The Silver King Rhythm Band Live In Norway - Rockabilly, Jazz, & Blues

The Silver King Band Live In Norway 

The Silver King Band had three fully-functional front-persons in Flo Mingo, St. Petey Twig, & Rock Bottom.

Their set lists were packed with rockabilly long before The Stray Cats reignited interest in the genre, and like Brian & The Boys, they wore only the most stylish vintage clothing, & were more popular in Europe than in the States.  But they accomplished it without a guitarist!  

Their billing often changed from The Silver King Band to The Silver King Rhythm Band, but their line-up was consistent.  Piano pounder St. Petey Twig was the ringmaster & generally introduced the songs.  Lead vocals were evenly distributed between him, the washboard playing Flo Mingo, and harmonica player Rock Bottom.   

Rock’s blues pedigree is pure—his brother-in-law was the blues singer Roy Book Binder, and blues legend Eddie Kirkland played on The Silver King Band’s live album Live At The Dive.  He often filled the spaces a lead guitarist would.  Rock continued to release albums after the band broke up.  Flo Mingo retired, & St. Petey Twig became a solo act in The Florida Keys as Barry Cuda.

Live was the way to experience them, & I’ve seen them at least 30 times.  While they often played dives, & beach bars in the U.S. (where our paths intersected), overseas they played festivals & were regularly on TV.  This live set was recorded for a television broadcast in Norway.  

Here, they almost exclusively cover rockabilly & blues standards (except for a sprinkling of The Entertainer from The Sting that Twig pretends to stumble through to the delight of the audience).  The blues numbers include Rock Bottom’s own inspired composition Boogie Woogie U.F.O. & Twig’s My Balls Are Blue From Loving You.  But they also cover Keep Your Big Mouth Shut, Don't You Feel My Leg, & Who Was That A While Ago? 

The rockabilly standards usually fell to Flo Mingo during this performance she steps into the spotlight for; Oo-Ba-La Baby, Hop, Skip & Jump, and Black Slacks.   St. Petey Twig takes the lead on a few; Drinkin' Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee, & Sea Cruise—he generally sang lead on the tracks that originated in New Orleans like Working In A Coal Mine & I’m Walkin’.

They were all the master of their instrument, but they had an amazing chemistry onstage, & formed a deeply intuitive unit.  Each member slavishly serves the song, and doesn't distract from whoever is singing lead.  And although the strangely sexy Flo Mingo has a bell and a bicycle horn attached to her washboard, she uses them with restraint and focuses on supplying rhythm.  She so consistently serves up only what serves the song, it could be said that she's the band's Flo RINGO.  

Flo was tall and slender, with dark eyes and tight curls, and she drew men to her organically--not because of her style of dress, or her behavior,  Offstage, she was quiet and politely poised and seemed to transform back into a mere mortal.  But the spell was cast, and guys swarmed around her & I was not immune.  It was as if she was the living embodiment of Curtis Mayfield's Gypsy Woman.  (If I had to guess, that's one reason her long-term relationship with St. Petey Twig didn't last).

But enough describing them to you--here's the video that the audio for this post is taken from (59 minutes in) and you get all of Twig's stage patter as well: Silver King Rhythm Band.

There’s a ringing in the mix if you turn it up too loud, but being primarily a touring live act, examples of their brilliance on record are rare.  I believe all three members have passed, so uncovering a forgotten set, like this one, is all we can hope for. I have a lot more of their stuff to share with you, so please check back.

 

Fantasy American Explorer Series

About one year ago we posted Exploring The American Explorer Series, an in-depth overview of an almost-forgotten Elektra/Nonesuch series from the 1990s which sought to shine a spotlight on some American musical artists whose contributions were under-regarded or near-forgotten. As usual, we got some feedback from our regular followers.

However one Anonymous comment stood out:

“The American Explorer Series of the early 90s at Elektra was the product of the best intentions of the label's leadership to revitalize deserving American artists coupled with the extraordinary skill and ability of the A&R staff at the time to deliver on the vision. Profit motives and the bottom line were NOT a factor in this mission!”

