|
Grammy-winning and CMA Award-nominated singer-songwriter Joe Ely died
December 15, 2025. He was 78, at home in Taos, New Mexico.
2014
Ely revealed earlier this year that he had been diagnosed with Lewy body
dementia and Parkinson’s disease. His death is linked to complications from
those diseases and pneumonia.
Joe Ely signed with MCA in the 1970s – the heyday of the Outlaw Movement -
and spent more than five decades performing and recording.
Born in Amarillo and raised in Lubbock, Joe Ely was a true Texan. The state of
Texas recognized that and his commitment to music in Texas: He was named
the Texas State Musician for 2016. He said that he was fortunate to have grown
up in such “an inspirational place with its rich, compelling history.”
Ely formed The Flatlanders with Butch Hancock and Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and
they’ve released two albums in the last 40-odd years.
Former Texas Music Chart Editor Katie Key talked with Joe in 2011 about his
kind of music:
Katie: When people categorize your music, what word do you not want them to use?
Joe: I never liked the phrase “Alt Country.” Alternative anything seems like it
needs to be one thing or another. If you need to have an alternative to
something, then it should have a different name. At one time there was a whole
movement in Texas, and everybody called it “Outlaw Country.”
A few years ago some of us got together—myself, Kevin Welch, a few of the
Flatlander guys, Kinky Friedman, and people around the Austin scene—and we came up with a term that I thought was good: We called it “Western Beat,”
because it had a beat and it came from the west, the wide open spaces.
We will miss Joe Ely and his work. The music will live on.
|
