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Joe Ely, born February 9, 1947, in Lubbock, Texas, hails from the South Plains. As a teenager, he played with a small country band in what he later discovered was the childhood home of rock and roll pioneer and Lubbock native Buddy Holly. Ely co-founded The Flatlanders with songwriter Butch Hancock and musician/actor Jimmie Dale Gilmore, known for his role as "Smokey" in The Big Lebowski (1998). He is most recognized as the leader of the long-standing Joe Ely Band, which featured members such as Lloyd Maines, Jesse Taylor, and Ponty Bone. The band achieved significant commercial success in the late 1970s and 1980s, mainly under the MCA label.
Along with guitarist Jesse Taylor, Ely helped establish the weekly Stubbs Barbeque Jam at a small Lubbock restaurant, which became a regional hub for live blues. The impact was so profound that a historical monument now marks the site of the long-demolished restaurant.
Much of Ely’s music is autobiographical, including an early song about his experience working for a traveling carnival that survived a hurricane. His longtime guitar is a 1950s Gibson J-5 purchased on a California beach, notable for large circular shell rings glued to its front by the previous owner. When Ely only had $5 of the $10 promised, the seller kept the shells. In the late 1970s, during country star Tom T. Hall’s peak, Hall, Ely, and others played a drunken billiards game at the back of Stubbs Barbeque. Ely, with green chalk on his nose, used a broomstick and an onion from a nearby bag to continue the game, inspiring Hall’s song, "The Great East Broadway Onion Championship of 1978."
Ely represents a rare breed of dedicated, down-to-earth working musicians who have persisted through both success and hardship without surrendering. While his style of Texas music didn’t gain as much prominence as the central Texas "outlaw" genre of Jerry Jeff Walker, Willie Nelson, and Waylon Jennings, or the pop sound of fellow Lubbock native Mac Davis, he remains one of the most respected musicians of his generation in West Texas.
