clifford & albert king & a flying v

One year ago, a dear friend died suddenly. He was the founder of a blues club I worked in. But that doesn’t really describe him. This man, Clifford Antone, devoted everything he owned and everything he was to blues music and musicians. It’s not like he was a saint, but in a sense, he was. He had been to prison twice, convicted of selling marijuana. Not a few joints on the street corner either, more like several tons on a plane from Mexico. Whatever he earned, he spent it all, every penny, on this music. He opened a nightclub in Austin, Texas in 1975 and brought blues icon Muddy Waters in for several weeks. Blues was not exactly popular in Texas at that time. When Muddy arrived in what was then a podunk Texas town and met this white, hippie college-kid club owner, he was not quite sure where he had landed. But, like everyone who passed through the doors of Antone’s, he had entered the world of Clifford. The stage was stocked with the best equipment—vintage amps and collectable guitars in perfect condition. Waiting to accompany Muddy was a group of local musicians that included Stevie Ray Vaughan and perhaps half a dozen other exceptionally soulful musicians. Muddy was their idol. In the window was a framed photo of him, garlanded with flowers. Sitting in the audience waiting for the show to begin was just about nobody except for Clifford. And so it began. After Muddy came Howlin‘ Wolf, Clifton Chenier, Albert King, B.B. King, Sunnyland Slim, and everybody else. Eventually, he launched a blues record store and a blues record label. When I arrived in 1985, the legend was in full bloom and, although Muddy and Howlin’ Wolf had passed by then, every other living icon was taking the stage at Antone’s like it was the coolest oasis in the desert. Which it was. Some came for a night, some came for a few months, and some, like blues harpist James Cotton and Muddy Waters’ piano player Pinetop Perkins, came to live. Albert Collins, John Lee Hooker, Otis Rush, Buddy Guy, Bobby “Blue” Bland, Jimmy Rogers—the list goes on and on—played night after night, backed by stellar local musicians, the Antone’s House Band. (My boyfriend at the time, Derek, was one of the guitar players. The other one, Denny, is now in Dylan’s band. When rock stars like Bono, Iggy Pop, or Carlos Santana were in town, they came by and asked to sit in. It was the most soulful place in the world and I don’t think I’m exaggerating.

I worked with Clifford for almost 10 years, first as a cocktail waitress at his club, then a bartender, then the manager of his record label. We spent some crazy times together and had lots of agreements and disagreements. In the mid-90s, I moved away and our contact dwindled in the intervening decade. Just a few weeks before he died, I was in Austin visiting. Cliff and I had dinner together and spent several hours in sweet reminiscence. Remember the time Doug Sahm almost pushed me (Susan) into a swimming pool because I wouldn’t give the band a draw on the next night’s pay? (I didn’t have any money…) Remember when Albert King fired his band in the middle of a gig? Remember the Japanese record label that dearly wanted to license our records because they “had listened to the CDs and were terrified?” (I think they meant something like “we were filled with terrific-ness.”)

Almost all the people we idolized were dead. His club still booked blues, but rock acts and comedians brought in the profits. He was teaching a class at the University of Texas called “The Blues According to Clifford Antone” and this was his new stage. He loved turning kids on to his musical heroes. But his heart was left in the past. The world he loved, gave everything to, where he had staked his soul, was gone. “When Albert (Collins) died, that was it for me,” he said. I think he already felt a bit like a ghost.

Last year, he died at the age of 56 of a heart attack. Out of nowhere. When I went online to read about Cliff’s passing in the Austin paper, the caption simply read, “Clifford Antone, 1949–2006.” Above the headline was a black and white photograph of him from the late 80s, in his record store. I was standing on one side of him and on the other was the only other employee of Antone’s Record Label, Connie. We were holding the label‘s latest albums in our arms, pretending to show the covers to Clifford, who was smiling. I looked at my own face and stopped. Who was that young woman and who was now looking back at her? I remembered the exuberance and inspiration and wildness of that time, and I felt so happy and so sad. But all of it is gone, everything in that photograph is gone, somehow. Record albums are as good as gone. Connie lives in Brooklyn with her boyfriend and their little baby girl. Clifford is in the ground. And I’m sitting here typing this in Boston, looking at the picture of the three of us tacked to my bulletin board, surrounded by outlines and notes for a new book I’m writing, a picture of myself at age 6, the floor plan of a condominium we’re thinking of buying, and numerous Tibetan Buddhist symbols and deities. Outside the window, spring leaves dim the sunshine that splashes across my desk in winter. Sun and shade, past and present, happy and sad, here and gone. This is our life.