This is the most comprehensive and career-spanning collection of tracks from the great Roy Head ever assembled.

More than a blue-eyed soul singer of the first order, Texas native Roy Head was a human contortionist.
When he guested on ABC-TV’s nationally broadcast Shindig! to belt his 1965 smash “Treat Her Right,” he twisted himself into the shape of a pretzel while never missing a beat behind the mic. Head was right at home in front of a roaring horn section even though his earliest platters leaned more towards rock and roll than R&B, with a side order of rockabilly. The Lone Star State was notorious for mixing and matching contrasting musical styles, and Roy paid no mind whatsoever to idiomatic boundaries—he just cut loose and let the chips fall.
What’s more, he was just as wild offstage as he was on.
Even in the later years of his career, Head was still merrily twirling his mic like a lariat, still attempting the occasional somersault or backwards roll, always indulging in free-wheeling craziness as he delivered the vocal goods in front of cooking, horn-powered bands that lived up to his penchant for unscripted fun.
Born January 9, 1941 in Three Rivers, Texas, Roy Kent Head began assembling his band at San Marcos High School. “I started in 1956, singing on the school bus,” said the late Head. “About 1958, I put a little old band together, thanks to Edra Pennington, who owned a funeral home in San Marcos, Texas. I put me a little band together, and we started playing like little talent shows, etcetera. And we started winning.”
At first, Roy’s band was called the Treys because there were only three of them. Guitarist Tommy Bolton and drummer Gerry Gibson were his first recruits; they played on a San Marcos radio station KCNY on Saturday mornings. Head recruited pianist Dan Buie next. Then came bassist Bill Pennington (Edra’s son) and lead guitarist George Frazier. It was easy to alter the band’s billing to reflect its expanded personnel. “We couldn't ever come up with a name, and Traits kind of fit everything,” said Roy. “Everybody had different traits, so we just thought it'd be a good name.” By 1958, the lineup was set.
Head’s musical tastes were pretty advanced for a high school lad; he dug bluesman John Lee Hooker as well as the latest R&B luminaries on the radio. “Etta James, Bo Diddley, Jackie Wilson, naturally James Brown,” he said. “Joe Tex is the one that taught me all the mic stuff.” After honing their groove playing teen clubs--“I used to do the little school assemblies,” he noted--the Traits were ready for their maiden voyage into a recording studio in late ‘58, once again thanks to the efforts of Edra Pennington. Joe Tanner had a label in San Antonio, TNT Records, specializing in country, (Bill Anderson, Red River Dave, Sonny Burns), rock and roll (Johnny Olenn, Ray Campi, Ray Liberto, Jimmy Dee and the Offbeats), polkas, and the occasional blues (Lightnin’ Hopkins and Big Walter and His Thunderbirds).
“She knew Mr. Tanner. And he liked what he saw,” said Head. “He said, ‘Okay, we’ll give ‘em a shot.’ So we came with ‘Baby Let Me Kiss You One More Time,’ which was a big regional hit.” Like all five of their TNT singles, “One More Time” (the song’s official title) bore writer’s credits listing the whole band. Its artist was listed as the Traits, with no mention of Roy, and it would stay that way through their TNT tenure. “One More Time” was a grinding rocker, full of sass just like Roy. It sold impressively around Dallas with plenty of regional airplay during the early months of ‘59. Its snarling flip “Don’t Be Blue” took a lowdown blues tack, Head’s no-nonsense vocal riding a throbbing back-alley groove.
That’s where this collection begins, and it proceeds right through the rest of the Traits’ TNT catalog. “Live It Up” was their first encore in late ‘59, another thundering rocker with Roy’s youthful pipes in fine shape. The yearning Latin-tinged “Yes I Do” graced its opposite side. “My Baby’s Fine” came next in the spring of 1960; it was another swaggering outing with a relentless drive, Buie pounding the 88s midway through before Frazier stepped up for a succinct guitar ride. TNT paired it with the lilting ballad “Here I Am In Love Again.” TNT logically timed the happy throbber “Summertime Love” for issue late that summer, Buie and Frazier again adding hot solos, with a Gulf Coast-flavored ballad, “Your Turn To Cry,” sitting on the B-side.
The Traits closed out their TNT stint in early ‘61 with the churning romp “Walking All Day.” Seven names graced the writers’ credits for both sides; saxist David McCumber had been added. Its lights-out instrumental flip “Night Time Blues” showcased the band’s musical prowess minus audible input from Roy, despite the all-for-one-and-one-for-all compositional credits.
