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About the Artist
Who is Joe King?
Joe King is probably in his 50’s or 60’s, but claims to have written one song, "Neutron Bombs are Falling all about Us, Dear", in 1929. He was raised (probably) in a south Texas town with the unlikely name of Edcouch (named, he says, for the speculator in railroad land who divided the area into lots and got rich selling them). One source, though, - a song written about him by Benny Skyn - mentions King’s hailing from a Texas town "near the New Mexico border". That’s only about a thousand miles different. Supposedly, he had a high school rock & roll band in the 50’s that was supposed to open for B.B. King. He says, however, that B.B. never showed up. Joe also claims to have had a Texas outlaw ancestor named King Fisher, but the name seems suspiciously like a reworking of either the Fisher King of Arthurian and Holy Grail myth or Kingfish of "Amos and Andy." He has also variously identified himself as having been a psychologist, a draft dodger (which war?), a logician, a computer technician, and a smuggler.
The Fictionaires are another quasi-mythical entity, a band of shifting size and identities which Joe King claims to have had a London incarnation (the original) and a Houston version. Apparently, there were musicians playing with King who had contractual obligations that did not allow them to appear with him, so he concocted a set of names for the musicians to use; thus, the bass player, for instance, was always Stumbling Jack Stillwater, no matter who he was.
Anyway, I am an ardent admirer of the quirky music of Joe King and the Fictionaires, with its devil-may-care mix of blues - Mississippi Delta and Mississippi Hill Country and Georgia ragtime and East Texas gospel slide - and rockabilly and psychedelic rock and hokum and jugband and New Orleans and 40’s novelty jazz and who knows what the hell else; BUT I find it necessary to stand back a bit from Joe King’s stories of his background and adventures and meetings with famous and "almost-famous" people.
But check out this CD project. JK and the Fs approach "classics", in this case Robert Johnson’s work, with respect but not reverence.
-- Credit: Lynn Vivian, 1999
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