We were intrigued by this remark and queried the writer for more details, which subsequently did follow via email. It turned out that one of the actual people involved in the American Explorer Series, Elektra A&R man Peter Lubin, had reacted as he was pleasantly surprised to see that some people still remembered that series fondly!

During the year emails were exchanged and the idea of doing an interview with Peter started to grow and ultimately materialized in a Zoom meeting with Koen last December.  He somehow managed to convert the rambling but highly informative and entertaining chat into a more coherent text. The results were shared with Peter and after loads of emails and revisions a fully-illustrated 27-page PDF had become a reality!

As everyone involved was rather pleased with the results, we continued on to the next phase of the project: a brand new “Fantasy” American Explorer Series with full input from Peter!  He took this challenge very seriously and subsequently presented us with a massive master list of 84(!) potential candidates that could possibly qualify by meeting the criteria to ‘bring forgotten artists back into the spotlight’. Even so, that list scared the sh#t out of us. Where to start??!?

With Peter’s guidance, we began living out the "fantasy" of being hard-boiled A&R men making critical decisions for the good of the record label as well as for the benefit of the listening public at large. This too required plenty of time as we took the mission seriously indeed. Some of the artists hadn’t recorded anything in years and it seemed too far-fetched to “revitalize” them, while others were disqualified owing to their citizenship (this is the ‘American’ Explorer Series, after all!) or a variety of other factors. Some, sadly, passed on during the time it took to bring this project to fruition.

We then hemmed and hawed about how we could approach compiling the music to accompany the interview. Finally it was decided to simply find the most recent recordings by each artist on the list and choose an appropriate song from that material. This rule applies in many but not in all cases.

Jonder took the lead and presented us with compilations of potential songs. Unlike some Tesla dude who enjoys wielding a chainsaw, we very slowly fine-tuned the number of chosen songs.

Jon’s original concept for the blog still stands—we post CD-length compilations—so there was the task of paring the material down to two volumes. All that remained was the running order of the tracks, which we created with an eye towards offering the best possible listening experience.

Koen submitted artwork for the front and back covers, and capped it all off with this introduction. ;-)

We let Peter have the final word: “I think this evokes the spirit of the original undertaking as well as the fantasy that we set out to conjure!”

For your reading and listening pleasure (and musical education) we proudly present…

Fantasy American Explorers Volume 1: Staxability

Fantasy American Explorers Volume 2: Kentuckiana

A fully illustrated 27 page interview with Peter Lubin PDF

Call Me The Wolf: Howlin' Wolf 1969-1973

Koen writes: One of the greatest blues artists from the past is probably Chester ‘Howlin’ Wolf’ Burnett, who first recorded for Sam Phillips’ SUN Records and later for Leonard & Phil’s Chess Records with amazing results. His work can be easily found in the blogosphere, including two great compilations shared by Babs and Butterboy.

But these fantastic sets focus only on his early career’s songs, up to the mid-sixties.  If you look at Amazon, it isn’t any different, countless early work compilations of sometimes dubious origin and quality, a shame really. 

In fact, there has never been an official (or unofficial!) collection of his final years’ work!  Once I realized that a new JOKONKY project was born: Call Me The Wolf 1969-1973.

In this final years' time frame, Wolf released five albums, of which The London Howlin’ Wolf Sessions is probably the most well-known, it even received a Deluxe treatment as a double CD with the original album plus alternate takes! Therefore I chose only one track, but it’s the classic Red Rooster, with Wolf explaining to Eric Clapton how it’s supposed to be done!

I remember vividly the first time I heard 1969’s The Howlin' Wolf Album, and was shocked, such a different take on those famous songs. Obviously I wasn’t alone, it got very bad reviews at the time and sales sucked.  Since then it has received a kind of re-appraisal and I’ve become more open-minded too ;-)

The spooky version of Moanin’ At Midnight deserves to be heard, it’s stunning! For the full-length Back Door Man I opted for a vinyl rip as that includes the spoken intro by Wolf, until now all CD versions of this album botched that up which resulted in 20+ seconds missing!

In the nineties, two Chess collections were released: a three-disc set The Chess Box and a two-disc Ain't Gonna Be Your Dog. The first one had the hits plus some unreleased work, the second focussed on alternate takes, single-only tracks, etc. Both featured a couple of (excellent!) songs from his later career which made these perfect for inclusion here!

