Lone Star fallen: a fond farewell to the great 'Gate'

I vividly remember the first time I met Clarence 'Gatemouth' Brown, who died last Saturday and was buried yesterday in Orange, Texas.

I was staying in a hotel in Sao Paulo and had just shared a lift with Richard Clayderman - not his music (everybody has had to do that), but the man himself. I was walking out of it - wondering, if I'd seized the moment and throttled him, would a Brazilian jury have convicted me - when I saw two giants of American music, both wearing their trademark hats, waiting to get in.

I timorously asked Gatemouth whether I might take their photo, and both graciously assented. I then found that I couldn't see a thing through the viewfinder. 'It might help,' said Bo Diddley, 'if you took off the lens cap.'

Gatemouth, or Gate as he was generally known, described what he did as 'American music Texas style' and beyond that he was magnificently difficult to categorise. He disliked being called a bluesman, regarding the description as too narrow, and, although you'd often find him on the bill at jazz and blues festivals, he was as happy playing to a rock or country crowd.

An enormously influential blues guitarist, he was also a mean country fiddler, played half a dozen other instruments well, and started his musical career as a swing band drummer. Then one night he stood in on guitar for an ailing T. Bone Walker, and a star was born.

Shortly after that South American encounter, he came to Hong Kong to play the Jazz Club, accompanied by a back-up guitarist who insisted on saying after each and every number 'Ladies and gentlemen Mr ... Clarence ... 'Gatemouth' ... Brown'. This gradually became wearing, but there was nothing wrong with the music.

He played an appropriately mixed bag of his big guitar showcase, a rocking Okie Dokie Stomp, a swinging version of Ellington's Satin Doll, Joe Zawinul's soulful Mercy, Mercy, Mercy, and a bunch of bluegrass fiddle tunes that I now forget. He concluded with a lengthy version of Unchained Melody. He couldn't be put in any recognisable bag.