Sunday, September 11, 2005

Another Great One Gone

Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown passed away yesterday at the age of 81. He was a classic. If you've never heard of him, you owe it to yourself to get educated.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I woke up to that awful news this morning. We saw him a few years ago with Dr. John at the outdoor arena in Osaka Castle Park. He was a great showman, mixing equal parts Texas Gentleman and Guitar Badass, and even at the age of 78 or so he did almost his whole show standing up.

At one point he put down the guitar and picked up a fiddle and played it like I had never heard the instrument played before, going up and down the strings with the bow, like jazz runs on a guitar, it was something entirely his own. He was dressed all in black: Boots, pants, black cowboy shirt and black hat. Epitome of cool.

My roommate Steve just after I graduated college introduced me to Gatemouth's album "San Antonio Ballbuster," and since then I'd been interested but didn't get to see him until he headlined the Japan Blues Carnival with Dr. John. A great memory, and looking at his site you can see that he was playing shows this year, including the JazzFest, even as disease was starting to take him. Cool that he went down swinging like that, died with his boots on, so to speak.