1962 saw the Traits split TNT for Jesse Schneider’s Renner label, another San Antonio concern with a small but select artist roster that included local heroes Denny Ezba and a young Doug Sahm. The Traits remained solely billed on their first outing, the slinky minor-key “Little Mama,” although the writers’ credits had been whittle down to Roy and Buie. It came coupled with the Traits’ fired-up treatment of Fort Worth rocker Ray Sharpe’s relentless “Linda Lou.” Schneider leased the single to United Artists’ Ascot subsidiary for national consumption.
The band stuck around Renner long enough to wax one encore twinning their own “Woe Woe” (penned by Head all by his lonesome, its swamp pop construction and an atmospheric horn-leavened arrangement bringing out a new soulful maturity in his vocal delivery) and a Tex-Mex-styled twist on the Ann Cole/Muddy Waters flagwaver “Got My Mojo Working” that owed little to either preceding version and might have surprised its composer Preston Foster (the slashing guitar solo displayed a solid feel for the blues). Guitarists Johnny Clark and Frank Miller had reportedly replaced Bolton and Frazier.
The Traits opened for Gene Vincent, Dale Hawkins, Roy Orbison, and Jerry Lee Lewis. Head inevitably gave those wildmen a run for their money in the showmanship department, although he had a habit of ripping the seat out of his trousers with his gymnastic antics. “That was a pretty frequent occurrence back then, because they didn’t have the stretch jeans and stuff,” said Roy. “The clothes were kind of molded to look good onstage.” At the other end of the spectrum, the Traits played buckets of blood where everyone had to stay as cool as they could, no matter what kind of craziness was going down at any given moment.
“We played places where they actually had chicken wire stretched across,” remembered Roy. “The kids liked to fight on the weekends. There’s nothing to do when you live in the country. It was pretty wide open in south Texas, and everybody would go to these dances on the weekend. They’d get a few beers in ‘em, and everybody would get in a scuffle. If you stopped, then it really got bad.
“We were probably the biggest group. Because back then, there weren’t any groups. They were very few and far between. It was us and the Moods, and B.J. Thomas and the Triumphs weren’t even started. I started him singing. He used to come see me, and I’d introduce him as B.J. Thomas and the Zodiacs, out of Dallas. That was before he even started singing. He always said he had a sore throat, and he’d always hustle all the women. It was neat. One day, I heard him sing. I said, ‘B.J., you need to get you a band together!’ Sure enough, he did. And after that, it was a tug of war.”
Small indie labels abounded across the expansive Lone Star State. Houston TV repairman Charlie Booth headed his own Golden Eagle logo, where blues guitarist Johnny Copeland scored a regional seller in 1963 with his “Down On Bending Knees.” Booth was knocked out by Head’s talent. “Charlie Booth came to see me play at a place called East Menard, Texas--Riverside Hall,” said Roy. “He saw me, and he liked what I was doing. He said, ‘I’d like to cut you!’”
What’s more, fellow producer Huey P. Meaux, who called himself the Crazy Cajun, also got involved with Roy’s career. Meaux was a former barber originally from Kaplan, Louisiana by way of Winnie, Texas who knew how to cut hits on a national scale. His resume already included helming Jivin’ Gene and the Jokers’ “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do” (1959), Barbara Lynn’s “You’ll Lose A Good Thing” (1962), and Sunny & the Sunglows’ ‘63 revival of Little Willie John’s “Talk To Me.”
“Huey Meaux is great. ‘Li’l brother, you know I wouldn’t cheat you, li’l brother!’ He was wonderful,” laughed Head. “Huey Meaux is a great guy. Always persistent. That’s what made Huey so good. He just didn’t take no for an answer.”
The Traits had been beefed up with a horn section by 1964 for their solitary single on the Suave label, which claimed an impressive address on Hollywood Boulevard in L.A. but featured nothing but Texas artists, notably Luvenia Lewis and Johnny Copeland. Now front-billed with the Traits, Roy tore through Big Joe Turner’s rollicking ‘57 Atlantic label outing “Teen-Age Letter” on one side and covered Lonnie Mack’s anguished Fraternity album track “Why” as “Pain” on the other (Roy was incorrectly listed as its author on Suave). “I used to love Joe Turner,” noted Roy. “I did a lot of things by Joe Turner. I did all black music back then.”
