Where Have You Gone, Gatemouth Brown?
But New Orleans' losses are still ongoing, and another one, a particularly hard one, came yesterday—the
death of guitarist Clarence Gatemouth Brown at age 81, just about a week after he fled the city.
Brown was one of the city's legends—a musician, a character, a storyteller, a piece of history. The things he could do with a guitar! I saw him play once, at a long-ago Jazzfest, at a New Orleans bar whose name I can't remember. His show began around two in the morning. I was a little tired and a little tipsy when it started, but I woke up fast. Brown walked out on stage wearing a white suit and a cowboy hat, and he sat down on a stool to play, and I just remember thinking, They don't make 'em like this any more. Certainly I'd never seen a 70-year-old man rock like that before. He might have needed a stool, but his fingers and his spirit were still young. "
American music, Texas style," Brown called it, but really it was just American music, played by a master.
Brown died of natural causes, but given that he was uprooted from his home, and his age, it's hard not to think of him as another victim of that terrible hurricane.
