Joseph "Joe Tex" Arrington, Jr.
Rogers, Bell County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Born to a sharecropping family in Rogers on August 8, 1935, Joseph Arrington, Jr., is considered one of the most influential, but underappreciated, innovators in rock, funk and rap music history. While at Carver High School in Baytown, Harris County, during the era of segregation, he drew inspiration from church services, school performances and the Houston nightclub scene. After winning a local talent show, Arrington received a paid trip to Harlem, New York, where he performed at the prestigious Apollo Theater. Performing under the name “Joe Tex,” Arrington signed his first recording deal with King Records in the mid-1950s but had a rocky start to his career. His first big hit, however, came in 1964 with the breakout single “Hold on to What You’ve Got.” An innovator in rhythm and blues, he slowed the tempo, adding spoken verses in a style he called “rapping.” Joe Tex became a transitional singer who made the switch from easygoing ballads in the 1950s to lively funk in the early 1970s with his platinum hit “I Gotcha.” Fame and fortune evidently left Joe Tex with a void in his life and he filled it by embracing the religion of The Nation of Islam. In 1972, Arrington abandoned his growing musical career and became Yusef Hazziez, serving in the following years as an advocate for The Nation of Islam. Following the death of his spiritual mentor in 1975, Hazziez took back his stage name and returned to his music career. After his last big hit, “I Ain’t Gonna Bump No More (With No Big Fat Woman),” he toured the oldies circuit until his death from a heart attack on August 12, 1982. Although he died young, the artist known as Joe Tex continues to have a lasting influence on many musical genres. (2016)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Born to a sharecropping family in Rogers, Texas, in 1935, Joseph Arrington Jr. rose from segregated-era school and church performances to the stage of Harlem's Apollo Theater and a recording career as 'Joe Tex.' His 1964 breakout 'Hold on to What You've Got' and the platinum 'I Gotcha' showcased a style in which he slowed the tempo and added spoken verses he called 'rapping,' bridging 1950s R&B ballads and 1970s funk. He briefly left music to serve the Nation of Islam as Yusef Hazziez before returning to the stage; he died in 1982, his influence echoing through soul, funk, and hip-hop.
Why it matters
Joe Tex is remembered as an underappreciated innovator whose spoken 'rapping' style and genre-crossing career helped lay groundwork for later American funk and hip-hop.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Joseph Arrington, Jr., was born in Rogers, Texas, on August 8, 1935, into a sharecropping family. That single fact carries a whole world with it: the rural, segregated South of the Great Depression, where Black families worked land they did not own and opportunity was rationed by law and custom alike.
He came of age when the color line ran through every part of public life. His schooling, at Carver High in Baytown, took place in the era of segregation, and the music that would carry him out of it was being forged in exactly those separate spaces — the church pew, the school stage, and the nightclub.
This was the generation that took the sounds of the Black South and remade American popular music with them. Arrington stepped onto that stage just as rhythm and blues was building toward the explosions of soul and funk that would follow — a young man from cotton country arriving at precisely the right moment.
People & events
His talent announced itself early. Drawing inspiration from church services, school performances, and the Houston nightclub scene, he won a local talent show — and the prize was a paid trip to Harlem, where he performed at the famed Apollo Theater, the proving ground of Black American entertainment.
Taking the stage name Joe Tex, he signed his first recording deal with King Records in the mid-1950s. The start was rocky, and success did not come at once. His breakthrough finally arrived in 1964 with the single “Hold on to What You’ve Got.” Along the way he did something quietly radical: he slowed the tempo and delivered spoken verses in a style he himself called “rapping.”
Joe Tex became a musician who spanned eras, moving from the easygoing ballads of the 1950s to the lively funk of the early 1970s, when the platinum “I Gotcha” made him a star. Yet fame left a void. He embraced the Nation of Islam, and in 1972 he set aside his rising career to become Yusef Hazziez, serving for years as an advocate for the faith. After the death of his spiritual mentor in 1975 he reclaimed his stage name and his music, scored a last big hit with “I Ain’t Gonna Bump No More (With No Big Fat Woman),” and toured the oldies circuit until his death from a heart attack on August 12, 1982.
Its place in the American story
Joe Tex belongs to a small group of artists whose fingerprints are all over American music even when their names are not. That spoken, rhythmic delivery he called “rapping” anticipated a whole language of popular sound that would come to dominate decades later — a genuine innovation from an artist too often left off the marquee.
His career is also a map of how Black American music evolved across a single lifetime, from the ballads of the 1950s through the funk of the 1970s. Few performers made that journey so completely, and fewer still did it while helping invent the techniques others would build on.
That he began in a sharecropping family in a small Texas town makes the arc all the more American. From the segregated South to the stage of the Apollo, his life traces the path by which the music of the rural Black South became the music of the whole country — and the world.
If you visit
There is no grand monument here, and that is part of the point. This is small-town Central Texas, the sharecropping country where a future innovator was born, and the landscape itself — modest, rural, easy to drive past — is the real backdrop to the story.
Stand in Rogers and let the contrast do its work: from these quiet surroundings came an artist who played the Apollo, earned a platinum record, and helped shape the sound of American music. The marker asks you to hold both truths at once — the humble beginning and the outsized legacy.
Make it a stop on a musical road trip through Texas, and bring the songs with you. Cue up the slow-burning soul and the funk, listen for the spoken verses he called “rapping,” and you will understand why this small town claims a place in the story of American music.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
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Themes & tags
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