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"Joe Tex is one of the unsung stars of southern soul." (Soul Train retrospective 2015)
"Joe Tex - relatively unknown outside R&B circles, until you hear one of his tracks, and then it's, "Oh I know that track . . .""(This review)
This is album review number One hundred and eighty one in the series of retro-reviews of both vinyl and CD albums from my collection.
The series is called Cream of The Crate and each review represents an album that I believe represents significant musical value, either because of its rarity, because it represents the best of a style or styles of a music or because there is something unique about the music, the group or the particular production. The first fifty reviews were based on vinyl albums from my collection, with the following fifty on CD albums from my collection. Links to all these reviews can be found at the bottom of the page.
The music of today has buried in it's roots the music of the 1950's, and the 1960's. One stream that developed in the 1950's and became particularly popular in the 1960's was, R&B - Rhythm and Blues. I have pulled an R&B artist from my Crate, who, if you asked people to name five R&B artists, would probably not be mentioned - what a shame!
The artist I am talking about is Joe Tex and this, a vinyl album is titled - The Best Of. Released on the Atlantic label in 1984, it has the identifying code of 81278-1. It is a single album and has twelve tracks, six on each side side.
Joe Tex was born Joseph Arrington, Jr on August 8, 1933 in Baytown Texas. His early career is emblematic of black musicians of his era. Raised in Texas, he began by singing in the church choir and won more than his fair share of talent shows, first in nearby Houston, then later at the famed Apollo Theater Amateur Night (which he won four times!).
All of this activity got him signed to King Records in 1955, but the right combination of producer and song eluded him for a decade as he recorded over 30 sides on the Ace, Anna, Parrot, and Checker labels without scoring one hit.
Now as a result of a young up and coming soul singer, James Brown, recording one of Tex's tracks - Baby You're Right, in 1962, Tex found himself signing to Dial Records. Now Dial Records was a Nashville based soul label owned by song publisher/producer Bobby Killen, and was set up specifically so that Killen could record Tex and have him on a sole contract. We may never know what drew Killen to Joe Tex, but he saw something, or rather heard something in him, that led him to believe Tex could really be big.
After a few tries and misses, Tex came up with a song called Hold What You've Got, a ballad that bridged traditional rhythm and blues with the emerging Southern soul style and also pointed toward a future of rap thanks to Tex's spoken, almost testifying homily midway through the song. (Tex, in fact, was actually nicknamed "The Rapper" in these years, waaay ahead of his time).
A young Joe Tex
Now among his peers, such as Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, Sam & Dave and Sam Cooke, just to name a few, Tex was the relative unknown outside the R&B/Soul fraternity. Yet his voice, which he would deliberately make hoarse to give it a grittier sound, and his stage performances were really as good as anyones. But although he had quality hits, he was never able to translate them into "quantities" of hits.
Between 1964 and 1972 he had four R&B number 1 singles - Hold What You've Got (1964); I Want To (Do Everything For You) (1965); A Sweet Woman Like You (1966) and, I Gotcha (1972). He had three top 10 pop singles, ten top 10 R&B singles and, two top 10 R&B albums, those being Hold On To What You've Got (1965) and The New Boss (1965). In fact a total of 18 albums have been released under his name, with the last being in 1978 and they include this album, The Best Of.
From his second album in 1965 - Hold On To What You've Got, through to the next ten albums, while recorded on Dial, were released on the Atlantic label. Then Atlantic stopped releasing Joe Tex albums after the 1971 album - From The Roots Came The Rapper, with the subsequent 6 releases being variously released by Dial, Mercury and Epic.
There are probably a number of reasons for not having had more success especially during the 1972 - 1976 period, because in 1972 he converted to Islam, took the name Yusef Hazziez, and quit the business, that didn't help! He returned in 1975 after Elijah Muhammad died and the Nation of Islam movement gave him permission to record again, but really with the rapid changes to music styles, leaving a two and a half year gap in recording, really finished him.
He made one more big splash with the disco joke Ain't Gonna Bump No More (With No Big Fat Woman), but his run was mostly over. Tex retired in 1979 and died in 1982 at the age of 49, suffering a heart attack at his Texas ranch less than 100 miles from his birthplace. Wilson Pickett and Ben E. King were two of the pallbearers at the funeral.
Apart from some damn fine music, we can remember him as an early pioneer of melding soul with funk and, country with soul.
Probably the only other story that should be related was the bitter and notorious feud he had with James Brown.
At one point the feud became so heated that James Brown attempted to murder Tex with a shotgun, reportedly wounding six or seven people in the process.
The rivalry dates back to the early days of their careers, according to Joe Tex’s Wikipedia page:
The feud between Tex and fellow labelmate James Brown took its origins allegedly sometime in the mid-1950s when both artists were signed to associated imprints of King Records when Brown allegedly called out on Tex for a “battle” during a dance at a local juke joint. In 1960, Tex left King and recorded a few songs for Detroit-based Anna Records, one of the songs he recorded was the ballad “Baby, You’re Right”. A year later, Brown recorded the song and released it in 1961, changing up the lyrics and the musical composition, earning Brown co-songwriting credits along with Tex.
It had to have stung having your song usurped, with a songwriting credit added, and watching it become a bigger hit than your single. According to Wikipedia, it went further than that.In 1963, their feud escalated when Brown and Tex performed at what was Brown's homecoming concert at Macon, Georgia. Tex, who opened the show, arrived in a tattered cape and began rolling around on the floor as if in agony, and screamed, "please - somebody help get me out of this cape!" Tex would later claim that Brown stole his dance moves and his microphone stand tricks. In a few interviews he gave in the sixties, Tex dismissed the notion of Brown being called "Soul Brother No. 1" insisting that Little Willie John was the original "Soul Brother No. 1". Tex even claimed Brown stopped radio disk jockeys from not playing his hit, "Skinny Legs and All", which Tex claimed prevented Tex from taking down one of Brown's number-one songs at the time.
Track Listing:
Side 1
1. SYSLJFM (The Letter Song)
2. Hold What You've Got
3. One Monkey Don't Stop No Show
4. You Better Get It
5. You Got What It Takes
6. I Believe I'm Gonna Make It
Side 2
1. Show Me
2. Papa Was Too
3. A Woman (Can Change A Man)
4. The Love You Save May Be Your Own
5. Build Your Love
6. I've Got To Do A Little Bit Better
So let's start at the start with track 1 - SYSLJFM (The Letter Song). Released in 1965 as a single, it managed to reach number 9 in the US R&B Charts, with the typical Joe Tex easy delivery style. The letters (if you aren't aware of the song), stand for "Save your sweet love just for me", from then Joe goes into other letter combinations as he sings his love song to his girl. But if you think because it's a love song it's slow and soppy, think again.
Joe and the band kick the pace immediately into top gear and the song really is representative of what could be called the "Golden Age" of R&B. It has that amazing Muscle Shoals horn sound and really, it is a kick-ass track and a great opener to the album!