Booth produced Head’s sizzling revival of Jimmy McCracklin’s ‘62 R&B workout “Get Back,” which Roy delivered with a blue-eyed soul vengeance. It originally came out on the Houston-based Lori label (its artists included Booth himself, the Jades, and B.J. Thomas), credited to Roy – Sarah & The Traits. Saxist Danny Gomez penned the sweet teen ballad “You’ll Never Make Me Blue,” a duet with Sarah that ran counter to Head’s usual aggressive concept.
When Florence Greenberg’s New York-based Scepter Records acquired ten masters from this period to cobble together a Head album in the wake of the mammoth response to “Treat Her Right,” the song’s title was switched to “Treat Me Right” and the LP was misleadingly named after it. “Everybody thought it was ‘Treat Her Right,’ because I never followed ‘Treat Her Right’ with an album,” lamented Roy.
The other sides that Scepter picked up from Booth and Meaux’s stash for that LP were much more in keeping with Roy and the Traits’ blasting horn-leavened attack: revivals of Rosco Gordon’s 1960 R&B hit “Just A Little Bit”; Barrett Strong’s “Money (That’s What I Want),” a hit the same year that helped put Berry Gordy’s newly established enterprise on the map; James Brown’s torrid ’62 hit rendition of “Night Train”; Oscar McLollie’s poppish ’55 ballad “Convicted,” and Bobby “Blue” Bland’s mellow 1963 blues “The Feeling Is Gone.”
The genesis of Roy’s signature smash began with the unlikely title of “Talkin’ About A Cow” (the demo is aboard this collection). Its unstoppable groove was much the same, but the lyrics were on the bawdy side, so any possibility of commercial success seemed remote. “My bass player, Gene Kurtz, at the time, said, ‘Look, make this about a girl. Get out of the country, and we might sell some records!’” laughed Roy. The two sat down and refashioned the theme into “Treat Her Right.”
“We went in the studio, Gold Star Recording Studio, over on Brock,” said Roy. “For $500, we cut ‘Treat Her Right.’” Since the storming anthem was stone-cold R&B, it made sense to steer it to Houston’s leading black-owned label, Don Robey’s Duke/Peacock Records.
“Charlie Booth and Huey Meaux knew Don Robey,” explained Head. “Charlie Booth really was the one that laid the record down in the studio. Then we took it to Huey. Huey liked it. Huey naturally was the engineer on it. He shopped it to Don Robey and Don Robey bought it. The rest is history.” Robey pressed “Treat Her Right” up on his Back Beat subsidiary in April of 1965 (Robey had tested the waters the previous month by reissuing Head’s Suave single on Back Beat). “Treat Her Right” flew up Billboard’s R&B charts that autumn, not stopping until it lodged at #2. What’s more, it managed the exact same lofty chart position on the pop side—an amazing achievement. Robey tried his best to keep Head’s new fans guessing as to his race.
“Don wouldn’t ever let me go on television nationally for a long time, ‘til the record was already number one on KHJ. I think that’s in L.A. When it hit number one there, then he put me on national TV. It was a Catch-22 for me. I was just kind of caught in the middle,” said Head. “Don Robey was great. He was wonderful. He could hit a spittoon from 20 feet and never even leave a trace!”
When he did turn up on Shindig!, American Bandstand, and Hollywood a Go Go, Roy’s flashy footwork was positively incendiary. Splits, twists, backbends, and something resembling yoga moves had him contorting his lithe physique into one gravity-defying pose after another, his feet ceaselessly moving as he belted the crowd-pleasing “Treat Her Right.”
Head also hit the African American theater and club circuit back East. “I toured and did all those shows,” said Head. “I did the Roostertail in Detroit. I did the Apollo. I’ve done Phelps Lounge in Detroit. I did the Regal Theatre (in Chicago). I did ‘em all.” Those throngs were initially taken aback when Roy came onstage. “I remember coming on stage at the Apollo Theatre, man,” he said. “I was working with the Joe Scott band. People were going, ‘Yeaahh!’ I walked out and it was (silence). God, I thought, ‘What the hell?’ I mean, just night and day. But when I did the first few flips and some of the mic stuff, hell, they were up in the seats screaming. It was pretty neat, really.”
When it had been widely ascertained that Roy wasn’t African American, his brief stint on the R&B charts was over. “Once everybody found out I was white, then it just kind of...I don’t guess it was the same,” he said. “You know, like you hear somebody’s voice, and then you see ‘em—it’s just, ‘God, I can’t believe that!’” Pop audiences remained receptive, however. Scepter released his rendition of “Just A Little Bit” as a single, and it cracked the pop Top 40 right behind “Treat Her Right.” Back Beat countered with “Apple Of My Eye,” peaking at #32 pop before year’s end. “Gene Kurtz and I put that together. Of course, you can't tell there’s any Jimmy Reed in it,” cracked Head. “Everybody was doing everybody back then. Just get you a melody and throw different words on it, and change the beat.”
