Webb’s life weaves through music history

This is the second of a multi-part series on Joyce Webb and her life in the music industry.

Daughter Michelle has always been a big part of Joyce’s life. Shelle, as she is called, was with her mom, staying with both Joyce and Joyce’s mother on the road.

Marriage number one was not a good one. “You don’t marry a man that is prettier than you are. I was married like, three years to Shelle’s daddy till I gave up.”

“Okay, I was married to Shelle’s daddy. Then married my second husband just because, he’s the one that said Shelle needs roots.”

The road can be hard for an adult, but even harder for a child. “So he really talked me into marrying him, and you know what the truth is? I’d already married the love of my life.”

Raising Shelle by herself as a single mom made a change to her performances, especially in a music industry that, at the time, was less segregated than much of the world around it.

One appearance in Detroit was unusual as she was staying at a white hotel there, but had to rehearse with an all-Black band for a New York recording with Columbia Records at a Black hotel with a rehearsal hall.

“They booked me and Shelle in downtown Detroit. It was cold, and I was with a baby, 3 or 4 years old.” She begged if she could stay at the Black hotel with her child there, as it would save her time, hailing cabs and traveling across town in the cold with Shelle. Finally the hotel relented and let her and Shelle stay there.

Shelle was growing, and soon the time came for her daughter to attend school, which meant the end of constant traveling and settling down.

“After she started going to school, I only traveled during the Christmas break and when she was out of school because of summer. Any kind of holidays, you know, they could book me because I could take her with me. That’s just how it was. You know, it’s got to be with my daughter. And it might have kept me out of the big time. You know, really, but I wouldn’t change a thing.”

She decided to move back to Houston for Shelle, giving some stability and roots to her daughter. Houston was the place to do it. It was big city, and she was well known there. Her daughter has been close to Joyce, performing with her as a duo when she turned 17.

“We even worked in Houston as a duo during the cocktail hour. She started working at 17. What we would do? She and I were getting ideas. You know, doing a duo? My daughter is better a singer than I. You know, she had a chance to have done a lot because she was a good singer. But she’d already lived that life. She’d already been on the road with me. She knew she’s been there and done that.”

Performing around Houston

“My home base was Houston. But I was still recording. I probably have bombed on every major label. Warner Brothers, Columbia, Motown. There were a lot of people who put a lot of money up thinking that I was going to do something, you know; I fooled them.”

Joyce’s 70s band broke up, and she was appearing in clubs around Houston. Another falling in my lap moment happened once again.

“Conductor Ned Battista, he came to see me at the place called the Roulette Club. ‘Would you be interested in singing with the Houston Pops?’ I said, ‘Oh, cool. Yeah.’”

They built the arrangements around me, and it was so good. It was so much fun. And you do, you got forty-four musicians that are the tops in the world playing behind you, because those guys in Houston, they were some dynamite musicians. And they were all Symphony players. Right? But they were playing pop music. And it was so good… I couldn’t believe I was a soloist again, all music arranged for me. I didn’t know they would pay me. They even paid me for rehearsals.”

Then at Houston’s Miller Theatre, the rehearsal went off without a hitch in the afternoon. “I was so good, so proud of myself. My mom was coming, but this was different. All my friends would be there. The rehearsal was great, we were talking the same language.”

That night it was sort of Judy Garland-esque, like in a “Star is Born.” Singing with a corded microphone, she threw the microphone cord over her shoulder and walked a few more steps than in rehearsal. In rehersal, she had about twenty feet from the back of the Battista to the front of the stage. For the show, they lowered the orchestra pit that night and she wasn’t aware of it. She only had eight feet in front of her, instead of twenty feet like in rehearsal. She couldn’t see because of the huge spotlights. She stepped off the stage. Thinking she had stepped in a hole, she threw her other foot in front of the other to catch herself. The result was that she literally jumped off the stage and landed on her feet. The searchlights couldn’t find her. The band didn’t realize what had happened, but 4,000 people all going “OH” does make a huge sound.

“All I saw was black, Ned was still conducting, and the searchlights were scanning to find me. What to do? I picked up the song where I was supposed to. I felt a motor moving and the floor rose under me when i started singing…. the searchlight finally caught me. I thought my career was over. I was not hurt. I landed on my feet and I didn’t drop the mic. This got me hired by the Houston Pops for ten years,” she continued.

“During intermission I iced my knees and tried to apologize to Ned, he said, no you’re our girl. It was a wonderful thing. It got me remembered.”

Her mom, in the audience with Shelle, laughed hysterically, while her daughter cried throughout the concert. She continued singing with Houston Pops, even after moving to Wimberley.

