Gerald Clark plays Black Water

Gerald Clark, once the vocalist for Delta Blue and now a solo artist, is one of the treasures of South African music. He has a genuinely soulful voice, writes lyrics that sound old even when they are brand new and makes music that never fails to thrill.  His chosen field is blues and though he does not walk a lonely road along this path, he does not have many peers in this country.

                                                          

He has released an Afrikaans album called Sweepslag en there is a virtual album as MP3 tracks on the Rhythm Records online store website. I’ve not bought any of these songs.

Late in 2011 I looked at Clark's website and contacted his manager to enquire whether Clark had released any CDs and was told that none was available but that I could have a copy of a DVD of a show recorded at a West Coast location earlier in 2011. I duly acquired the DVD called “Concert on the Coast.”

“Concert on the Coast” is a multi-disc package with the DVD of the live gig plus a CD with the audio recording.

In November 2012 I popped into The African Music Store and found Black Water, a proper studio album with a quite elegant cardboard sleeve with poster.

The two sets are companion pieces as they have several songs in common. Presumably Gerald Clark was road testing his songs before recording them in a studio setting.

At the live gig Clark is backed by Henry Steel, his old mucker from Delta Blue, bassist-to-the-stars Schalk Joubert, and drummer Tim Rankin. A solid, tight, tasteful combo that respects the blues and knows how to make simplicity powerful.

Clark plays a lot of acoustic guitar, one tune with a Telecaster and a handful of tunes on a Gibson 335, which allegedly was made in the Gibson factory in Kalamazoo. Highly authentic old school, then.

The packaging contains no detail on authorship of the tunes. Clark performs a bunch of blues and R & B standards such as “Hallelujah, I love Her So”, “Stand By Me“, “Come On In My Kitchen”, “Stranger Blues” and “It's Alright”, as well as a bunch of his own compositions, including the anomaly that is “Elandsbaai”, the only Afrikaans song in the set and  the only non-blues.

The performances are energetic and powerful and swing easy. There is no grandstanding from any one and the musicians give the tunes room to move. I guess it is not authentic given that we are listening to a group of |South Africans and because Clark, to my mind, fits better as a soul singer, or a R & B artist in the vein of Ray Charles or Bobby 'Blue” Bland than as some Mississippi Delta bluesman.

The easy swagger of this live is a far cry from the rather stilted performances on the Delta Blue debut album, recorded live in Stellenbosch, where the musicians were not yet fully acclimatised to the blues and were   acting it out instead of feeling it. In the blues game you cannot beat time and experience as the vital ingredients for producing music that lives and breathes, and truly satisfies.

The Black Water album is a different proposition altogether. The album packaging contains no background information whatsoever and I do not know when or where it was recorded, who plays on it or who wrote the songs. Some songs are recognisable classics, like “House of the Rising Sun”, “Breaking Down” and “Can't keep From Crying.”  The 2 opening cuts, “It Ain't You” and “Black Water” perhaps not so coincidentally are also the first 2 songs performed at the live gig. “Ain't going to Heaven” is a new version of one of the standout out songs on Heaven, so far, the last Delta Blue album.

For my money Delta Blue may be the most underrated band in South Africa. The run of 3 albums from Turn thorough Inbluestation to Heaven represent a pinnacle of blues and soul inflected rock from this country, and would fit proudly alongside similar music on record shelves all over the world. 

Well, whatever crack band Clark put together to back him on Black Water acquit themselves more than well. This is an insanely great blues album that not only nods the head to tradition but is also fiercely contemporary. Clark has one of the best voices in the country and writes the best lyrics in the blues and soul context, that sound as if they were written decades ago yet do not slavishly imitate the standards. Clark follows the folk blues tradition of taking well-worn phrases and concerns and making them his own in the fashion of, for example John Lee Hooker.

The band plays tough when required, bluesy, soulful and with finesse.  The good thing is that the band does not sound like a blues band, along the lines of the many blues rock outfits we have in this country, at all but rather like a countrysoulblues band with a unique approach to the music. Delta Blue did not much sound like anybody else, once they got past the debut album, and neither does Gerald Clark. Sometimes this kind of individualism is more of impedance in the quest for commercial acceptance and the hope of making a living in music. In Clark’s case the independence of thought and approach makes him a star, albeit not perhaps of mega proportions, but I can see him developing a following akin the devoted following of one Van Morrison, another guy who has always followed his own path and refused to pander.