Scepter tried again with Roy’s remake of “Get Back,” which made a minor chart run in early ‘66. Back Beat responded with Head’s revival of Chicago blues harpist Little Walter’s 1955 R&B chart-topper “My Babe,” a Willie Dixon composition that barely creased the pop hit parade for Roy in March of ‘66. “My heart's really blues,” said Head. “I love blues.” The Kurtz-arranged “Wigglin’ And Gigglin’,” Roy’s next platter for Robey that spring, missed the charts altogether. “‘Wigglin’ And Gigglin’” didn’t do a whole lot,” said Roy. “It just had too much fancy stuff goin’. It just didn’t stay with that power-drivin’ thing.”
Head’s last charter for Back Beat offering that autumn, the violin-and-vocal-chorus- enriched ballad “To Make A Big Man Cry,” was anything but bluesy—it was a stately British import that Les Reed co-wrote. “I got a demo on that from Tom Jones, believe it or not,” said Roy. “He was doing the vocal on it. We did that really as a filler. If I’d just taken the time to put the thing together right, that could have possibly been a good song.” The Kurtz-penned “You’re (Almost) Tuff” was back in Head’s wheelhouse, a relentless rocker soaked in screaming Texas garage rock guitar minus the horn section that somehow missed the hit parade altogether in early ‘67. “Z.Z. Top, that's where they got ‘Tush’ from,” claimed Roy. “They had an article in Rolling Stone where they got the idea from ‘You’re (Almost) Tuff.’”
Roy reached way back for his Back Beat swan song that spring. “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” had been written by Eddie Green in 1917 and recorded by Bessie Smith a decade later (of course, Roy gave it a brassy update). It was arranged by trombonist Leo O’Neil, a longtime Meaux associate. “Great ‘bone player,” said Head. “He arranged a lot of things. ‘A Good Man Is Hard To Find,’ he put all of those together. He was one of the best ‘bone players in Houston.”
The Traits, who consisted of bassist Kurtz, drummer Gibson, guitarists Clark and Miller, tenor saxist Tommy May, and trumpeter Ronnie Barton during the Back Beat years, split from Roy in 1966. “My group sued me for six-sevenths of everything I made, because they didn’t want to travel,” he said. “I had all these tours offered and all this, and they all had different occupations. Some were going to college to be doctors and lawyers. So we signed a little peace bond with each other. If anybody wanted to walk, they could. And then, whenever the walking started, there wasn’t any road to walk. They all sued me.
“So I just quit singing for about a year. Which was really--well, you can tell I’m country. It wasn't real sharp. If I’d have had the snap, I’d have went on and sang, gave ‘em the money, and went through the wade with ‘em, and probably had a different road,” he said. “I just was a hard-headed hillbilly. I should have just kept on pumpin’.” The Traits made a couple of Meaux-produced 45s with Dean Scott fronting the band for Universal (picked up by Scepter) and Garrison (also out on Pacemaker). Their Universal encore, a rocked-up ‘67 rendition of Mose Allison’s “Parchman Farm,” found a pre-fame Johnny Winter behind the mic.
Head resurfaced on Mercury later in 1967, his new producer Boo Frazier bringing him to Chips Moman’s American Studio in Memphis to cover Mickey Newbury’s “Got Down On Saturday (Sunday In The Rain).” Moman himself supervised Roy’s ‘68 Mercury encore, a solid cover of Bobby Womack’s “Broadway Walk” (Bobby was a session guitarist for American at the time). Fellow Texas whirlwind Doug Sahm took over the production reins for Head’s next Mercury single, pairing Doug’s “Ain’t Goin’ Down Right” and “Loven’ Man On Your Hands.” The label assigned Head his fourth producer in four singles when Roy waxed “I Want Some Action” and “I Miss You Baby” for Chicago’s Jack Daniels.
Since none of Head’s Mercury platters so much as sniffed the charts, he moved on, reuniting with the Crazy Cajun for what amounted to his first real album in 1970, Same People That You Meet Going Up You Meet Coming Down, which producer Meaux licensed to ABC-Dunhill (Roy’s previous TNT and Scepter LPs were just compilations of old masters). It was a total return to form, Meaux imparting just the right Texas blue-eyed soul feel to the proceedings.
