain’t no higher mix than Joe Ely and his Texas males.”
Ely was a favourite opener for veteran rock acts seeking to imbue units with Texas nation swagger. He carried out with the Rolling Stones, Stevie Nicks, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers and Bruce Springsteen, who later sang with him on “Odds of the Blues” in 2024. Springsteen as soon as mentioned of Ely: “Thank God he wasn’t born in New Jersey. I’d have had much more of my work lower out for me.”
Within the ‘90, Ely joined a supergroup, the Buzzin Cousins, with John Mellencamp, Dwight Yoakam, John Prine and James McMurtry, to file for Mellencamp’s movie “Falling From Grace.” Robert Redford later requested Ely to compose materials for his movie “The Horse Whisperer,” which led to collaborations together with his outdated Flatlanders bandmates and a reunion within the 2000s. He additionally acted in within the musical “Chippy: Diaries of a West Texas Hooker” at Lincoln Middle in New York Metropolis and joined the Tex-Mex collective Los Tremendous Seven — he shared within the band’s Grammy for Mexican-American/Tejano Music Efficiency in 1999, his solely such award.
Ely was inducted into the Austin Metropolis Limits Corridor of Fame in 2022 and launched his final album, “Love and Freedom,” in February.
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