Clarence Gatemouth Brown -Deep Freezes and Stolen Trucks

[@otisgibbs]

What's your favorite Clarence Gatemouth Brown song?

[@bryk3146]

She winked an eye

[@Frostheimer]

Monroe, Louisiana.

[@sayeager5559]

All that early Peacock stuff is fantastic.

[@MajTom-wd2yt]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/enzRemWEfNCUl80..

[@eddies4921]

the dark end of the hallway also loved to watch gatemouth and roy Clark perform together

[@sayeager5559]

I have a tape of a show with Rambin Jack from the 70s and he tells a story about his accordion player leaving his instrument in his unlocked van. when they realized it was unlocked they ran the few blocks back to the van "but it was too late, there was already a second accordion in the van."

[@kevinhuber8723]

Dude, Gatemouth was a total trip! We had him perform several times while I was associated with the Blues Society of Indiana. Always smoking refer out of his pipe. One show we were setting up and he walked into the stage room. "All you guys gotta get out of here?" So we went outside and Gate had pushed a few tables together and lay down and went to sleep!

[@kevinhuber8723]

I tried to look up an email address for you, can't do it. I'm not on Facebook or Tweeter or any of that "stuff" I was in the Blues Society for quite sometime. I have a bunch of Gatemouth stories

[@brettzuver1862]

I got to see and meet Gate in Colorado back in the mid-90's, he was AMAZING! He was playing at a little Tex-Mex joint called Tres Hombres in Woodland Park, CO. I was at a table literally 3 feet from him the entire night. He was in the zone on one of his guitar solos and spun around quickly...the stage was so small with his big band, everyone was crammed very close together. When he spun around, his guitar neck hit the mic stand (that had his pipe and asher attached to it). Without thinking I reached out and caught the mic stand and placed it back up for him. He smiled slyly and during the solo his guitar immediately said, "Thank you!"...it was pretty cool.

[@jswjanjan]

Waitressing at The El Mocambo in Toronto - early 90's - got to see CGB and he was great!❤⚘🇨🇦

[@g2guns562]

Otis Gibbs, Never heard of this guy,but he himself Is a hell of a story teller himself, with a hell of a story

[@TR-yi8up]

Not surprisingly, he’s also a great songwriter. kzbin.info/www/bejne/nZfdhniho5t4n68

[@g2guns562]

Thanks for turning me on to some cool tunes

[@lukewest8889]

Dark end of the hallway is my favorite Gate mouth Brown tune.

[@bradhardisty1652]

He did one of my favorite albums with Roy Clark.

[@darrelmorgan6266]

Wow, Kevin had me literally holding my breath leading up to that point where he said they had left their gear back at the venue. Wheeew. Bad enough the truck got stolen but if all the gear had still been on it that would have become a true horror story!

[@williamperkins7318]

Okie Dokie Stomp is a favorite. I have a signed album that I bought from the man himself "Real Life". I got into Gatemouth in the late '80's.I saw him play all over New England. I saw him play in an antique shop in Rhode Island. I chatted him up for an hour after the show. He signed the album that night. He liked the woman I was with; classic blues man, so cool. He would sit on stage smoking his pipe while he enjoyed the band playing around him. I loved him. Coldest night: a January weeknight in the early "90's in Portland Maine. We went to see Acoustic Junction (shoutout Reed Foehl) at a club downtown in my Honda Civic. There was a snowstorm all the way up from MA. I park the car and it is actually warm out. During the show, a freezing rain rolls in behind a vicious cold front. We left the show, and had to find unfrozen bricks to chip into the hatchback because it had a layer of snow and then an inch of ice on that, freezing raw cold. The ride home took hours, four of us packed into my hatchback on icey roads.

[@GIBKEL]

Being 15 years old, and having just been kicked out of my house and never to return, my first independence into the world was sleeping out along the Missouri River in January during the first of winter's arctic plunge. You could have set your watch to it as it was so predictable in the 70's and 80's. Sleeping bags with in sleeping bags, within sleeping bags and yet the cold found its way in to shiver me all night long and for the next two weeks until the cold front broke. You could walked out on the shore ice a bit and cast your pole into the slush water and pull enough trout to stave off the pain of hunger. I will never be that cold again.

[@kevinharnan8378]

Love this story Otis. You & your compadres are priceless!

[@WILDBILLSOUTDOORS]

Dark End of The Hallway, my favorite Gatemouth tune!

[@jcmacmusic]

We were on the road in Northern Canada and driving through White River Ontario it was 60 below zero. I'm still having nightmare 50 years later...

