LISTEN: This trailblazing nightclub singer wasn’t afraid to be out and proud in the early 1960s
Troy Walker Recorded Live, came out in 1962 and featured covers of old standards like “Stormy Weather” and “Sinner Man,” as well as one controversial single that put Walker’s queerness front and center: “Happiness Is Just A Thing Called Joe.”The song was a love letter to a dreamy man named Joe.
Walker was far from the first to sing it — “Happiness Is Just A Thing Called Joe” was written for the 1943 movie musical Cabin in the Sky, and the original version was sung by Ethel Waters.
It’s since been covered by all-time great vocalists like Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, and Bette Midler. But the lyrics take on a queer tilt when they’re sung by a man like Walker: “It seems like happiness is just a thing called Joe. / He’s got a smile that makes the lilacs want to grow. / He’s got a way that makes the angels heave a sigh / When they know little Joe’s passing by,” he croons on the chorus.Walker’s version isn’t even as explicitly queer as it could be.
Where previously recorded versions of the jazz standard were sung in the first person, Walker’s was in the second: “Then he’ll kiss me,” becomes, “Then he’ll kiss you.” Of course, that was still surrounded by Walker’s homoerotically charged compliments for Joe.Naturally, Walker’s recording made waves in conservative midcentury America.
