Early life and band career Born Earle Rewell Ely in
Amarillo, Texas, in 1947, He played
violin from the age of eight and sang in the First Baptist Church choir. He sold his violin to buy an
electric guitar and was expelled from Monterey High School for "singing 'Cherry Pie' by
Marvin & Johnny in the middle of a school assembly". Ely "took to the road like his heroes
Jack Kerouac and
Woody Guthrie." He experienced "a drugs bust in Texas involving
magic mushrooms", went to California where he bought a guitar, and in New York worked as a
janitor in a theatre. He returned to Lubbock and in 1971, with fellow Lubbock musicians
Jimmie Dale Gilmore and
Butch Hancock, formed
The Flatlanders. According to Ely, "Jimmie [Gilmore] was like a well of country music. He knew everything about it. And Butch was from the folk world. I was kinda the rock and roll guy and we almost had a triad. We hit it off and started playing a lot together. That opened up a whole new world I had never known existed." In 1972, the band recorded their first album. Impressed with each other's performances, the two bands later toured together, including appearances in Ely's hometown of Lubbock, as well as
Laredo and
Ciudad Juárez in Mexico, across the border from
El Paso, Texas. Ely sang backing vocals on the Clash single "
Should I Stay or Should I Go".
Joe Strummer planned to record with Ely's band but died before that happened, which was one of Ely's greatest regrets. On May 1, 1982, Ely presented the Third Annual Tornado Jam in Lubbock to a crowd of 25,000. The Jam included
Linda Ronstadt,
Leon Russell,
Joan Jett,
the Fabulous Thunderbirds,
Jay Boy Adams and
the Crickets. The first Tornado Jam was a fundraiser to help Lubbock after
the Tornado, hence the name. The second Annual Tornado Jam drew a crowd of 35,000. In the early 1980s, Ely toured with the Kinks, the Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen. In the 1990s, he collaborated with Dutch
flamenco guitarist
Teye, with whom he recorded
Letter to Laredo (1995) and ''Twistin' in the Wind'' (1998). Throughout his career Ely issued a steady stream of albums, most on the
MCA label, with a live album every 10 years or so. In the late 1990s, Ely was asked to write songs for the soundtrack of
Robert Redford's movie
The Horse Whisperer, which led to his reforming the Flatlanders with Gilmore and Hancock. Ely spent 2016 as the reigning "Texas State Musician", a one-year designation that he formally accepted in a ceremony at the State Legislature that spring. In October 2022, he was inducted to the
Austin City Limits Hall of Fame.
Illness and death In September 2025, Ely announced he had been diagnosed with
Parkinson's disease and
Lewy body dementia. He died from Parkinson's, dementia and pneumonia at his
Taos, New Mexico home, on December 15, 2025, at the age of 78. ==Lawsuit against Universal Music Group==