New West Records

Suffice it to say, in all of music there was only one Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown. Texas music has always been a melting pot of many styles, genres, cultural and ethnic influences, but Gatemouth was a one-man cauldron of sonic intensity and originality unmatched by anyone before or since. If you asked him who his musical influences were, he would say, "I never wanted to sound like nobody. I just play the king of stuff that got into my blood and I'm still the only person I know who plays it." Still, born in Louisiana, raised in Texas and bouncing around the Texas circuit explains a lot. Whether playing one of his blistering blues guitar solos or teasing a country or Cajun melody out of his ever-present fiddle, Gatemouth's versatility reflected the musical palette of his home turf - a potpourri of blues, jazz, Cajun, r&b, Texas funk and honky-tonk. His father taught him to play piano and guitar, but he was also listening intently to T-Bone Walker, Count Basie, Woody Herman, and Texas Playboy steel guitarist Leon McAuliffe. Gate borrowed heavily from the Big Band sound, and his music could swing with the best of them, as he demonstrates in this show recorded on February 6, 1996 (the last of his four appearances on Austin City Limits®). Gatemouth Brown's live shows were always a musical roller coaster, seamlessly bouncing from song to song and instrument to instrument, with his irrepressible banter sometimes competing with the music. His was a highly personal approach, and he was a larger-than-life personality. Keeping with show biz tradition, he "rocked till he dropped," maintaining a busy touring schedule until just before he died in 2005 at 81.