Photo by Lynne Hawrelko

Gurf Morlix

​Part of a storied singer-songwriter scene, former Houstonians Gurf Morlix and Blaze Foley were living in Montrose during the Urban Cowboy craze but were not impressed. In fact, according to Morlix, they worked so much they "hardly ever had a night off, and if we did we certainly weren't going to drive out to Pasadena to some fake cowboy joint." Somewhat ironically, we had just interviewed Mickey Gilley moments before calling Morlix to discuss his gig and the showing of the documentary Blaze Foley: The Duct Tape Messiah at Anderson Fair Friday night. Morlix, who released an entire album of Foley covers last year, Blaze Foley's 113th Wet Dream, spent all of 2011 traveling with the film, usually performing a set of Foley songs after each showing. We caught up with the Grammy winner at his studio in Austin.

Rocks Off: Is the Blaze Foley phase winding down for you or does it have more legs?

Gurf Morlix: I think I'm about done with it. I devoted all of 2011 to Blaze and the film and my album, but I've got other stuff to do this year.

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Photo by Marc Brubaker

​If one understands the historical depth and context of the singer-songwriter tradition in Houston -- and it was flourishing here long before it migrated to Austin or before a few (mostly Texan) outlaws started up a movement in Nashville -- it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that two of American Songwriter magazine's Top Fifty songs were written by local natives. However, big surprise -- Hayes Carll took the top slot with "Another Like You."

Popular New West Records artist Robert Ellis came in at Number 23 with "Friends Like These."

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​While most of Houston only yawned when it was released, the Jonn Richardson/Rich del Grosso album Time Slips On By made Downbeat magazine's recently published Best of 2011 list.

Richardson, a monster picker who tours behind Diunnah Greenleaf and Otis Taylor, and del Grosso, a rare practitioner of blues mandolin and a frequent contributor to Blues Revue, are regulars on the local scene, playing everywhere from Shakespeare's Pub to the Big Easy blues jams.

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cred

Gene Kurtz (left) and Roy Head wrote "Treat Her Right" in 10 minutes on a roll of toilet paper.

​"I guarantee you one thing, Gene Kurtz is playing bass in the best band in heaven tonight," says Roy Head. Head co-wrote "Treat Her Right," one of the truly legendary Texas hits, with Kurtz, the bassist who passed away late Sunday evening in Austin at age 69.

When Kurtz and his Los Angeles-based publishers sued Head over mechanical royalties to "Treat Her Right" and other songs from the early days of Roy Head and the Traits, the two entered a rough patch in a long friendship that goes all the way back to early 1960s in San Marcos .

"Yeah, Gene thought I was screwing him," says Head. "But the suit was dismissed."

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Photo by Jesse C. Smith Jr.

​Another of Houston's unique blues treasures, the effusive, ebullient and always stylish pianist Earl Gilliam, has moved on to the big juke joint in the sky. Gilliam, 81, died peacefully this morning at his home in Tomball of advanced lung disease. He had suffered from emphysema and other lung complications the past few years and was hospitalized several times, most recently with a collapsed lung.

Born in New Waverly on January 13, 1930, Gilliam moved to Houston when he was 18, just in time to be part of the first historic wave of Houston piano giants: Amos Milburn, Teddy Reynolds, Lonny Lyons and Elmore Nixon. After playing country-western gigs with his cousin for a while, Gilliam got his first major break when he was picked up by Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, the charismatic, hard-touring wild man who played guitar and fiddle.

In an amazing career that spanned more than 60 years, Gilliam literally played with virtually all of Houston's greatest talents at one time or another, plus a host of national blues acts that passed through places like Shady's Playhouse, where he ran the house band for years.

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​Rocks Off contributor William Michael Smith just called in to regretfully inform us that Houston blues musician Earl Gilliam has passed away. Gilliam's friend and manager Sheri Goodman told Smith that Gilliam died at his home near Tomball of advanced lung disease.