“Me and Huey were off and on all through the years. We’d choke each other to death and get up and go drink a beer,” said Roy. “Somehow we’d always do another project.”
The album credits only list first names for the band members so we can’t identify them individually apart from lead guitarist David “Hawk” Koon, but the set captured exactly what Head was all about. Huey dug deep in his publishing catalog for some little-known gems that Roy handled beautifully (the whole album is here as the first dozen tracks on the second disc).
The hard-charging opening title track “Same People (That You Meet Coming Up, You Meet Going Down)” was the handiwork of Alton Valier, part of Meaux’s songsmith stable. Its southern soul drive set the pace for the rest of the set. Ex-Phillips International rockabillies Cliff and Ed Thomas and their partner Bob McRee at Grits and Gravy Recording Studio in Clinton, Mississippi (one of Huey’s preferred studios) contributed the funk-laced “Trying To Reach My Goal,” which Johnny Copeland had recently cut for Meaux (it came out on Atlantic in early ‘68).
Roosevelt Sykes’ 1936 blues classic “Driving Wheel” had already served as the flip side of Roy’s “Wigglin’ And Gigglin’” on Back Beat, but Huey had him redo it for Same People, giving it a tough treatment with punchy horns, a muscular saxist taking a ride at the midway point, and Hawk cutting loose at the end. Head was probably more familiar with Little Junior Parker’s ‘61 hit remake on Duke than Sykes’ original.
The atmospheric ballad “I’m Not A Fool Anymore” had been a national hit for South Louisiana swamp popster T.K. Hulin in 1963 on Smash. T.K. and his Lonely Knights cut the original at its composer Robert Thibodeaux’s local facility. “I recorded that song at a small, small studio, and we did it twice—two takes,” said Hulin. “That was good enough. They sent it off.” T.K.’s song began to break out along the Gulf Coast. “Robert was friends with Huey Meaux,” said Hulin. “Then Huey called me up, and he drove in and I signed a contract with him. I don’t know if that was a good deal or not!” Huey placed it with Mercury’s Smash subsidiary and snagged the publishing for his Crazy Cajun Music. Head gave the tune a faithful reading on Same People.
Crazy Cajun’s Joe Pipps penned the surging “I Was Born A Free Man” and Meaux got his good out of the song, producing it on James Anderson Parkway for Pacemaker, Sunny and the Sunliners on Key-Loc, and Roy in a surprisingly brief rendition for Same People. Guitarist Simon Reyes wrote “Mama, Mama” for his own band, the Bourbonstreet Bums, who waxed it in both English and Spanish (back to back) for Huey’s Tear Drop logo in 1969. Roy’s redo threatens to veer into “Black Is Black” with its similar guitar/bass line, but once he steps in, the number finds its own distinctive mood. ABC-Dunhill chose it as the LP’s lone single with “I’m Not A Fool Anymore” on the opposite side.
“She’s About A Mover” looms large in Huey’s history—he produced the Sir Douglas Quintet’s original 1965 smash version. Their leader, Doug Sahm, wrote it so Huey could cash in on the sound of the British Invasion, but its Tex-Mex bounce was decidedly non-English in nature. Roy transforms the anthem into a horn-fueled funk grinder, its south-of-the-border sway long gone. Alton Valier sang the original demo for the relentless “Neighbor, Neighbor” and reportedly wrote it too, even though Meaux ended up with the credit. Intense soul singer Jimmy Hughes registered a huge R&B hit with it on Muscle Shoals’ Fame Records in 1966. Head’s revival is drenched in Koon’s screaming guitar and a funky undertow.
The hypnotic chant “Don’t Want To Make It Too Funky (In The Beginning)” keeps Head reined in pretty tight vocally, but “Double Your Satisfaction,” penned by McRee and the Thomases and first produced by Meaux on vocalist Andy Chapman in 1968 for Atco, gives Roy a lot more latitude to break free over a infectiously shifting drive. You couldn’t get much funkier than Dyke and the Blazers; “Let A Woman Be A Woman – Let A Man Be A Man,” written by their leader, Arlester “Dyke” Christian, had been an even bigger R&B hit for them in 1969 than “Funky Broadway” was a couple of years earlier. Head settles into its James Brown-derived funk strut as though he was born to the task.
