At a time when the outlaw movement was sweeping country music in the hands of
Waylon Jennings (of RCA Victor Records) and
Willie Nelson (of Columbia Records), it was not surprising that MCA Records, in search of its own representative of the style, would have taken a tip from
Jerry Jeff Walker of its roster and signed Texas journeyman
Joe Ely to a deal. The 29-year-old
Ely had knocked around for a while, notably as a member of Jimmie Dale Gilmore & the Flatlanders, whose sole album had a brief release on Plantation Records in 1972. Clearly,
Ely had kept in touch with that band's other principals, since
Jimmie Dale Gilmore's excellent composition "Treat Me Like a Saturday Night" is included here, along with four songs written by another
Flatlanders alumnus,
Butch Hancock. In fact, those tunes -- "She Never Spoke Spanish to Me," "Suckin' a Big Bottle of Gin," "Tennessee's Not the State I'm In," and "If You Were a Bluebird" -- are all strong ballads, the best material on this record, and suggest that maybe MCA should have signed
Hancock instead.
Ely, who provides the other five songs, is no slouch himself, however. "I Had My Hopes Up High," which leads things off, is his account of his peripatetic life of hoboing and hitchhiking around, while "Mardi Gras Waltz" is a good Cajun number and "All My Love" (the first single) is in the
Bob Wills Western swing vein. With his accent and light tenor,
Ely came off as an experienced Texas honky tonk performer on his debut album. Maybe he wasn't MCA's answer to
Willie and
Waylon, exactly, but
Joe Ely showed promise for a powerful, individual repertoire in the future, especially if he continued borrowing songs from his pal
Hancock. ~ William Ruhlmann