THE TITLE OF JOE TEX’S FIRST SONG, “HOLD ON TO WHAT YOU’VE GOT,” sums up the thirty-year-old singer’s feelings on life.
Joe, who recently appeared at the Howard Theater, said, “A depression will come again and I want to be ready for it. Those screams and hollers I hear while I’m on stage aren’t going to last forever.
“My name in lights doesn’t mean anything,” he said. “All I want to do is make enough money and quit.”
By quitting, Joe doesn’t mean retiring and living in a mansion with servants waiting on him. In fact, when Joe leaves show business, he hopes to have accumulated enough money to buy a farm and raise a sizable crop of beans.
Joe once worked as a bean picker on a farm, and he says that when he has his own farm, he wants to pick the beans and have his grandmother preserve them.
It will probably be quite a while before Joe stops belting out rhythm-and-blues tunes because, as he puts it, “It took me ten years to get where I am now, and although I should be resting, I’ve got to keep on making it while I’m hot.”
Joe’s last two records, “Poppa Was Too” and “Show Me” were easy to dance to, so they appealed mainly to teenagers. But Joe feels that most of the other songs he sings are “too deep” for teenagers.
“My songs are very deep,” he said. “Kids don’t want to have to think, they want to dance. That’s why my things sell mainly to adults.”
Right now, traveling is the biggest hang-up in Joe’s life. He only gets home to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, one week out of every month. “I would like to spend more time with my wife and son,” Joe said.
“I was on the road when my son was born,” he said. “He knows who his daddy is, but he never sees him. My wife and mother-in-law always play my records for him. I even bought a horse for him. But that doesn’t make up for my being away from home so much.”
Joe attributes much of the success of R & B to increasing white audiences. “A lot of the white teenage kids are just beginning to find out who some of the Negro artists are,” Joe said. “For a while, all anyone saw on television or heard on the radio was English groups.
“Now pop radio stations are playing R & B records and cats like James Brown are making appearances on television. It’s a new bag for white kids and they’re going to keep R & B alive for a long time to come.”