The piano player was famous for hosting his "Doghouse Jams," informal gatherings at his house on Sunday afternoons that lasted for hours and brought out much of the Houston-area blues community. The jams ceased when Gilliam fell into ill health, which he had been in for some time.

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Photo by Steve Harris/Compadre Records

Hayes Carll before he was old enough to shave... not that he ever has.

​The other day, one of the Rocks Off Crew was rummaging around in the Houston Press office and came across a bunch of publicity stills for various musicians.

Allow us to explain what those are: They're photos, usually 8X10, that artists' management and publicity teams would send in the mail in case the paper needed it for an article, calendar listings, etc. In order to do that, these photos had to be scanned into a computer by the paper's art or production department, then they were tossed aside and usually forgotten about.

Any paper of any size probably has a file cabinet or two of these things sitting around, we're sure. (Even we're not sure how they went from photo stock to newsprint in the days before scanning.) A sure sign the publicity shot's day has come and gone is that they are now considered collectibles - for a while, Sig's Lagoon had a huge stack by the counter selling for about 5 bucks a pop.

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Photos courtesy of jam280.com

Josefus live at U of H, March 1970

​When Lonesome, Onry and Mean moved to the Bayou City in 1968, it wasn't long before we stumbled upon what would become our favorite local band of that period: Josefus. They were known for playing free shows that would last a couple of hours and for a 20-minute version of "Louisiana Blues" that was their signature, and often set-ending, rave-up.
 
Kicked out of Love Street by the International Artists management after drummer Doug Tull harangued the crowd about how badly IA and Love Street people treated the bands, a few nights later they set up in the parking lot across the street during another band's show at Love Street and literally caused most of the patrons to leave the venue and come across the street to hear Josefus. Bold move.
 
While their tenure was a short one - a couple of tours and couple of albums - 1969's Dead Man is today a collector's dream album often cited as one of the earliest examples of metal. (Read a brief history of the band at jam280.com.) Only 3,000 copies of Dead Man were pressed, but a sealed copy recently sold on eBay in the UK for $1,100.

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Photos courtesy of thundersoulmovie.com

How many high-school bands can you name that had their own publicity shots?

​It's hard enough to believe that a single high-school stage band could win 42 out of 46 competitions entered throughout the '70s. It's even harder to believe that the same band that won those competitions did so by playing nothing but the rawest renditions of "Super Bad" and other classic funk songs of the era.

Band Director Conrad "Prof" Johnson came to the impoverished Kashmere Gardens school in and built a contest-decimating army of musicians from neighborhood kids called the Kashmere Stage Band. Many would go on to college with music scholarships, some became professional musicians, but all remember Prof and the life lessons he taught them.

Director Mark Landsman caught wind of the Kashmere Stage Band and Conrad "Prof" Johnson and set out to make a documentary to tell their story. The result is Thunder Soul, produced by Jaime Foxx. The film opens in Houston today.

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Marc Brubaker

Archie Bell at the Continental Club, September 3

​In certainly one of the more interesting local items to come in over courthouse.com, a Web site that reports on notable, unusual or legally significant filings in the federal courts, Houston songwriter and performer Archie Bell has filed suit against monumental soul-disco powerhouse Philadelphia International Records (PIR) and the hit songwriting and producing sister company Gamble-Huff Productions in the Houston division of the U.S. District Court.

PIR and Gamble-Huff are the corporate vehicles for the songwriting team of Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, the duo that single-handedly invented what became known as "Philly Soul," and together wrote or produced over 170 gold records. Gamble & Huff were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008.

Along with his band The Drells, Bell had a Billboard No. 1 and a gold record with the 1968 Houston-centric single "Tighten Up." After picking up the single for distribution, and following several other charting singles collected onto the Tighten Up album, Atlantic rushed out follow-up album I Can't Stop Dancing that same year. Among other songs and production work, Gamble and Huff wrote Dancing's title track, which reached No. 5 R&B and No. 9 pop.

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