Message To The Young is in many ways the most different album compared to his other recordings. Responsible for this were Sonny Thompson (piano, arranger, conductor, lyrics) and Cash McCall (producer, conductor). I selected 2 tracks that give a good indication of the rest of the album.

Live And Cookin' At Alice's Revisited gives us a chance to hear Wolf in a live setting with his regular band The Wolf Gang, brilliant. The Back Door Wolf is his final album and gathered good reviews, but not many people have heard it, I think.  From those last two albums I picked 3 tracks each.

From Nigel Dixon To Willie Dixon!

Anyone with the slightest interest in the blues [Koen writes] will sooner or later encounter Willie Dixon’s name, whether as bass player, producer, writer/composer, or vocalist…

For me, it was probably the first 3 that piqued my interest and it wasn’t until I found a second-hand EP with 4 tracks from the American Folk Blues Festival that I heard him singing as well, in this case on "Crazy For My Baby". But any album I saw at the (pre-CD!) time featuring his name usually had his compositions sung by Muddy, the Wolf, and the other usual suspects of the Chicago blues scene.

In my early 80s travelling days I was pleasantly surprised to find a cassette of his 1969 I Am The Blues album in Malaysia of all places!

But after that not much happened until I discovered that in 1989 Don Snowden had written a book about Dixon:  I Am The Blues… I requested a Dutch friend to get me a copy and in 1995 I was reading it, a riveting story!

Later during the Napster and Audiogalaxy (remember those?!) days I finally managed to get some (low quality, 128 kbps) mp3 tracks of his songs, pretty cool, although truth be told Dixon was an average vocalist, at least compared to Muddy & the Wolf, but it was pretty cool to hear more of him.

Chess issued a 2 CD Willie Dixon Box in 1989 which was an interesting mix of his production work and compositions, but again, not much of his singing.

1988 saw a new Dixon album, produced by T-Bone Burnett: Hidden Charms, which rightfully won a 1989 Grammy Award.

In 1995 a 14-track single disc compilation was released: The Original Wang Dang Doodle: The Chess Recordings & More, which focussed on the man’s voice and even included some unissued tracks at the time, starting with his own first 1954 version of Wang Dang Doodle and ending with the 1990 Rob Wasserman collaboration Dustin’ Off The Bass.  Brilliant, I bought a copy immediately and still have it in my collection.

Fast forward to the present, various Willie Dixon compilations are widely available but most shoddily put together, usually mixing anything and everything without proper liner notes and just presenting all tracks under his name. Chances are very high that "Wang Dang Doodle" on one of those is the Howling’ Wolf’s version and not Willie’s, irritating to say the least! Therefore compiling a new collection seemed not a bad idea, a kind of The Original Wang Dang Doodle disc 2!  

What have we got? We start with Koko Taylor: her 1969 album was produced by Dixon and had several of his compositions, including 3 on which he sang as well, plus a single, "The Egg Or The Hen".  On Howlin’ Wolf’s "Going Down Slow", Willie does the introduction.

We have a couple of live tracks from various American Folk Blues Festivals, recorded between 1962 and 1966.  To get a better idea of Willie’s bass-playing skills, check out the 1966 live performance of Bassology.

Chuck E. Weiss recorded in 1970 a cover of the old "Down The Road A Piece" with Dixon, which only saw the light of day in 2002.  A semi-bootleg concert with Johnny Winter recorded at the Liberty Hall, Houston Texas on May 9th, 1971, gives us a cool performance of "Spoonful"!

For his 1973 album Catalyst, he recorded a slightly different version of "Wang Dang Doodle".  I selected one song each of I Am The Blues and Hidden Charms.

For the 1986 soundtrack of Scorsese’s The Color Of Money, Robbie Robertson got Willie on board and together with Hiram Bullock (g), Delmar Brown (keyboards), Mark Egan (b), Kenwood Dennard or Ricky Sebastien (d), and Gil Evans (arranger), recorded "Don’t You Tell Me Nothin’". This is a slightly different version of "Don't You Tell Nobody", which Willie recorded with Memphis Slim years ago in 1960 for Willie’s Blues…  Recycling the blues!

