Joe Ely, singer/songwriter and member of The Flatlanders, died Monday at his home in Taos, New Mexico, according to his publicist. He had suffered from Lewy Body Dementia, Parkinson’s and pneumonia.
Born in 1947 in Amarillo, Texas, Ely’s music career began in the 1970s, helping to shape what would become known as alt-country and Americana, both as a solo artist and with his bandmates Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock. The trio released their first album in 1971 to little fanfare, and it would be three decades before their second, as each followed their own solo path in the interim.
Ely left Texas for for New York, returning soon after to work as an animal wrangler for Ringling Brothers Circus. “I herded the llamas and walked in the parade with the world’s smallest horse,” he told Paste in 2015. “We hit every town in Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma. Then I got kicked by a horse and decided to go back to Lubbock and start a band. I had enough of the glamorous life.”
He released his first solo album with MCA records in 1977, traveling to London where he met The Clash, eventually singing back-up vocals on “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” It was just one example of his genre-busting inclinations, performing in his career with Bruce Springsteen, The Chieftains, Uncle Tupelo, Lyle Lovett and German composer Eberhard Schoener. “An East London band connecting to a group from Lubbock, Texas is a pretty vast jump as a cultural exchange,” Ely said. “They really like rockabilly and old gunfighter ballads. Before Joe [Strummer] died we planned to go into Mexico and record an album together using Mexican musicians. But then he died the next year. It’s sad we never got to do that. He left this world way too soon.”
The “Lord of the Highway” recorded 17 solo studio albums, becoming an integral part of Austin’s music scene, and reunited with his bandmates in the 2000s to record three more.
“Working with the Flatlanders has been a crazy experience,” Ely said in that 2015 interview. “We get together every three or four years and throw around ideas and see if anything sticks. We don’t think of it as a band. We think of it as a group of friends who gets together every once in a while. That’s probably why we have stayed friends as long as we have. So many bands do two records and then break up. It took us 30 years to do two records. The Flatlanders lived its career in reverse. It’s crazy.”
He is survived by his wife Sharon Thomas and their daughter Maria Elena Ely, who were with him when he passed.
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