"I play blues, sure, but don't call me a bluesman …"
Clarence 'Gatemouth' Brown
That's certainly an odd quote when you consider that Gatemouth (he was told by a high school music teacher that he had a voice like a 'rusty gate') Brown is considered one of the true proponents of the Texas blues. Yet in several interviews conducted throughout the latter years of his life, Clarence would practically bristle when someone would suggest that he was a 'bluesman'. Following in the footsteps of so many of the blues players of the past, Brown played the blues as just a part of his musical bag of tricks. Like so many rural musicians of his time, Brown essentially played whatever people wanted to hear at that time, including the blues. But the blues was not his first love. In an interview with Jas Obrecht, Brown tried to sum up his musical style as follows: "Blues and jazz is not my first music. My first music is country, Cajun and bluegrass." And yet he is so quickly identified as a world-class blues musician. A bluesman.
Brown was born in the small Louisiana town of Vinton in April, 1924. While still an infant, his parents moved a short distance away to Orange, Texas. Growing up, Brown was surrounded by music. His father was a gifted musician and local favorite who taught his children a variety of instruments as they grew up. By the time he was 10, Brown could play a host of instruments including the fiddle, mandolin, bass, drums and, of course, the guitar.
Brown found early on that he was adept at his own finger-style guitar picking. When asked about his unorthodox style of picking and which fingers he used, Brown explained "Depends on what I'm playing. I might use 'em all, I might just use my thumb. I may use an index finger. I might use a ring finger. It's unexplainable. People ask, "How do you do that?" I say "Magic." When they say "Show me how to do that," I say "I show no one nothing." " Brown went on to say that when he would play alongside his father as a child, he would ask his Dad to show him a technique, his father would say "I'm not going to show you anything." When he asked his Dad how he would learn, his fathers response was simple. "Pay attention." And pay attention he did.
Brown and his father would often play at various house parties and fish fries around their local area which kept Brown in constant learning mode.
As a teen, Brown played in a few small bands that he had formed in the local area including The Brown Skin Models before being drafted into the Army in 1946. His stint in the Army was brief. When asked about it, Brown could rattle off the days. "5 months and 10 days". When asked why he was discharged after such a short stay, Brown would look wistful and say "I don't care for imprisonment" Although he considered himself somewhat of a pacifist, he said that his parting with the military was a mutual understanding. "I just was honest with the CO and I said, "there's gotta be more than this in life for me." I stayed here everyday for the 5 months because of being depressed. So, he was a very fine man, he discharged me and said I didn't belong there. I belonged in the outside world, where I could spread my music."
After his discharge from the Army, Brown returned to Texas and relocated to Houston. It was shortly after arriving in Houston that Brown was discovered by a local club owner and budding music manager named Don Robey. As the story goes, Brown was at the Bronze Peacock one night watching T. Bone Walker perform (Browns primary influence). In the middle of his set, Walker became ill and had to leave the stage. In a rare moment of bravado, Brown walked out of the audience and up onto the stage where he grabbed Walkers guitar.
"I started to tune to E natural, that's the only key I knew, and I invented a tune right on the spot. And I'd like to quote some of the words. "My name is Gatemouth Brown and I just got to your town," and I repeated that and said "If you don’t like my style, I will not hang around." And I made $600.00 in fifteen minutes and I was broke." When Walker heard what was happening on stage, he came back up and grabbed his guitar back from me and said 'As long as I live and breathe, don't you ever pick up my guitar again!" I said, "I'm sorry Mr. Bone. I don't know what made me do it."
But Robey heard the crowd's reaction to Brown and saw them tossing money at the young guitarist. That was enough for him and he immediately took Brown on as his client and began to manage his career. The next several months, Robey booked Brown and a small backing band all over Texas for dates at small venues and clubs (including several of his own). He also secured a recording contract for him with Aladin in 1947. Brown recorded 4 sides for Aladin but the discs received very little support from Aladin and failed to make a mark commercially.
Both Robey and Brown were incensed over the way that Browns tracks cuts were handled by Aladin so Robey pulled out of the contract and formed his own label, Peacock (named after his Houston club) and Brown became the first artists he recorded.
[FONT=Tahoma]"All I can do is be me ... whoever that is". Bob Dylan [/FONT]
