Joe Tex Performing Hit Song “Hold On To What You’ve Got”; Was It STOLEN?

Singer Joe Tex hit the stage to perform his hit single “Hold On To What You’ve Got,” today (March 3, 1965) on the hit TV show “Shindig.”

The track was recorded at the legendary FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.

Joe Tex was allegedly not impressed with “Hold On To What You’ve Got,” and advised Dial Records owner/producer Buddy Killen, not to release the record.

Buddy Killen decided to release the record, without Joe Tex knowing and the record sold over 200,000 copies, and eventually moved up to #1 on the R&B charts.

But there may have been another reason that Joe Tex did not want “Hold On To What You’ve Got” released.

According to the book “Rockabilly: A Forty-Year Journey” by Billy Poore, the hit single was actually stolen.

According to “Rockabilly,” a songwriter named Charlie Feathers wrote the song “Hold On To What You’ve Got,” in 1963.

He left an unfinished version the song on a reel of tape at Tom Phillips’ (Sam Phillip’s, owner of Sun Records) studio in Memphis.

More than a year after leaving the reel of tape at the studio, Charlie and his wife Rosemary were driving through Memphis when they heard Joe Tex’s version of the song around 1964.

Charlie’s wife Rosemary said that her husband wrote every word of the song and the only difference was the title for the song, which was originally titled “One, Two, Three,” the catchy hook featured on the song.