Clarence 'Gatemouth' Brown  Blackjack 
Recorded: 1977 
Released: 1999
Label: Sugar Hill 
Format: Mp3 @ 320 
Time: 45:09

Grammy Award winner Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown is surely the most versatile musician the blues idiom has ever known. Brown plays guitar, fiddle, harmonica, mandola and viola, along with singing in a gravely, robust voice. Brown plays the blues but refuses to be limited by the "bluesman" tag. He's gone from leading his own 23-piece big band in the late 1940s to being a deputy sheriff in New Mexico. He's moved from wailing the blues at the prestigious Montreux Jazz Festival in the '70s to appearing on the TV show HEE HAW and making a hot album with country singer/guitarist Roy Clark. In 1977, Brown came out of retirement to record this incredibly varied and eclectic album (originally released on the Music is Medicine label).

Blackjack is a rollicking party of an album, mixing blues (the shimmering "Blackjack"), jazz (the fleet "Pressure Cooker"), western swing ("Tippin' In"), country ("When My Blue Moon Turns to Gold Again") and bluegrass ("Up Jumped the Devil"). If you're a blues purist, you may be disappointed; if you like genre-branching music played with a sense of joy, calculated recklessness and hot musicianship, Blackjack holds the winning hand. Deal yourself in!

1977 album which explores his versatile love for Texas swing, featuring outstanding tracks laced with swing, big band, R&B and straight-up blues.


Recorded at Studio In The Country, Bogalusa, Louisiana.

Tracklist

1. Here Am I - 2:29
2. Tippin' In - 3:28
3. Song For Reneé (Gate's Tune) - 6:21
4. When My Blue Moon Turns To Gold Again - 2:28
5. Street Corner - 5:10
6. Pressure Cooker - 3:05
7. Chickenshift - 3:14
8. Blackjack - 4:41
9. Honey Boy - 3:57
10. Take Me Back To Tulsa - 1:52
11. Dark End Of The Hallway - 4:09
12. Up Jumped The Devil - 3:31


Personnel:

Clarence 'Gatemouth' Brown - Guitar, Fiddle, Viola, Mandola, Harmonica, Vocals
Jeff Pollard, Freddy Wahl - Guitars
Don Buzzard - pedal Steel Guitar, Electric Dobro
Rod Roddy - Piano
Leon Medica - Bass; David Peters - Drums
Bobby Campo - Trumpet, Flugel Horn, Flute