Finally, we return where it all started in 1949 with The Big Trio’s "Signifying Monkey".

Chuck E. Weiss: Sneaky Anthems For Old Souls

According to Wikipedia (quoth Koen), Chuck E. Weiss was known for an eclectic mix of blues, beat poetry, and rock & roll. His music included strains of every rhythmic style from nursery rhymes to zydeco…

The first time I ever heard Chuck’s name was probably in Rickie Lee Jones’s hit "Chuck E.’s In Love", but I had no idea who she was singing about… Much later when I got into Tom Waits and had read about the connections between these three, I started paying more attention to Chuck. Apparently, he had written a few songs with Tom and featured in the title of another, "Jitterbug Boy (Sharing a Curbstone with Chuck E. Weiss, Robert Marchese, Paul Body and The Mug and Artie)" …

In the pre-digital days, I had no idea of his first album The Other Side of Town, which was released in 1981. I wasn’t the only one, as it didn’t make much of an impact.  However, 1999’s Extremely Cool was a different story, as it featured Tom Waits prominently and had some great (weird) songs on it, e.g. "Do You Know What I Idi Amin"! I did manage to get some digital tracks from it, courtesy of Napster…

John E. Depp (left) and Chuck E. Weiss (right)

Old Souls & Wolf Tickets appeared on the scene in 2001, without Waits and more in a Delta blues style. As a curiosity, it had a great collaboration with Willie Dixon from 1970 on it, with Chuck covering the old Don Raye classic "Down The Road A Piece" from the 1940s!

In 2006 he released 23rd & Stout, featuring an exploration of many blues and rumba styles with more than a nod towards Tom Waits. His last album Red Beans and Weiss appeared in 2014, again a very decent collection of songs.  He often performed live with his band the Goddamn Liars in and around Los Angeles and was at times joined by Johnny Depp on guitar.  

Weiss died on July 20, 2021, in Los Angeles at the age of 76. He suffered from cancer before his death. All in all, Chuck delivered a remarkably consistent number of high-quality (weird) songs and therefore imo certainly deserves a Jonderblog compilation! Making compilations such as these is kind of fun, as I usually try to include a few odd & sods as well, and luckily Chuck recorded a few songs for compilations such as Son of Rogues Gallery (and tributes to Kinky Friedman and Elmore James).

However, the Willie Dixon collaboration (Willie on bass & vocals, Sunnyland Slim on piano, Shakey Horton on harmonica, Buster Benton on guitar) triggered a memory, something from my pre-travelling days when I was still working in Holland and a rabid 50s rock & roll/rockabilly fan, believe it or not…

In the mid-1970s, I started ordering albums and singles from Ronny Weiser, an American rockabilly fanatic who revived the careers of forgotten artists such as Ray Campi and Mac Curtis by bringing them back into his recording studio. In 1976 Weiser started recording new artists, and I vaguely recalled his two Rollin’ The Rock compilation albums (with dreadful artwork/lay-out, done by himself…) 

As I had sold off my record collection years ago, I did some digital digging and sure enough I found those two albums, both featuring a certain Chuck Weiss! On Vol. 1 there’s a great version of Big Joe Turner’s "Boogie Woogie County Girl", again with Dixon & co.! Vol. 2 has a more rockabilly-sounding track, "Callin’ Loud", unfortunately without any information about who’s playing on it, but still pretty cool. As far as I know, neither track has ever been released on CD, so a worthwhile addition to this compilation!

Exploring The American Explorer Series

Last month (Koen writes] Jonder came up with this question: "Are you familiar with the Elektra Nonesuch American Explorer Series from the 1990's?  It would be cool to do a sampler for that series.  Terry Adams from NRBQ produced two of the albums (for Boozoo Chavis and Chuck Berry's pianist Johnnie Johnson), and Ben Vaughn produced two others (Charlie Feathers and Arthur Alexander).  The label did release a compilation, but it came out in 1991 after only 4 of the 11 albums in the series had been issued."