Meaux was loyal to “Soul Train,” the original album’s uncommonly droll closer. As its writer, Huey envisioned a choo-choo where the entirety of R&B royalty was on board toiling at gigs specially designed for them (the Crazy Cajun himself is the engineer, the Supremes are the bankers, and Jimmy Reed, never one to turn down a little taste, serves the drinks; Rufus Thomas is left behind because he has too many dogs!). This should have been the album’s single; it had already been a regional 1966 R&B hit for Jackie Paine as “Go Go Train” on one of producer Meaux’s many labels, Jet Stream (Valier was then listed as Huey’s co-author). Paine even lip-synched it on Dick Clark’s ABC-TV show Where the Action Is.
Plenty of Meaux-produced sides by Roy were left behind at the time. “How Do You Think I Can Live With Somebody (After What I Been Used To),” a Thomas/McRee/Thomas copyright waxed by the brotherly duo of Mickey and Clarence Murray for Shelby Singleton’s SSS International label in 1968 with Huey and Bobby Smith sharing production credit, would have fit perfectly on Same People with its rumbling bass and high-end brass. Ditto Head’s infectious remake of the Soul Sisters’ Smokey McAlister-penned 1964 hit “I Can’t Stand It” and three vintage Bo Diddley classics: “Who Do You Love,” “Before You Accuse Me,” and “Bring It To Jerome.”
Roy left a different, equally savage version of “Boogie Down Sunset” in the Back Beat vaults. It’s Head’s personalized treatment of John Lee Hooker’s “Boogie Chillen,” Roy moving the action from Detroit’s Hastings Street to Hollywood’s Sunset Strip (the Boogie Man receives a prominent name-check; Jimmy Reed is mentioned as well). Allen Toussaint’s “Get Out Of My Life, Woman,” a 1966 hit for Lee Dorsey; a pair of time-honored B.B. King chestnuts (“Rock Me Baby” and “Three O’Clock In The Morning”), and a stomping “Operator” also failed to see light of day at the time.
Head sang the garage rocker “Easy Lovin’ Girl” for Huey in February of ‘67 at Pasadena Sound Studio over what sounds like the same highly distinctive backing track that Johnny Winter had utilized a couple of months prior. Roy added an extended spoken big city bar life vignette that really rings true to his version of Clarence Carter’s massive 1968 hit “Slip Away,” layered over a two-chord vamp spiced by a suave horn riff.
When no big hits resulted from Roy’s latest hookup with the Crazy Cajun, he moved over to the TMI label, where Booker T. and the MG’s guitarist Steve Cropper produced his ’71 single “Puff Of Smoke,” which sounds like another lost hit with its sizzling horns and crisp rhythmic thrust (Cropper wrote it with Sir Mack Rice). A cover of Van Morrison’s “Bit By Bit” did no better for him, nor did several Cropper-helmed followups. It was time to try something new. So Roy picked up his own production reins and went country with Mickey Newbury’s tender ballad “Baby’s Not Home” for the Mega label, promptly scoring his first C&W hit in late ’74. Why?
“Because I was hungry,” Head explained. “Country’s easy to sing. A lot of people would probably say that’s a shit statement, but country's very easy to sing. I grew up around country. It’s kind of a second nature to me.” The genre switch worked out well for Roy; between 1974 and 1985, he notched two dozen country chart entries, with “The Most Wanted Woman In Town” (1975 on the Shannon logo), “Come To Me” (1977 on ABC/Dot), and “Now You See ‘Em, Now You Don’t” (1978 on ABC) crackling the C&W Top 20. Nonetheless, Roy eventually drifted back to his first love, R&B.
“The blues eventually got a hold of me. I’d go up, do my country hits, and then I’d rock their ass. I rocked myself right out of that,” he said. “Luckily, my stage performance has kept me working all this time, without really having hit records all through the years.”
Head’s son, Jason “Sundance” Head, didn’t fall far from the family tree. A talented singer himself, he was a semi-finalist on the 2007 edition of American Idol before winning the 2016 competition of The Voice. But he could never match the fancy footwork that his dad routinely unleashed. Roy’s unfiltered late-career performances at the Ponderosa Stomp in New Orleans were the stuff of legend. He might totally forget the lyrics to one of his lesser hits and revert right back to “Treat Her Right” or smack his burly bassist in the chest with an errant mic twirl (the poor guy didn’t look happy), but he never lost his crowd for an instant.
Roy Head was a bigger-than-life character, the personification of Texas music tradition. It seemed like he’d go on forever despite mounting health issues, so his September 21, 2020 death of a heart attack in Porter, Texas at age 79 came as a bit of a shock.
“I just go in and cut songs that I love,” he said in 1995. “I’ve always had a thing for the beat. If it doesn't have a good, solid rhythm, then, you know...”
--Bill Dahl