Joe Ely (album)

Joe Ely (album)

Joe Ely is the self-titled debut album by Joe Ely, released in 1977 on MCA Records. The album includes several tracks with "near-classic" status among Ely fans, including several written by Ely's bandmates from The Flatlanders. Although The Flatlanders never actually broke up, there would be several decades between their poorly distributed 1972 album and their next release.

Joe Ely, together with his follow-up, Honky Tonk Masquerade, established Ely as a solo artist. Although the reissued CD doesn't credit Ely's backing musicians, the original LP included a one-page insert containing lyrics and musician credits. The core of the backing band that Ely had assembled for his debut was the same Lubbock-based crack team that appeared with him the following year on Honky Tonk Masquerade and continued to follow him on the road until 1982.

Years later Ely would recall that the band had not initially made plans for a recording career:

"We had recorded some songs at Caldwell's studio," Ely said. "Don took that tape to Jerry Jeff Walker, and Jerry Jeff recorded one of the songs and played it for a guy with MCA Records. Then one night in 1975 at the Cotton Club, an A&R guy with MCA asked, 'Do y'all want to make some records?'"

"I told him we'd sure never planned on it. But we hadn't planned anything else either, so why not?"

In the years that followed the release of Joe Ely, the band would become an act of national stature.