Sheepishly I admitted being familiar with Johnnie Johnson’s and Arthur Alexander’s records, but never had been aware that they were part of an Elektra Nonesuch series…

These records covered a wide range of styles: rockabilly (Charlie Feathers), blues (Johnnie Johnson), country/Americana (Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Guy Clark, and The Kentucky Headhunters), zydeco (Boozoo Chavis), soul (Arthur Alexander, Fontella Bass), gospel (Vernard Johnson, The Five Blind Boys Of Alabama, and Fontella Bass), and Latin (Eddie Palmieri)…

And thus a new project was born!

Putting on my Sherlock Holmes hat and armed with a digital magnifying glass I dove headfirst in the murky depths of the World Wide Web.  Most of the albums weren’t too difficult to locate, either on obscure/forgotten blogs or through dubious file-sharing thingies.

The only one giving me serious headaches was The Five Blind Boys Of Alabama Featuring Clarence Fountain’s Deep River album.  Despite my considerable efforts, I found zilch…

Of course, there are some copies for sale available on eBay, but I always consider it a challenge to find them somewhere instead.  When the going gets tough, the tough get going to… YouTube! There I found 2 songs from the album of decent enough quality to be allowed into my project!

I rounded up some album art and reviews from various sources and mucked around with them a few times until they fit my PDF format.  Last part was coming up with a cover design and writing this piece!

The result is a 22-track sampler which sounds pretty good, although Eddie Palmieri is the odd one out. His Latin album is not bad at all, but very different style-wise from the rest of the series!  Anyway, hear the results and judge for yourself.

Twilight Time at Blue Note

The 1970s weren’t very kind to the Blue Note label [says Koen]: jazz was under pressure by rock and pop, and talent like Grant Green, Ronnie Laws, Ronnie Foster, Bobby Hutcherson, Bobbi Humphrey and Donald Byrd were recorded in more commercial settings that were laced with wispy R&B, disco grooves and strings.

In the mid-’80s, however the arrival of Bruce Lundvall as CEO led to a proper reactivation of the label, and under him Blue Note thrived on creative and commerce-savvy fronts.

Lundvall brought on board newcomers like the pianistic guitarist Stanley Jordan and the one-man choir Bobby McFerrin; started a program for reissues and previously unreleased recordings; and recruited legacy Blue Note artists like Freddie Hubbard and Woody Shaw. 

He also invested in highly influential stylists like Cassandra Wilson, Don Pullen, John Scofield, Joe Lovano, Greg Osby and Jason Moran; and experienced unimaginable sales with Norah Jones’ debut.

During the late 1980s and early 90s, I spent considerable time browsing through cassette shops(!) in Penang, Malaysia, and Bangkok, Thailand, as I was in between vinyl and CDs. Among the tapes I bought were Bobby McFerrin’s first Blue Note solo album Spontaneous Inventions, the great Duke Ellington’s Money Jungle reissue with Charles Mingus and Max Roach, and Stevie Ray Vaughn’s first two solo albums.

You may wonder what the connection is between Blue Note and Stevie Ray Vaughn.  I had read about one particular Blue Note album which I couldn’t find anywhere. Only much, much later I finally managed to score a digital copy and was very pleased to be able to play it at last! I guess not many music fans are aware of this classic album at all.

Tenor saxophonist Bennie Wallace had only one album on Blue Note, 1985’s Twilight Time. The producer, of all people, was Dr. John (The Night Tripper!), who gave it a neat R&B and funk vibe!

The core musicians included Ray Anderson on trombone, Eddie Gomez on acoustic bass, Chris Parker and Jack DeJohnette on drums, John Scofield on guitar, and the good old doctor himself on piano & organ. Tracks 1 and 7 included Stevie Ray Vaughan on guitar, Bob Cranshaw on electric bass, and Bernard Purdie on drums.

With a lineup like this you hardly could go wrong, and Twilight Time doesn’t let you down.  It swings in all the right places!  [Leonard Feather called it "hectically eclectic" - jonder]

Bennie and Dr. John teamed up later once more, for the 1988 Bull Durham soundtrack, for two tracks in a similar vein (one with Bonnie Raitt on vocals!), and therefore I added these as bonus tracks (#10 & 11). As far as I know this classic record is only available second hand nowadays -- and certainly not in this slightly extended version only here on jonderblog, so enjoy!

