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Clifford Antone: intimate with the blues

B.B. King and Clifford Antone

Austin's mourning the death of Clifford Antone, who put Austin on the blues map by creating what for years was considered the world's best blues venue. Yesterday there was a long wake at Antone's ("just stick around, music will happen" was the intro). [Video]. I waited 'til today to blog about Antone so that I could include links to the memorials at the Austin Chronicle's web site:

Okie Dokie Stomp by Joe Nick Patoski
This Be an Empty World Without the Blues by Bill Bentley
Buried Alive in the Blues by Ed Ward
I Saw the Light by Margaret Moser

Joe Nick's summary:

Clifford Antone might not have set out to be a wise man of music, but he did just fine. Then the light went out. Just like that. But the sound – the pounding, strumming 12-bar march to the lowdown, the dance that so many of us in Texas have known for 100 years – its life extended in no small part by a kid from Port Arthur, is still coming across loud and clear.

There's also a link to Margaret's 2001 interview with Antone, about the origin and history of the club:

"It was a hard time for blues," he continues. "The hardest time was right around '75. That's why we became so close with Jimmy [Reed], Clifton [Chenier], Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, Walter Shakey Horton, and Sunnyland Slim. Some of them had never been to Texas. Some of them no one wanted anywhere, and here's this club of kids devoted to the blues. It just blew them away...."

I didn't know Antone though I followed his career, heard great stories, loved the club. One of my favorite stories was about Boz Scaggs trying to ego his way in the back door of the first Antone's on Sixth Street - word was that Antone kicked him out, evidently offended by Scaggs' lack of humility. The Antone's show I most remember was the first time we saw Stevie Ray Vaughn play solo; his dramatic opening, head bowed with wide-brim black hat concealing the tornado that was about to emerge and tear up the house; his incredible percussive touch. SRV was gonna be huge no matter what, but he was so much more because the Antone's scene nurtured him like a loving Mom and Pop.

I didn't know Antone, but ever time I saw him he was nod and smile, greeting me like I was an old friend. And I suppose the great thing about his career was that, by the time he died, he had so many old friends, and was completely intimate with the blues he loved.

jon posted this at 8:39 AM
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