Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown: I play rock and roll a lot of times. You see, what they call rock and roll today is not rock and roll, son. It’s a lot of noise. A lot of string bending and not even making a statement. Remember that tune of mine called “Chicken Shift”? That’s rock and roll. “Dolly Got the Blues” —that’s rock and roll. Louisiana zydeco is a mixture of rock and roll and Creole music. Then I play straight-ahead Cajun that has nothing to do with nothing else but Cajun.
What can you say to young rockers?
If a guy’s a heavy drinker or heavy dope user, don’t follow him, because he’s in misery in the first place. That’s why he’s playing that kind of music. And them hard rock players, well, all I can say for those kids is they’re being brainwashed to brainwash others. Why play music that loud and ruin yourself before you hit 20 years old? And what they’re playing is not understood—no way—because everything is so high volume. Why play something so loud where it’s going to tear you up inside? I’ve seen guys that was so loud, my stomach was hurting!
What do you look for in a tone?
Dynamics. Just what I do. And there’s four dynamics, all told: High volume, midrange, soft, and off. See, if you play in a high volume, you’ve got it goin’. Now, at a certain portion you drop it down and leave it to midrange. I go further than that: I go from a high volume to real soft, but just keep that drive going. And every time I do it, you can hear ’em scream all over the place because it feels good. I can rattle my guitar and almost tear out windows, and drop it to where you just barely hear it. Every man in my band knows when to do this. That makes music.
Well I posted the track above from Fess' Rock N Roll Gumbo album being one of the earliest Professor Longhair albums I own (in the sense of second or third after buying Crawfish Fiesta) and really just to show the boys played together because I found this what I thought was an extraordinary excerpt here -
Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown:
“See, I don’t play guitar like guitar,” he explained. “I play my guitar like a horn. I play horn parts—actually, tenor parts. I can play trumpet parts, make it sound the way trumpet would sound, or a tenor. I know how a trumpet’s supposed to sound. I know how a tenor is supposed to sound. That’s why I say I can head-arrange a whole entire orchestra. It’s just something I can do. Just a gift I can do. If you ever heard any of my records, then you can understand it.”
To conjure a horn-like sound on his Gibson L-5, Brown relied on a fingers-only approach: “I never used a guitar pick in my life. I use my hand. I can’t use no pick. I only use a pick for mandolin. [On guitar] I play overtone rhythm with my thumb and I use my middle finger a lot of time for picking. I got control of my mind with my fingers. I got control of the guitar with my fingers. I can let them ring, or I can smother my strings in a snap and cut it just like a horn would do when your breath run out. The circle of breathing—I can do that by using my fingers. And, of course, another secret of mine, I pick with both hands. A lot of people don’t understand that, and it’s hard to explain.”
Asked which fingers he used to accomplish this, Gate replied, “Depends on what I’m playing. I might use ’em all, and I might use a thumb. I may use an index finger. I might use my ring finger. It’s unexplainable. People ask, ‘How you do that?’ I say, ‘Magic.’ When they say, ‘Show me how to do that,’ I say, ‘I show no one nothing.’”
Let It Roll! The Essential Blues Sessions by Jas Obrecht - Living Blues Magazine