Another Music in a Different Kirchen

Well, it's the same Bill Kirchen, but he's in somebody's living room. A tip of the ten gallon hat to MrDave (lover of music and film), who pointed us toward some great footage of Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen performing "Everybody's Doin' It" (a Western Swing tune originally recorded by the Modern Mountaineers) in the 1976 film Hollywood Boulevard!  

It's a B-movie about making B-movies, produced by the B-movie master (Commander Roger Corman).  Hollywood Boulevard was the directorial debut of Allan Arkush and Joe Dante.  Three years later, Arkush directed Rock & Roll High School.

At the 1:23 mark of this here video, a young Bill Kirchen (sporting a pair of bright red slacks) favors us with a tasty Telecaster solo, while the merry Airmen keep buckin' and truckin' along!

Let's give a hand to the half dozen readers (that's more than you can count on one hand) who singlehandedly persuaded Stinky to share another Bill Kirchen gem. Stinky has lovingly fashioned a "Living Room Session" (hosted by Elderly Instruments) into a new Homemade Record!  

Bill sings songs and tells tales about Mississippi John Hurt, Minnesota Bob Dylan, Dan "Hot Licks" Hicks, Nick "Name" Lowe, and the honorably aforementioned Cmdr. Cody (ret.)  We may never get to see Machete Maidens of Mora Tau (the movie shot by the characters in Hollywood Boulevard), but if you listen to this set you will find out what happens when you take three Bennies and your semi truck won't start!

Gnarly Guitarists: Bill Kirchen (part 2)

Bill Kirchen has played alongside Danny Gatton, Roy Buchanan, Evan Johns, Billy Hancock, Tom Principato, Jorma Kaukonen, Redd Volkaert, and The Nighthawks.  He has appeared on albums by Gene Vincent, Link Wray, & Elvis Costello.  He's released solo albums for the UK’s Proper and Demon labels, as well as Black Top and Hightone in the US.  No small feat for a kid from Ann Arbor (where he was a classmate of IGGY POP!)  The photo at left is Bill riding high in Ann Arbor, back in 1962.

Bill was joined on his own Word To The Wise album by Costello, Lowe, Cody, Austin de Lone (from Eggs Over Easy), Paul Carrack, Maria Muldaur, and Dan Hicks (who cowrote and sang the title track as a duet with Kirchen).  Bill's wife Louise Kirchen also sings on Word To The Wise, and she has written songs for several of Bill's albums.  Bill has also written some great originals -- check out the double entendre "Talkin' About Chicken" (with Sarah Brown).

Bill was asked to join Nick Lowe’s backing group THE IMPOSSIBLE BIRDS alongside Geraint Watkins, and Watkins played on Kirchen's Hammer Of The Honky Tonk Gods album.

This is the second volume of Stinky's Best of Bill Kirchen, and it features Bill performing with Commander Cody, The Moonlighters, plus songs from his solo career.  Stinky promises, "If these go over well, I have a great solo live show that I’ll edit and turn into something Jon-Ky."

Send us a comment, and let's make this happen!

Delbert McClinton: Lost In A Dream & Early Tracks

Delbert McClinton wasn’t pleased when his “Crazy Cajun Recordings” for Huey P. Meaux were released, and he didn’t cooperate or share any session information.  Delbert’s a packrat whose treasure trove of mementos was opened to his biographer Diana Finlay Hendricks (author of Delbert McClinton: One Of The Fortune Few).   

It’s common practice that early recordings get released when an artist becomes famous—or that an odds & ends album is released by their former label when an artist scores a hit on another label.   

Houston’s Huey P. Meaux had a hand in many artists’ success, producing hits for George Jones, The Sir Douglas Quintet, Freddie Fender, The Big Bopper, and Barbara Lynn.  A former barber, Meaux used to say he went from “cutting hair to cutting hits,” and he got his start when records were still being sold out of the trunks of cars.  

Delbert recounted that he was recording for Meaux’s Fort Worth’s counterpart Major Bill Smith, who thought “If You Really Want Me To, I’ll Go” might have potential.  “He called up Huey Meaux in Houston, and played it for him.  Huey offered Bill five hundred dollars for the song on the spot.  That’s when Major Bill knew he had something.”  The song was licensed to Smash Records but was pulled off the air because the ownership of the publishing was clouded—becoming a country hit for Waylon Jennings in 1967.  

