Joe Tex month day 17: Dang Me/Show Me! The Joe Tex/Roger Miller connection

"If I were a silly grin, I'd like to be worn on Roger Miller's face."

-Joe Tex-

Buddy Killen was the Joe Tex/Roger Miller connection. He was lifelong buddies with Miller, brokered several of his record deals, managed his publishing and sat the crazy laughing ADD genius down to complete his songs.

According to "I Love You Drops" singer Bill Anderson, "Roger would come in with seven or six lines of a song. It'd be something fabulous, and Buddy would just have to almost take him and chain him to the table to make him finish."

Killen was also one of the snappers on the giant Miller hit "King of the Road".

Joe Tex covered three different Roger Miller songs throughout his Dial career, and it wasn't just the fact that  Killen helped make them the successful artists they were that made them simpatico. Both singers managed to say deeply profound things in often ridiculous contexts, and conveyed both happiness and humor in their performing style in a way that is absolutely captivating and infectious. And they were both funny as do-wacka-do.

JT covered "King of the Road" on The New Boss, "Half a Mind" on I've Got to Do a Little Bit Better, and "Engine Engine #9" on Soul Country.

And on Hold What You've Got, he wrote his own Roger Miller homage/parody, "Are We Ready?", the last verse of which goes out to Newt Gingrich.

Joe Tex with Buddy (right) and journalist Charles Lamb (center)

And just because it's too long to wait until Roger Miller Month, here's Roger and Johnny Cash.

I just told myself a dirty joke!

For more information on Roger Miller and Buddy Killen, check out the informative bio on the official Roger Miller website.

Joe Tex month day 8: The Early Dial Sides

Like King and Ace, Anna and Chess didn't really work out for Joe. But because of his obvious talent, producer and music publisher Buddy Killen decided to start a label, Dial, specifically to release Tex's records.

Things didn't go very well at first. In fact, a lot of Joe's early Dial singles are a step back in quality and uniqueness from his Anna and Chess waxings, even if they're a leap forward in terms of sound quality. Most of these early singles can be found on the Super Soul compilation pictured above, but they can be a wee pricey for a comp, since a couple of Joe's early Dials are considered Northern Soul classics.

Where you at, Rufus?

But "Looking for My Pig", one of the best songs (especially for Ichiban purposes!) he cut in the early Dial days, is not. This barn-burning tip/rip to "Walking the Dog" - complete with shout out to Rufus Thomas at the end - only came out on 45 until its eventual release on the First on the Dial CD in 2008.

Another killer early Dial tune not on the Super Soul is "Blood's Thicker Than Water", the flip of "I Wanna Be Free". This is probably the most expensive record in Joe's catalog, consistently fetching over a hundred dollars on the Northern market. So if you see it for a couple of bucks somewhere, don't sleep!

The way forward was planted on "I Had a Good Home But I Left". A call-back to the first two Anna singles, it was a two-parter with a sermon on the flip. This time the tempo was slowed down to a fine Southern lope, and Joe and the band really work off of each other to give his words maximum impact. It gets so good to Joe that he punctuates one bit of wisdom with a "Think about it!" that would make Jerry Lee proud. The track is presented here (for the first time, as far as I can tell) as a seamless song rather than being split into two parts.

The record still didn't sell. But Killen and Tex would take this style to the A-side for the first time at the next recording session, and the results were much different.

For more on the Dial story, go here.