[@RavenMadd9]

Great guitar player....underrated blues man .... Hello Otis you the man

[@smokey2135]

One of the neatest things that I ever saw was in an Atlanta club, where I peaked in the dressing room, and Gate and Vassar Clements were sitting on bar stools side by side trading fiddle tunes. Gate would say " My mamma taught me this one", and saw it off and Vassar would answer in a like way. No one was there. It was something really memorable.

[@elliottcrews4997]

now that's a moment right there!

[@ayronsmama05]

Not just how fabulous you are Otis, I watch your channel because you have introduced me to folks I had heard of but never knew. Shits exciting and thanks! My ex was a OTR driver and when they started using biofuel, he said the pain of diesel didn't go away it just smelled a bit better running cause they bought McDonald's used oil, hence hot, early morning french fries. Blessings y'all!!

[@johnrosier1686]

Gatemouth was a serious cat, well put. Glad that everything worked out.

[@jimmyteardrop]

My dad Luther Wamble played guitar with Gatemouth for a long time, I wonder if he was on that run.

[@g.k.dickenson9259]

Met Gate in Indiana in Indiana. Shared a drink with a legend. Very quiet, but Cordial.

[@mitchmatthews6713]

Kevin is a true rock and roller. Tell him Matt from Detroit sends his best. Thanks, Otis!

[@timadamson3378]

It’s ten below zero in Waterloo Iowa today. Sure could use some Clarence in our lives right now!

[@sidpierce9219]

I was Roy Clark’s sound man for a couple of decades. We played some shows with Gatemouth. One of my favorite albums is their duet album backed by Tulsa musicians including Jim Keltner. Regarding cold nights…Roy and Mel Tillis was booked for a Canadian tour. It was the coldest winter in a hundred years and we were to travel 400-500 miles over night for a week of shows. We started out with five buses, a semi and a private jet. Roy offered Mel a seat on his jet but wanted to stay on his bus. Each night we’d lose a bus due to the hundred degree below wind chill. I woke up one night mad because the guys were being so loud in the back lounge of our bus. I wondered why they were partying all night…I put on my overalls without a shirt and stepped into the back lounge to find out who was making such noise. I opened the door to find eight Statesiders crammed into the small area. I went to the front lounge to find more of the same. The large front window and driver’s heater was no match for the extreme cold. Mel was standing in the stairwell by the driver and when he saw me with no shirt on said, “Son….you’d better put, put, put some clothes on……it’s colder than a witch’s ti, ti, ti, tit out there.” 30+ musicians and crew on one bus with nine bunks hobbled into our last date of the run. One bus, the semi and the jet finished the tour…it was brutal!

[@sunnyhendry7144]

Saw CGB for free at the San Jose State yearly Fountain Blues festival. Great show.

[@bluesdoggmusicrediker4614]

i have seen SRV, duane allman,roy buchanan, danny gatton, albert collins, buddy guy, junior brown,, johnny winter, billy gibbons, carlos santana, jimmy vaughan, jimmy thackery, jerry garcia, etc. and when i look back on it all....i think gatemouth brown might be the best guitar player i have ever seen...fav. song is "pressure cooker"

[@SeeCSeesCC]

LOVE this!! Oh yes touring Canada in the winter we had a block heater

[@robertrohrs9195]

I was able to take in Clarence Brown twice, loved it.

[@petertaysum8947]

Kinda remember reading his obit, his house was wrecked by Katrina, destroying his collection of musical instruments and he died broken hearted soon afterwards. Alligator Records released some awesome albums in the early 90's of great hard rocking blues and roots artists, Gatemouth included.

[@josephtravers777]

Gate wasn't in good shape just before the hurricane. He hung around New Orleans w/ his oxygen tank a lot, relocated around Beaumont when he passed. I loved catching him @ Jazzfest back in the '80s.

[@elliottcrews4997]

I once scared the shit out of Gatemouth. It was around 1980. I was serving one of my junior years in college, at ECU in Greenville NC and haunted the usual college bars and music halls more than the classrooms. Brown was playing "JJ's" a very unassuming club tucked away in an alley downtown. That alley was dark and spooky, if you didn't know where you were going you couldn't have found the place. I came walking around some typical alley type obstacles (maybe a dumpster or something) to nearly walk right into him. There was no one else around and as I say it was pitch black. He jumped back startled. I'm not the scary type I don't think but I guess he just wasn't expecting anyone else back there, much less some denim clad death warmed over looking 20 year old kid. I immediately recognized him, and just said, "Oh hey Mr. Brown, looking forward to the show tonight." That put him at easy, and he did put on a great show let me tell you. I was kind of surprised he was playing that venue as there was a big Country / Country Rock club in town (The Carolina Opry House) that would probably seat 4 times as many people and a Rock club (The Attic) which was much larger as well. Both of those clubs had lots of national and regional acts. But I do recall also seeing Delbert McClinton at JJ's that same year. You gotta love Gatemouth!

