The multiple Grammy-winner turned 75 last November, and now follows it with a yearlong "Diamond Jubilee" tour to mark it. He has a new band, and new album due in the spring.
His son made a full recovery and plays across Texas in preparing his fifth LP. Back in the warmth of his 10th-floor condo beside the Hilton Garden Inn, Delbert looks out the window over Downtown Austin, a view cutting straight down Fifth Street toward the new Antone's. Though long based in Nashville, the couple still makes it to Austin at a rate of once a month. I'm at a point in my life where I'm not trying to have a career. I got a career where I can do anything that I want to do.
McClinton's harmonica ignites the song with a wild abandon against the chugging rhythm, ushering in Channel's vocals trembling with a youthful want and energy.
That ringing harp line launched countless stampedes to the dance floor. The hit also sent the year-old Lubbock native to England with Channel for a tour featuring an opening act called the Beatles. Backstage, McClinton showed John Lennon a few tricks on the harmonica.
Later, the Fab bandleader famously credited the Texan's blues harp as an influence. Everything was just made up on the spot, and there was very little precedent of any kind to go by. In Ft. Worth, where his family moved when he was a teenager, McClinton formed the Straitjackets in , which became the house band backing Jimmy Reed, Bobby Bland, Sonny Boy Williamson, Howlin' Wolf, and every other blues legend that passed through town.
The Skyliner Club had gone to seed a long time ago, but Blue Monday there was the night black people had it. We were the only white band that ever got to play there. I had the band that knew all the artists' songs, and we were doing them good. Worth had little more to offer the aspiring musician though.
His marriage was falling apart by the end of the Sixties, and his career hadn't reached much beyond Texas.
Then she raked it all up into a pile and turned it into something. The music that has been central to their lives for more than three decades is second to their mutual respect for one another. Nothing I write spirals into the abyss. Every song reveals his mastery of another facet of blues and jazz and illustrates the ways that his nonstop energy carries these songs into the stratosphere.
Help us continue to keep our web content free and accessible to all — without paywalls or invasive pop-up ads. Your support is important because it helps us cover our costs so that we can continue bringing you the independent music journalism you know and trust. Please consider subscribing or donating to No Depression now. By Henry Carrigan on November 11, By Courtney Hartman on November 10, Delbert McClinton is the most underrated entertainers in the business.
He has unmistakable voice. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Biography American star Delbert McClinton is the most outstanding singer in music history, and that success has made the superstar a wealthy singer.
FAQ How old is Delbert? In , under the name Mac Clinton, he released his first single on the Le Cam label. Baby" in venues throughout Europe. In England, he jammed with a then-unknown group called the Beatles, inspiring the harp licks on the group's smash hit "Love Me Do.
But after 15 years with that band, McClinton returned to the bar circuit in Texas, and released his first solo LP, Victim of Life's Circumstances, in McClinton's soulful roadhouse-style rock caught fire with fans, and his debut LP spawned Genuine Cowhide in , followed by 's Love Rustler. Unfortunately, his association with ABC Records would not be long-lived, symptomatic of the bad luck McClinton would have with record companies throughout his early career.
A deal with Capricorn, which picked him up in , proved to be little better. After the release of two successful albums, Second Wind and Keeper of the Flame, and with one song poised to climb the charts, that label, too, succumbed to the recording industry's intense competition, and declared bankruptcy in When his second album for MSS, Plain from the Heart, was on its way to record shops in , the distributor, Capitol Records, dropped the label.
McClinton's efforts on that LP languished due to lack of airplay and proper promotion. In frustration--and motivated also by a tax problem that resulted in a complete takeover of his assets by the Internal Revenue Service--the singer took a seven-year break from the studio to hit the road on a relentless touring schedule that numbered live performance dates a year.
Sharing the spotlight with performers as diverse as Jimmy Buffet, the Allman Brothers, and Elvis Costello, McClinton spent most of the decade of the s observing the world from the relative safety of the stage.
Fellow musicians, who held his songwriting skills in high esteem, supported McClinton by covering his songs. Of his songwriting, McClinton told Hilts: "I never really set out to particularly write about anything. But there are things that command to be written about. You can write about two things You either love to hate somebody or you hate to love somebody. That's just about it. In , with the help of manager and close friend Wendy Goldstein, McClinton felt it was time to turn his career around.
After a televised performance on the Public Broadcasting Service's Austin City Limits, he remixed a live album from the television tapes. His instincts proved right; as critic Robert Baird noted in New Country, "This album brims with the kind of sweaty, electric energy that makes McClinton and his crack group one of the best bar bands in the world. On the heels of this success, McClinton negotiated a recording contract with Curb Records that put him back in the studio.
Clearly, McClinton's long absence from the charts hadn't fazed his fans, who eagerly awaited release of 's "I'm With You. A few years later, a duet with blues slide-guitarist Bonnie Raitt gave McClinton the exposure that had so eluded him in the past.
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