Joe Ely by Joe Ely

Joe Ely is the 1977 debut album by Texas singer-songwriter, Joe Ely. The album includes several tracks written by Ely's bandmates from The Flatlanders.Joe Ely and the follow-up album, Honky Tonk Masquerade, helped establish 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 [Don] 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?"