Major Bill recorded artists in a basement studio at a local radio station KFJZ, often hiring Delbert & The Rondells as the backing group.  That’s how Delbert wound up playing harmonica on Bruce Channel’s “Hey Baby”.  When there was time left on the clock, he’d let Delbert cut something.  Major Bill released at least 18 singles by Delbert’s band The Rondells between 1963 and 1970, several of them becoming regional hits.

That’s where a lot of the tracks on Lost In A Dream & Early Tracks are from.  Lost In A Dream became a bit of a holy grail for me.  I was unable to track down the cassette version that I found online, but pieced together the ten tracks listed from the best available sources.  In the process I found a whole mess of tracks on YouTube, & the rest were most likely recorded for Meaux.

Ronnie Kelly, Billy Sanders, & Delbert broke away from McClinton’s previous band The Straitjackets, and they combined Ronnie & Delbert’s first names to form their new band name, The Rondells (sometimes credited as The Ron-Dells).  

Delbert Part Three!

Stinky sez: You know someone’s a great artist when you put together a “Best Of” collection, and their Grammy winning duet with Bonnie Raitt doesn’t show up until the end of the third volume!  

Volume 3 also includes tracks of Delbert McClinton guesting on releases by Roy Buchanan & Frankie Miller.  McClinton’s a great duet partner, as evidenced by his three albums with his old friend, Glen Clark.

Clark had moved from Fort Worth TX to Laurel Canyon and wrote a letter to Delbert urging him to make the trip — explaining that the artists’ community was a place where audiences were hungry for singer/songwriters. The change in audience allowed Delbert the freedom to further develop his own unique mix of Texas Roadhouse Blues, country, R&B, and soul.  

Delbert seems to have more lifetime friends than the average recording artist.  As the old joke goes: “In show business, they stab you in the front.”  There's truth to that, but Delbert’s an exception. He’s still friends with members of his first bands, as well as Bruce Channel & Glen Clark — many of whom have joined him on his annual Sandy Beaches Cruise.  The next cruise leaves Fort Lauderdale on January 13th of 2024 and returns on January 20th.  

Another Bottle Of Wine With Delbert McClinton

What put Delbert McClinton on the map (says Stinky) was the song he wrote after that divorcee (the one who accompanied Delbert from Texas to Laurel Canyon) up and left him “sweepin’ out a warehouse in West LA.” “Two More Bottles Of Wine” became Emmylou Harris’s third #1 hit, and a country music staple.

Delbert had a #8 hit with fellow Texan Jerry Lynn Williams‘ “Giving It Up For Your Love”. Delbert's solo albums are consistently impressive, but none more than 1980's The Jealous Kind, which features "Giving It Up" and a performance of the title track which rivals Ray Charles' version. Most of the songs on Volume 1 are from this period. Delbert toured almost nonstop for the next ten years. There was a glaringly obvious Peruvian Marching Powder break during the (otherwise impressive) show I caught around 1985.

McClinton moved to Nashville and continued to write hits for others, while his own albums topped the blues charts. His most recent Grammy was a duet with Bonnie Raitt on “Good Man, Good Woman”.  Another duet with Tanya Tucker was a Top 5 hit. Duets with Iris DeMent and Kacey Jones are included in today's Best of Delbert McClinton, Vol. 2.

Delbert retired during the COVID pandemic, with the exception of his annual Sandy Beaches cruise — which is scheduled to set sail in 2024 with guests The Mavericks, Marcia Ball, Paul Thorn, The Band Of Heathens, Lee Roy Parnell, and more! His biography Delbert McClinton: One Of The Fortunate Few was published in 2017.

Hey Delbert! We Wanna Know If You'll Be On Our Blog

Delbert McClinton may be best-known among other singer/songwriters (Stinky writes), despite winning 4 Grammys and releasing 20 solo albums. While still in his teens, McClinton and his band played desegregated Texas roadhouses. They backed blues artists passing through (Bo Diddley, Lightnin' Hopkins, Muddy Waters), and accompanied Jimmy Reed and Sonny Boy Williamson on short Southern tours.