[@spearzoid]

In the tiny basement restaurant/venue in Knoxville's Old City called Ella Guru's, I sat feet away from Gate as he rocked in his chair and sparked his bent stem pipe, with a sparkle in his eye. He was smoking a certain aromatic blend I recognized at first sniff.

[@c.j.benoit8662]

I LOVE Gatemouth Brown, so it's hard for me to pick just one. (That's like asking to eat just one potato chip) but his version of "See that My Grave is Swept Clean" off Los Super Seven's I Heard it on The X (my favorite record of theirs) is phenomenal. As for the coldest night I've dealt with . . . I worked for a landscape company that did snow removal, and aside from a 4-hour nap in my car, we had to work for two days straight in a blizzard before we had to finally give up and take a hotel. Part of why I got the hell out of Maryland.

[@c.j.benoit8662]

@@jessesguitars6316 which part? The Blizzard or the record?

[@c.j.benoit8662]

@@jessesguitars6316 all good. Was more for 2016. I was around for '94 though. I was a little guy though.

[@tedgay8427]

I think it was old ACL repeat where I saw Gatemouth and Roy Clark trading licks on their guitars. Worth the search.

[@InfamousGUNN]

Great story😎

[@davidrush6547]

Hey Otis, Another fine story you and Kevin have relayed to us! I volunteered back in the day with the local blues festival to transport artists from their hotel in downtown Cincinnati to the venue on the riverfront or wherever they might need a ride to. My first passenger was Gatemouth, and he wanted to go get something to eat before he went on. I knew that he was from one of the Gulf states, so I took him to a local restaurant who was known for their Cajun/Creole food. Apparently their food wasn't up to his standards and took too long to get to him, so I picked him back up and delivered him to the venue disgruntled and hungry. As luck would have it, a sweet lady who runs a local "soul food" kitchen had a tent set up serving her restaurants food, so I had her fix him a big plate and delivered it to him back stage. He got fed, put on a great show and I got to meet and chauffer around an actual musician who was featured on Austin City Limits which was a huge thrill for me. I continued to volunteer at those blues festivals for a number of years and met and chauffered both The Blind Boys from Alabama and Mississippi and Bobby Rush. I ended up being friends with Bobby because we shared a last name, all in all great times spent with great people. Keep up the great work and YOU are on my list of great people I hope to meet. Take care, Dave "hed" Rush✌️

[@cowpuncher5099]

Saw Gate at a couple of volunteer jams in the mid to late 70’s. Those fingers were gifts of God. 1985 24 below, it hurt.

[@odhutch5806]

In 2003, Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks opened for Gate at Montalvo, an old mansion that's now a county park in Saratoga, California - outside at night. After Gate's set, Dan & the Hot Licks came out to join him for an encore. I can't remember what the song was, only that the two bands were a great juxtaposition. (The Google tells me that encore was Shout Hallelujah, and Yes Indeed.)

[@caseysmith544]

Coldest night I do not know what that would be specifically, but the snowiest day was in mid April 2017 Pierre (Pier) South Dakota, after a few days of snow, My dad got his 1998 Ford F-150 stuck in the snow that was up to my neck (I am 5 foot 2 inches). Luckly, a person who came by in a 2009 Ford 350 had to get us out with chains and just barely got us out without getting stuck himself. The Coldest was in 2010's when the low was -22 F, no joke and the heat could not be shut off at the house due to a starting mechanism that died over the night well for a week we had to have the heat going all the time.

[@brianmobley1720]

Coldest night I can remember was the Blizzard of 78 🥶🥶I was 8 years old ✌️😎

[@toddgaines9446]

Thanks Otis!

[@otisgibbs]

What's the coldest temperature you've ever endured?

[@whiskeycitydiggers]

I walked to what I thought was going to be a job interview a few years ago when it was -25 degrees Fahrenheit. I got there and asked to speak to the guy and was told, "Oh, he's in Florida right now." Must have been nice.

[@Bill-cv1xu]

Pud row bay up in Alaska, 60+ below.... with sustained winds.

