Joe Ely’s career has been legendary on one hand—a member of the Flatlanders with Jimmy Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock whose first four solo albums are about as good as Texas country gets—but he has never been as big as it seems like he should be. Ultimately, it’s because Ely is a rock ’n’ roll singer whose voice and persona is bigger than the singer-songwriter-y production his records tend to receive (even when he’s behind the board). Whether he’s a raconteur or part of a song’s narrative, he’s garrulous, feeling the forward momentum of his own vocals and rolling with them. In some cases, that means he undersells smart lines. He lets the cliché “Baby needs a new pair of shoes” punctuate verses about basic human needs, then adds “All I want is to get back home / Instead of wastin’ away at this Superdome” to his list of needs, making the song immediately relevant and making the cliché literally true.

 

Ultimately, messages or expressions of values give his songs subject matter, not gravity. “So You Want to Be Rich?” may lyrically skewer the foul ambitions that accompany wealth, but Ely’s having too much fun stretching the word “rich” into “reee-itch” to make the pointed lyrics sting, just as Jagger’s vocals were far more about Jagger’s love of the blues and himself than about real world.

 

It’s no surprise that the Ely album that hasn’t aged is Live Shots, recorded while touring as an opening act for the Clash. The hard-edged, amphetamine honky-tonk sound was pure rock ’n’ roll. Happy Songs features solid songs and vocals; it would be nice if Ely’s production presented his songs more sympathetically.