GREASE IS THE WORD

JOE ELY

Musta Notta Gotta Lotta (SouthCoast/MCA)

by Robert A. Hull

All the rockabilly revivalists have been clinging to every neo-rockabilly act (Matchbox, Crazy Cavan) and every honky-tonk hack (Delbert McClinton, Gary Stewart) so loudly for so long that maybe this will seem anticlimactic, but the fact remains: Joe Ely’s Musta Notta Gotta Lotta is a modern masterpiece of real-gone hiccuping.

His first studio album in two years (his last LP was 1980’s Live Shots, which MCA unjustifiably chose not to release in America), this album finds Ely with his hair greased back in all seriousness; you soon realize that his three previous LPs—Down On The Drag, Honky Tonk Masquerade, and Joe Ely—were only mellifluous illuminations from a cowboy too timid to surrender to bebop-a-lula hysterics.