Locating a Delbert McClinton album can be tough. It’s not that stores don’t stock his CDs — they just can’t agree on where to file them.
The singer blends R&B, country, rock, and blues into a genre-juggling sound all his own. Even McClinton, who plays at House of Blues April 25, is hard-pressed to classify himself.
“I can’t tell ’em what to call it,” he says. “For lack of a better term, I just sometimes call it `Delbert music.’ “
Duets have been McClinton’s specialty of late. He sang the Grammy-winning “Good Man, Good Woman” with Bonnie Raitt in 1991. Two years later, he stood toe-to-toe with Tanya Tucker, the duo scoring a country hit with “Tell Me About It.”
But McClinton’s youth was soaked in blues. During the early 1960s, the Texan and his Straitjackets shared stages with Howlin’ Wolf, Joe Turner, Sonny Boy Williamson and Jimmy Reed as the house band at various Ft. Worth juke joints.
“We used to work every weekend with somebody who was coming through town,” McClinton says from his Nashville home. “I got real turned on to the Jimmy Reed style of harmonica and Sonny Boy’s style. Working with those guys, I took every opportunity I could to learn what I could from them.”
Young white blues bands were scarce back then, but that didn’t faze McClinton. “We didn’t know it was. That’s what we got into,” he says.
McClinton’s atmospheric harmonica backed Texas rocker Bruce Channel on his 1962 pop chart-topper “Hey! Baby.” During a British tour with Channel later that year, a then-unknown Beatle asked McClinton for a harp lesson.
“It’s chiseled in stone that I taught John Lennon how to play harmonica,” he says. “The truth of it is, they were the opening act for about five days or so, and we traveled together and hung out.”
Clearly, McClinton has come a long way from the Ft. Worth roadhouse circuit. Yet he remains true to his roots.
Blues notes
Kenny Neal was seemingly born to play the blues. His father, harpist Raful Neal, is a Louisiana swamp blues legend.
“He always encouraged me, but he never did force anything,” says Kenny Neal, who emphasizes the familial connection by having three of his brothers in his band.
Neal’s five albums for Alligator spotlight an innovative young bluesman who’s a standout on both guitar and harp and proudly embraces tradition instead of rock-slanted histrionics.
“I guess it’s the love that I have for the music,” says Neal. “Even though I’m doing a lot of my own originals, I still don’t forget about Muddy Waters and all of the guys.”
Neal’s updated swamp blues sound will be showcased April 26 when he opens for the Steve Miller Band at the Rosemont Theatre.
– The career of Chicago record producer Ralph Bass read like a roadmap of postwar R&B. Bass, who died of a heart attack March 5 at age 85 while aboard a flight to the Bahamas, supervised a tremendous run of early ’50s hits by bandleader Johnny Otis for the Savoy label before landing at Federal Records, where he worked with the Dominoes, the Midnighters, and Little Esther. In 1956, he beat Leonard Chess to Macon, Ga., to sign James Brown.
After a stint heading King Records’ Chicago offices (where he discovered Syl Johnson), Bass was hired as a producer at Chess in 1960 and remained there until its 1975 demise. Delmark recently reissued albums by local luminaries Eddy Clearwater, Carey Bell and Lonnie Brooks that Bass produced in 1977.
– A half century ago, Leonard and Phil Chess launched their Chicago recording empire. MCA is paying tribute with “The Chess 50th Anniversary Collection,” a yearlong CD reissue series. The first nine releases include collections by Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Buddy Guy, Bo Diddley, Etta James and Chuck Berry.
The indispensable set so far is Jimmy Rogers’ “The Complete Chess Recordings,” a two-disc package containing everything the guitarist cut as a leader from 1950 to 1959. Its 51 songs include “That’s All Right,” “Walking By Myself” and “Rock This House,” along with a wellspring of rarities and unissued alternate takes.