Delbert’s first taste of international fame came when he played the harmonica on Bruce Channel’s “Hey Baby”, which reached #1 in the US and #2 in the UK in 1962. At the time, pick-up bands were more likely to have horns than harmonica, but Channel insisted on Delbert.

I had never really even been out of Texas, (Delbert told Lonestar Music Magazine.) So to go to England was a big deal. As for meeting the Beatles… we were all on common ground at that point. We were the same age, we had the same dreams, we were going to do the same things, and on and on and on. And it wasn’t until after I’d been back from over there, maybe a year before the Beatles broke it wide open, that John (Lennon) mentioned to somebody in an interview that he was encouraged by the harmonica on “Hey Baby.” So that has been romanticized now to the point where “I taught him everything he knew.”

McClinton’s band The Ron-Dels put out a single Delbert wrote (“If You Really Want Me To, I’ll Go”) that reached the Top 20 in some cities. They also covered “Hey Baby”, augmenting Delbert’s harmonica with 60’s-era organ.

Delbert’s friend Glen Clark had moved to Laurel Canyon and urged Delbert to join him, explaining that the artists’ community was a place where audiences were hungry for singer/songwriters. Delbert’s girlfriend had a car and a divorce settlement, so they made the trip. “And just like that, we became hippies,” as Delbert recalls. In California, Delbert further developed his unique mix of Texas Roadhouse Blues, country, R&B, and soul.

The duo Delbert & Glen released several albums. 1972’s Clean was produced by T-Bone Burnett, and 1973’s Subject To Change included Delbert’s “Let Me Be Your Lover", which was covered by Dr. Hook. Glen Clark was also a solid songwriter: his "I Feel The Burden (Being Lifted Off My Shoulders)" became a hit for Rita Coolidge. After a brief thirty-year break, Delbert & Glen released Blind, Crippled, & Crazy in 2013.

The Blues Brothers covered Delbert's “B Movie Box Car Blues”, which was pretty racy for the time with a line that sounds like, “She said she sure could dig it if I rode her.” Never mind that the lyric sheet reads: “She parked inside of town, laid the Rambler down, she said she sure could dig if I'd knew her”. After regaling his intended with tales of various hookups in a Rambler, a DeSoto, & the titular boxcar with “a hobo woman”, Delbert brings it all home with: “Look for me Sunday, gonna be there honey, with something special just for you.”

Yeah, a mouthful of hot death.

At Belushi & Aykroyd’s insistence, Delbert appeared on Saturday Night Live and performed Chuck Berry’s “Talking ‘Bout You”, which is included in Volume 1 of The Best Of Delbert McClinton. Delbert was linked to another SNL alum when his song “Weatherman" was featured in Bill Murray’s Groundhog Day. Volume 2 to follow!

Gnarly Guitarists: Clem Clempson

Stinky's back with a double-disc compilation, "The Best of Clem Clempson"!  This one stretches all the way back to Clem's early days as guitarist with the British blues band Bakerloo.  The compilation is hot and heavy on the Humble Pie (live and studio recordings). It also includes Clempson's work with Jack Bruce, Roger Daltrey, and Cozy Powell.

Included are several tracks from the B.B. King & Friends' 2005 album 80, where Clem accompanied B.B., Eric Clapton, Roger Daltrey, and Van Morrison.  Also included are Clem's appearances with the Hamburg Blues Band on Mad Dog Blues (2008). 

More recently, The Clem Clempson Band released In The Public Interest in 2013.  Clem has played on and off with Colosseum since 1970: the band released Restoration in 2022, and their current European tour runs through October 2023.

Stinky's compilation focuses on Clempson's work as a blues guitarist and vocalist. It skips the jazz-rock of Colosseum, its offshoot JCM, and Clem's soundtrack music, but does include several examples of Clem's extensive session work, which has ranged from Greenslade (1974) to contemporary work with Tanita Tikaram, Shirley Bassey, and British blues legends The Spice Girls. 

Enjoy The Best Of Clem Clempson, Another Stinky Production!  Photo above: Clem with Steve Marriott (photo by Craig Petty), and Clem with Chris Farlowe (at right). Not pictured: Stinky le Pew.