A new 1981 version of Tex & the Saddletramps record "Slave Lover" in Will Clay's Cumberland Avenue basement

Todays Memories confronted me with an old youtube from Tex & the Saddletramps. "Slave Lover” is a great song written & originally sung by George Jones on his 1963 Mercury Records album ‘The Novelty Side of George Jones’. An album that I ran across & immediately loved, early in my fandom of the Possum. Once Mike Haskins & I reassembled Tex & the Saddletramps, which had started out as a rockabilly/C&W-sideband from The Nervebreakers in 1979, a couple of years later with original drummer Russell Fleming, Key Kolb on guitar, & Donny Ray Ford on bass & backing vocals, this is one of the first tunes I wanted to do. A very uptempo tune with lotsa stops & starts about a poor henpecked guy forced to cater to his lover’s every whim & command.

Tex & the Saddletramps - Slave Lover

‘The Novelty Side of George Jones’ on Mercury Records 1963

A short while later, five or six songs were recorded by Will Clay, a saxophonist & all round funny guy who loved to laugh & crack jokes, who Mike & I had known since he was one of the younger guys that used to come hang out at rehearsals for the pre-Nervebreakers band we were in called The Idiots, circa 1974. The other 3/5 of The Idiots went on to form a local band called The Toys. Will had set up a little recording space down in the basement of a house on a hillside on Cumberland Avenue, just down the street from the Dallas Zoo in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas. Coincidentally, right down the street in the other direction from Lee Harvey Oswald’s famous Beckley Avenue garage apartment. Where “the shadows pointing every whichaway” photo of Oswald holding the rifle allegedly used to kill the president was taken. A photo whose authenticity had been questioned by the first wave of conspiracy theorists for decades.

Here is a photo by Vern Evans of saxophonist Will Clay sitting in (actually standing) with Tex & the Saddletramps at a Lower Greenville Avenue Street Dance. There's Ron Gulley & Michael Brown leaning on a vehicle, with me singing & James Flory on bass & Paul Quigg on guitar & Russell Fleming's drums...

"Slave Lover” was the first tune we recorded there & it turned out the best, with right on the money playing & strong backing vocals from Ford. That version of the band soon splintered & our original bassist, Linda Shaw came back into the fold. But the raw, tinny sound captured on Clay’s ancient analog equipment had a certain charm to it. Years later in 2009 long after Will’s passing, Mr. Bobby Beeman, onetime bassist of the legendary Stick Men With Ray Guns band, ran across a third generation (maybe that’s why it sounds sort of tinny) copy of the sessions & contacted me about posting them to youtube. Which is where they’ve sat until the present. With the ease of uploading & posting old tapes to Bandcamp that I recently discovered, Mike Haskins & I are working on a Tex & the Saddletramps collection featuring the tunes from the Cumberland sessions, plus several more from a session that produced “Move It!” at the late Songbird Studios on lower Greenville Avenue in Dallas, & a few songs that Rocky Langston (RIP) recorded for release on his ‘Steel Rok Presents’ cassette. Sort of the Tex & the Saddletramps album that never was…

Here are some photos of the lineup on "Slave Lover" at a Flykiller party in a warehouse in downtown Dallas (not sure who took these photos). First here's Mike Haskins with Donny Ray Ford in background:

Next, here's me with Key Kolb in the background:

Russell Fleming under the Flykiller logo:

The "Slave Lover" lineup of Tex & the Saddletramps at a Lower Greenville Avenue Street Dance in front of Curtis Hawkins' Stack O' Tracks record store: