A gem of an album from Delbert McClinton

BY MICHAEL H. PRICE

August 24, 2009

Fort Worth’s Delbert McClinton – still claiming this burg as a primary influence though Lubbock-born and long since resettled into citizen-of-the-world status – cinches his mastery of music, Southern-fried and universally applied, on a generous new CD-album called Acquired Taste (New West; $23.95). Distinguished in part by a final collaboration with Fort Worth-bred guitarist-vocalist Stephen Bruton, who died in May, this set of recordings draws heavily upon McClinton’s origins as a roadhouse entertainer, the Deep Blues and honky-tonk influences in particular.

But for every influence that he has absorbed – harmonica ace Sonny Boy Williamson II, slow-shuffle champion Jimmy Reed, the majestic Howlin’ Wolf, to name a few – McClinton has given back a thousand-fold to his preferred idioms of blues and South-by-Southwestern country. The styles on Acquired Taste may seem to vary wildly, to the listener catching McClinton’s act for the first time.

To those of us who have tracked his progress over the long term, however, the album is entirely consistent with the expectations of brilliance. He delivers a wealth of hard-charging material of an astonishing emotional range with the same profound understanding of the human condition that distinguishes his earlier gems of the 1960s (see the Fort Worth-waxed “If You Really Want Me To, I’ll Go”) and such benchmark works of the 1970s as Victims of Life’s Circumstances and two Delbert & Glen albums, pairing McClinton and Glen Clark as a duo sufficiently formidable to give the Righteous Brothers pause.

McClinton also defies some expectations, notably in longevity and constancy of purpose. At 68, he wields a voice of husky vigor and melodic accuracy. He remains attuned to the wilder side of life and its standing invitation to cut loose and relish the moment (“Mama’s Little Baby” and “Do It” are standouts on the new album), and he radiates hard-earned wisdom with “Can’t Nobody Say I Didn’t Try” and “Never Saw It Comin’.” McClinton also alludes to the jazz-club scene with conviction and flair, and he channels bayou-country swamp-rock to memorable effect. (Stephen Bruton’s appearance on “Can’t Nobody Say ...” packs a singular poignancy.)

The unrelenting surge of energy is the clincher – the current of passionate dedication that embraces a variety of musical styles while whipping them all into a distinctive manner.

McClinton has made much of his belief in Duke Ellington’s philosophy that there are “only two kinds of music… good music, and bad music, and you decide which is which.” This attitude has served him well since his younger days, but it also has made McClinton difficult to categorize as a blues singer, a rock singer or a country-and-Western singer. Hence the “acquired taste” reference in the present album’s title.

McClinton also has outlived any number of recording companies, large and small, while forging a popular identity that renders style-branding beside the point. His work in times more recent with the New West label has proved worth the waiting, for here he has thrived as a singer-songwriter who bears mentioning in the same breath with Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson and the late Doug Sahm.

Such versatility is no doubt a matter of taste, but it also is – or was – a matter of necessity for a working entertainer coming of age on Fort Worth’s demanding bar-band scene of the last century. High-lonesome traditional country music and Western swing were birthrights for McClinton. If the blues was an acquired taste, then McClinton acquired the taste instinctively, understanding the essential ties to rural Texas’ ideas of what constituted country music. A bar-band artist was expected to know Jimmy Reed’s material and Bob Wills’ material – and to make with the Sinatra vibe when the audience leaned that way. And to pack the dance-floor, by turns, with a Louis Prima jump-blues or a “Cotton-Eyed Joe.” Sometimes, all in the same set.

Such a Mulligan Stew of influences has shaped Delbert McClinton into a restless, striving artist whose devotion to a multifaceted Muse has sustained his career while transforming him into an artist of trend-defiant relevance and immense popular staying power. The taste for McClinton may be an acquired one, okay – but a delight when one has acquired the taste.

Michael H. Price’s 2006 book, Daynce of the Peckerwoods: The

Badlands of Texas Music (Music Mentor Books), covers the earlier stages of Delbert McClinton’s career in some detail. Contact: mprice@bizpress.net