[@michaelgregory2231]

Did a tour of Alaska in the winter of 1986 that hit Juneau, Sitka, Ketchikan and Cordova. -40 degrees overnight on one of the last nights. Brutal second lowest was when I played the air base in Minot, North Dakota.

[@cju1135]

Iowa winter of 1994, had a paper route and delivered papers in -20 degree weather daily for a duration in which i also learned to jog on ice. Would listen to the blues show with Andre Mosqueda on sunday mornings. I got to see Clarence Gatemouth Brown around that time at the Maintenance Shop, too. "Dollar Got the Blues" is my favorite song. World music, Texas style....

[@TR-yi8up]

-35 to -45 wind chill and -17F at my first and only Packer game. Never again

[@yellowshoes9773]

My buddy , Kelly Cutler was Gatemouths road manager up to the time he died.

[@rogerwilliams2629]

Brings back lots of memories. I e not had anything stolen, but I have had windows in my ban knocked out, and had to improvise!! Cool story, Gatemouth was cool as hell m to watch play for sure.

[@scottkidwellmusic9175]

Something about those old school musicians... definitely had an aire of class, and a certain way of doing things. Love CGB's playing Coldest I've ever seen was up above Nome, Alaska in '87; -70 with the wind chill. We didn't go outside.

[@leftchicago]

"IT's too cold for crime." Not when you're that far North!

[@Bill-cv1xu]

Awesome print above your mantle...

[@douglasswinford2598]

It wasn’t cold at all in Atlanta, but I couldn’t get the group of four co-workers to go inside this small club that was in The Underground. Gatemouth was killing it in the little club to the point that the bouncer was only allowing a few people in at a time. I was dying to get in, but my group was totally ignorant to who I was talking about 🙄. We ended up in the club just across from the busy crowd. The house band were looking at us like we were aliens from another planet. I just shook my head and raised up my hands in exacerbation, but my group still didn’t get it even though there was no one in the club just across The Underground. I was pretty frustrated, but I kept my cool, and the woman who was singing did her best, but she knew I was just going along to get along. It would have been my one and only chance to see Gatemouth Brown …. go figure 😂. He sounded great, because you could hear him all the way down the walkway 😅

[@petertaysum5563]

Might have commented on this before, seriously recommend any of the Alligator Records releases of the very early 1990s, especially CGB's.

[@stevenedwards4470]

You'd think there would be something in the musician's union barring playing Iowa in the winter...just on basic principle.

[@jamesdavid7099]

A guy I knew had a gig one night. He had just purchased his dream guitar...a Gibson Les Paul. His car was stolen that night after the gig, with his new expensive guitar in it. He didn't care so much about the beater car, just his Les Paul. Never got it back. Typical scenario I guess in the topsy turvy world of rock-n-roll. It's probably happened thousands of times.

[@catheryndenton1766]

Coldest ever for me - camping on top of Yonah Mtn in north Georgia at zero degrees. I don’t recommend it.

[@halridleyjr.2890]

Gatemouth is buried here Orange Tx drinking was 21 but across the Sabine River Vinton La was if you could walk up to the bar or fight for it. We were the last owners of LuAnn’s Club in 90’s. to 50’s Gatemouth, Big Bopper, Janis, Johnny & Edger, before Elvis, Fats, Lil Richard… should have been there?

[@edwinbrashear7729]

Great Story...Funny now, not so much I'm sure then..."The best laid plans of mice and men"...PLH-ELB

[@ish474]

it was 7 below this morning and my truck wouldn't start. The car wouldn't jump it and the hood was frozen shut. Somebody's not gettimg the load of parts till tomorrow🤷🏻‍♂️. 3 hrs later I'm still cold.

[@otisgibbs]

It was +1 yesterday morning when I went out to feed the squirrels and I'm still shaking a day later. Winter in the north is no joke. : )

[@MrBluoct]

Saw CGB multiple times in the 80’s Popular at many blues societies gatherings as well Big hat Big smile Big talent An undeniable legend that would OWN the stage - all business Genuine and missed- Fav. Song ??? Heck, any song he played lit up the crowds around the nation and the world Over multiples of multiple decades

[@patrickcoughlin3564]

Salt pork W.V.

[@2packs4sure]

Lol ,, "it's too cold for crime",,, that's funny stuff,, not true at all but funny.. I never heard what year this actually occurred and I was especially curious because we had a 79' 3/4 ton Chevy diesel pickup,,, NOT GOOD,, lol...

[@Redeyefiddler]

Gatemouth was a decent fiddler. Ain’t nothin wrong with a little gage.

[@Tim1963-u6n]

Gonna have to CK Gate mouth out never heard of him