I saw Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown several times. He was great
REMEMBERING GATEMOUTH BROWN
This guitar genius went far, so far beyond the blues
Musician had fled Katrina's wrath to Texas.
By Michael Corcoran
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
I have to admit that I was pretty intimidated when I met Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown at an IHOP in Beaumont last October.
It wasn't just Gate's reputation as a surly, gun-totin' contrarian that made me hope to get through the encounter with my self-esteem intact. I was in awe of his stature as the last of the original Texas electric blues guitarists. Not just a contemporary of T-Bone Walker, Pee Wee Crayton and Lightnin' Hopkins, Brown was the musician who inspired Don Robey, a notorious gangster manager, to form Peacock Records (which later merged with the Duke label), as well as the Buffalo Booking Agency, which greatly expanded the working options of top-flight R&B acts in the '50s and '60s.
Gatemouth Brown, who died Saturday in Orange at age 81, has been called "the Count Basie of the Blues" for his ability to swing in whatever genre he played, but he was especially significant in the evolution of the electric guitar player.
"Here's the man who influenced Guitar Slim, who influenced Buddy Guy, who influenced Jimi Hendrix, who influenced Stevie Vaughan," is how Clifford Antone liked to introduce Brown.
I had just completed a book, "All Over the Map: True Heroes of Texas Music," for the University of Texas Press, but when the opportunity came to interview Brown I called the editor and said to make room for one more chapter. This black man in Western wear, who could play fiddle as well as guitar, country as well as blues, needed to be in a book about music pioneers from a state where Hispanics played German music, blacks played country, farm boys played big band jazz and everyone played the blues.
Unlike the majority of subjects in the book, Gate was still alive, though reports were that it would not be for long. In July 2004, the Grammy winner was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. Chemotherapy was the only option, but when doctors put the survival rate at only 15 percent after seven weeks of treatment, Gate decided against it. His publicist said doctors had given Gate about six months to live.
I had come to East Texas to write what would be, in effect, a living obituary. But Gatemouth was still very much larger than life when I approached his table at the pancake restaurant. He eyed me suspiciously for about 10 minutes as I sat down, met his biographer, Colin Walters, and ordered coffee.
"Give me twenty bucks" was the first thing Brown said. It stunned me for a few seconds. Did he expect me to pay him for an interview?
"Twenty bucks," he repeated, motioning a "give it here" with his fingers. As I stammered out something or other, Walters laughed. Then Brown laughed.
"He does that to everyone," Walters said.
"Had you going," Gate added, lighting his ever-present pipe.
The plan was to go to nearby Orange, where Gatemouth grew up, and he'd show me around and talk about coming up in the business. But Gate was tired. He just wanted to sit outside his brother Bobby's house.
"Let's get out of here," Brown said after about an hour of me trying to get him to talk about his days "on the Deuce," as Orange's former black nightclub district on Second Street was called.
"I don't remember nothin' 'bout that," Brown said before launching into a bitter monologue about how he would tear up T-Bone Walker in guitar battles and how all those more famous Chicago guys — Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Albert King — were not in Gate's league because they could only play the blues. It was tiring.
"I want to go home," Gate said, standing up. "Why don't you follow me to Slidell? I'll make some time for you tomorrow."
So there I was, driving another five hours, but I didn't really have a choice. There was no story yet. I didn't know any more about this multi-instrumentalist with the longest, skinniest fingers that ever flew up and down a fretboard than I did when I left Austin.
At 10 a.m. the next morning I was at Gatemouth's front door. About three series of knocks and 10 minutes later, the skinny man in a white T-shirt and yellow fluffy SpongeBob SquarePants slippers came to the door, yawning, and let me inside. The house on stilts at the edge of Lake Pontchartrain looked like a cool, nautically themed clubhouse, with a piano, random percussion instruments, a fiddle, a couple of brass instruments and an accordion strewn here and there.
Gate, discovered by Robey as a singing drummer in 1947, could play any instrument he put his hands on. After Gate hacked and coughed his way through a couple hits of ganja to go with his coffee, he played DJ. His favorite artist was Gatemouth Brown.
"Check this out," he said time after time, first during his fiddle jam with Canned Heat on the 1973 album that helped rejuvenate his career, then when he made his guitar say "woman" on a later solo album. He was jumping around playing air guitar like a 12-year-old.
And then he turned bitter again, after playing the original version of "Blues Power," with him trading licks and vocals with Eric Clapton. He was expecting a career boost when the Clapton album came out, but was disappointed that his presence had been edited.
"They just took all the Gate out," he said. "Exact same record otherwise."
During the next few hours, Gatemouth was as animated as the characters of the old Saturday morning cartoons he had on stacks and stacks of VHS tapes. He talked about growing up in Orange, one of five children. Gate's father, a star of local string bands, taught him to play fiddle and guitar at a young age.
"People always accuse me of selling out to the white man," he said. When Brown started infusing his sets with country, bluegrass and Cajun music, it didn't sit well with hard-line blues fans — like those at Antone's in 1975 who had come to hear "Okie Dokie Stomp," "Dirty Work At the Crossroads" and other nascent R&B hits but instead heard Gate's takes on Bob Wills and Buck Owens. "Does that mean I was selling out when I was 6 years old and my daddy was teaching me this music? They can say what they want. I know who the (expletive) I am."
When I asked Gatemouth how he'd like to be remembered, he shot back, "Now hold on; I'm not dead yet." I didn't mean that, I backpedaled. It's a question I ask in almost every interview.
"Just tell 'em ol' Gate put a smile on the people's faces," he said.
Charlie Sexton, who produced Brown's last session in July 2004, said the thing that stuck out most was just how little of the great instrumentalist's skill had deteriorated in six decades.
"A lot of musicians play late into their careers and you have to make allowances for their age, but not Gatemouth," Sexton said. "We were playing and I was thinking, 'He's still a total badass.' "
Brown was reluctant to heed warnings about Hurricane Katrina and leave his lakeside home. Finally, his youngest daughter fetched him, not taking no for an answer, and drove him to Orange. He watched on TV as Slidell was destroyed.
Rick Cady, his booking agent, told The Associated Press that Gatemouth "was completely devastated" losing his home to the hurricane.
"I'm sure he was heartbroken, both literally and figuratively . . . it weighed heavily on his soul."
Plans were under way to have Gatemouth moved to Austin, where he had many friends and fans. Antone had reserved a room at the Wellesley Inns & Suites and found doctors and nurses to care for Brown around the clock. But Sept. 4, Gatemouth suffered a major heart attack and was hospitalized in Port Arthur. He died Saturday night at his brother Bobby's home in Orange.
I was thinking that I should've asked Gatemouth for a keepsake. But he leaves memories much more meaningful than objects he once held or pieces of paper he scribbled on.
"A lot of people play music for the wrong reasons," he said in October. "I never played to get women, though I had my share. I didn't do it for the money, though it pays the bills. I realized early on that I could create something beautiful that would build love within the people who came out to hear it."
Gatemouth's good friend John Loudermilk, who wrote "Tobacco Road" and many other classics, once said of the man whose likes we'll not see again: "He's a genius, because a genius creates his own language."
Funeral plans in Orange are pending.
mcorcoran@statesman.com; |