She was not married for twelve years, then met David Tate. “My third husband, he asked me, ‘Where do you see yourself retiring?’ And I said I missed the hills. I want to be in the hills. And so, Houston is great, but it’s flat, you know? Then he said, ‘We’ll start looking for some retirement land.’ But I was 40 years old, you know, before I married him... And I thought my career was near its end.”

But as the saying goes, you can’t go home again. Austin started growing and began to take on the appearance of a large city. “We went to Austin, and it wasn’t the same; this is more like Houston. We started driving around in the area, and then we drove into Wimberley. The first thing I saw was that a big tree right in the middle of the road, Old Kyle Road.”

Intrigued by the small town, both of them decided where they would settle down.

“We bought 33 acres and I sold my house in Houston. We both said what have we done? We started coming here and camping out, we started out after we bought the land, coming only two days week.”

Tate was a self-employed builder and owned his own companies.

“I was singing, doing commercials you know, television and radio jingles, writing music.” They continued, just coming up weekends and within a year were spending more time in Wimberley and less in Houston. Soon it was time to build a house.

“There was a house for rent right next to our property, up on the hill, and looked across towards Paradise Valley. In a word Paradise, Paradise Hills, there was nothing on Paradise. Yes. No buildings. No light. Wow, no nothing, you know. And so we built the house. We bet all we had and finally moved. We didn’t have a job; we just said this is what we’re doing. So, okay, I said I know people in Austin, you know, I can get a job there.” Then realization soon set in.

“Okay, now what? Oh, my God, what have we done? Our careers were in Houston; it was just a leap of faith. It’s just something that happened. It was just meant to be.

We started building the house. It was so weird because it was sitting on solid rock and we needed to lay a foundation. And we had to use dynamite to blow it up... so we could lay the foundation. Now figure that out, and I said Tate’s over there blowing up the mountain.” For a while he was known around Wimberley as Dynamite Tate.

“I started doing stained glass for a hobby, because I wanted nice things in my house. That’s how I decided... I can do it. I’ll do it. So I started. So that’s how that got started.

“(Tate) was building all over Wimberley. And if one didn’t sell, we’d move there and live there and put in the furniture and make it look good. And then it would sell and then we moved. So we did a lot of moving around for a while.”

Soon, her stained glass hobby grew and storage was needed for all the colored glass.

A shop close to the Wimberley Square was located and the storage began there.

“We were using it for a workshop, but people would want to see it. I’d walk by, and they look and see that we were in there.”

Even though there was no name on the door, and was just used for a hobby, people would still want to see the pretty objects she made for her own house or Christmas presents.

“And at some point, I realized that I had something for sale in there and people would buy it. I never intended to have a business. I decided to put a sign up Wimberley Stained Glass. And then I found out I had to have a tax thing; I didn’t know anything. Luckily my husband was smart enough, he’d been in business right? So I started building stained glass for his houses. And people would say ‘I love this. Who did this?’ ‘Well, my wife does it.’”

Wimberley Stained Glass became a big hit and soon moved into proper quarters near the Square. Daughter Shelle and nephew Dewey worked with Joyce.

At a stained glass exposition in Toronto, she took a class on working with Blenko, a stained glass hybrid, (a trademark). Having worked with the material, although different from traditional stained glass, it presented challenges.

“I took a class on working with Blenko it’s like the cement stuff that you mix and has to be warm. You have to draw the patter. It’s laid in big chunks, and you have to break the glass with an anvil and a hammer.”

Huge projects happened like the Horseshoe Bay Country Club in Marble Falls. Although Blenko is beautiful, it is much heavier than glass and the commision was for the whole ceiling with a pool underneath it in the health club. It was about a quarter football field in size. As a builder, Tate had the problems solved with the weight of the Blenko glass overhead in the ceiling.

Joyce was also commissioned at a private mansion in the Domain part of San Antonio.

“I walked in and it was like Tara, it had two big stairs going up on each side. At the top is this great, huge expanse of a big window. And it was facing west. The marble floors up there were beautiful, but horrible because the heat was just so tremendous on them.”

She came up with the idea of a huge peacock in Blenko to cover the west window. Dark colors, like cobalt. “It was like putting sunglasses on the window.

It was a reflection, like a reflection in the pool, you know? And it was so breathtaking with all the jewels, everything. I just, I couldn’t say anything and that guy said, ‘Oh, my God, I had no idea.’ I said it was everything I could do. I didn’t know it would be so beautiful, either. Anyway, his property backed up to George Strait’s property. So George Strait got in touch with us saying he really appreciated the peacock, shining at night.”

Click here for the third and final part of the series on Joyce Webb.