“There’s a line there. You go too far and it’s really stupid.”
—Joe Diffie
Joe Diffie arrived on the Nashville scene when the hat acts were just getting off the ground — and a neo-trad sound was very much in vogue.
He had dabbled in Haggard-esque honky tonk, but ultimately grew more comfortable with a high-energy sound that had more to do with rock’n’roll than old-school honky tonk.
Country, however, has been part of his background since childhood. Born on 28 December, 1958 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Diffie played gospel, rock, country and bluegrass in Oklahoma before moving to Nashville in 1986. He first won acclaim as a demo singer, his voice gracing countless cassette tapes used to shop songs to labels and artists.
This eventually led to his own recording contract with Epic Records in 1990; amazingly enough, his debut single, “Home,” shot to #1.
Many of Diffie’s songs do exhibit a traditional country foundation, especially material from his first couple of albums, A Thousand Winding Roads (1990) and Regular Joe (1992).
His third release, Honky Tonk Attitude, contained the novelty hits “John Deere Green” and “Prop Me Up Beside The Jukebox (If I Die),” and it also showed him drifting into more pop- and rock- influenced territory.
This shift became clearest of all on his fourth album. Third Rock From The Sun, his most popular to date. Diffie still included some redneck novelty numbers for which he was gaining a reputation—“Pickup Man” and “Junior’s In Love” (written by Dennis Linde)—along with straight-up rockers (“Third Rock From The Sun”) and tender ballads (“So Help Me Girl”).
Third Rock was followed by a Christmas album in 1995, Mr Christmas, which, along with standards like “Let It Snow” and “O Holy Night,” included “Leroy The Red Necked Reindeer.” Guess which one made the Top 40.
His other 1995 release, Life’s So Funny, was highlighted by yet another hit novelty tune, “Bigger Than The Beatles,” but that album and its follow-up, Twice Upon A Time, didn’t sell as well as his previous efforts.
By the late 1990s, Diffie’s hits had slowed down, but he continued to record throughout his career. In 1999 he released A Night To Remember, which included “I’m The Only Thing (I’ll Hold Against You),” a Diffie-penned song that Conway Twitty recorded just before his death in 1993.
Diffie’s albums in the new century included In Another World (Monument Records) and Tougher Than Nails (Broken Bow). He later signed to Rounder Records, and his releases for that label included Homecoming: The Bluegrass Album.
Jason Aldean name-dropped Diffie in his his song “1994,” which Diffie called an “honor.”
And speaking of 1990s country stars, Diffie later recorded an album with Sammy Kershaw and Aaron Tippin called All in the Same Boat.
Diffie passed away on March 29, 2020, due to complications from COVID-19 (coronavirus).
Remembering Joe Diffie T-shirt now available on Amazon.
This profile of Joe Diffie was adapted from the book Country Music: A Rough Guide, published in 2000 by Rough Guides.