Disc jockey, performer, and record producer Joe Gracey thought his life was over when, in the late Seventies, he was diagnosed with oral cancer. Indeed, Gracey remembers walking out of the doctor’s office “determined to die.”
The Fort Worth-born former DJ for legendary Austin freeform station KOKE writes via e-mail, “I loved to tell stories, had the gift of gab and hyperbole, loved to roll words around in my mouth and use words to call down the magic. I thought I was my voice.”
Gracey underwent seven operations aimed at saving his voice, but ultimately the doctors not only had to remove his tongue and larynx, they “created entirely new ways for me to swallow and breathe.” They accomplished this by grafting skin from his shoulders and legs into his neck in what Gracey calls “the most painful thing I ever experienced.”
The psychological aftermath of his ordeal was also extremely difficult. “It did insidious things to my mind that I could not fight with mere bravery or bravado or booze or anything,” he writes. “I went about half-crazy there for a few years, both in fear of dying, and in a vain attempt to deal with the horror of what I had been through.”
Meeting wife Kimmie Rhodes ultimately brought Gracey back to life. Nowadays, he communicates by writing on one of those magic slates available on the toy aisle of any HEB. The tiny slates only have room for eight words at a time, forcing him to “hone my editing skills to an unprecedented degree.” He uses sign language and fingerspelling to talk to his family, though he admits “they have learned to turn their backs when they feel I am becoming long-winded.”
After a spell, Gracey was able to resume working on records, some of which include Willie Nelson’s Me and the Drummer and Rhodes’ Rich From the Journey. He uses e-mail to assist him as president-for-life of the couple’s label Sunbird/Jackalope Records and subject his friends to “long, ponderous tomes every few minutes,” but harbors no illusions about trying to lead a so-called “normal” life ever again.
“You don’t adjust to something as mundane and day-to-day and also important as not being able to use a telephone, or not being able to talk to your kids about stuff, or sing harmony with Kimmie onstage (or even in the car on a moonlit night),” he writes. “You deal with it, but you never adjust.”
This article appears in September 21 • 2001.