The Brooklyn All Stars - On Peacock and Nashboro

Happy Sunday, Chitlins' people!  Please allow me to make an offering today for your spiritual nourishment - vintage recordings of Hardie Clifton and the Brooklyn All Stars.  Hardie Clifton may not be a household name in the USA, but he most certainly had one of the great voices in gospel during the late 50s through the 80s.  He possessed a powerful, soaring falsetto that he could alternatively drench with Sam Cooke-esque sweet soul or break into rough scream.   I have packaged together here three dynamite singles that the Brooklyn All Stars waxed under their first recording track for Peacock, together with a collection on Nashboro that was briefly available on CD under the title "The Best of the Brooklyn All Stars."  

The first six tracks here come from Peacock, while the remaining 14 tracks comprise the disc pictured on the right.

The Brooklyn All Stars were formed by Charlie Storey in New York immediately after World War II.  He recruited the exceptional bass-baritone Thomas Spann, who took over the leadership of the group in the mid-50s when Storey left for other waters.  Thomas Spann continued to lead the Brooklyn All Stars well into the new millennium.  He is very much alive today, and just celebrated his 90th birthday last month.    

The Brooklyn All Stars rose to prominence after Spann recruited the teenage Hardie Clifton in the latter 1950s and trained him vocally.  This led to recording opportunities with Peacock and the the three precious singles included here.   They are all superb, with "Careless Soul" perhaps the greatest of all of them, a true masterpiece and showcase for Hardie Clifton.  "Singing for the Lord" is another stone masterpiece.

By the time that the Brooklyn All Stars signed with Nashboro in the 1960s, Jimmy Outler had briefly joined the group.  A dedicated disciple of Sam Cooke, Jimmy Outler had just succeeded remarkably well in the very challenging job of filling Johnnie Taylor's shoes, who had filled Sam Cooke's shoes as lead singer of the Soul Stirrers.  A run-in with the law soon forced Outler into hiding, however, and his work with the Brooklyn All Stars here was actually done under an assumed name. On the Nashboro sides included here, Clifton and Outler alternate leads.  There are many highlights among the Nashboro recordings.  I have a particular attachment to Hardie Clifton's delivery of "Nobody's Fault But Mine."


The Brooklyn All Stars went from Nashboro to Jewel in the 1970s, and released a number of high quality albums, many of them featuring Thomas Spann more prominently that had been the case in the past.  Hardie Clifton passed in 1990, but the Brooklyn All Stars kept going.

Clarence Gatemouth Brown - The Original Peacock Recordings

1940s and 1950s

Born in Vinton, Louisiana, Brown was raised in Orange, Texas. His professional musical career began in 1945, playing drums in San Antonio, Texas. He was tagged with the "Gatemouth" handle by a high school instructor who accused Brown of having a "voice like a gate". Brown used it to his advantage throughout his career. His career was boosted while attending a 1947 concert by T-Bone Walker in Don Robey's Bronze Peacock Houston nightclub. When Walker became ill, Brown took up his guitar and quickly wrote and played "Gatemouth Boogie," to the delight of the audience right on the spot.

In 1949 Robey founded Peacock Records in order to showcase Brown's virtuoso guitar work. Brown's "Mary Is Fine"/"My Time Is Expensive" was a hit for Peacock in 1949. A string of Peacock releases in the 1950s were less successful commercially, but were nonetheless pioneering musically. Particularly notable was the 1951 instrumental "Okie Dokie Stomp", in which Brown solos continuously over a punchy horn section (other instrumentals from this period include "Boogie Uproar" and "Gate Walks to Board"). As for his gutsy violin playing, Robey allowed him to record "Just Before Dawn" as his final Peacock release in 1959.

1960s and 1970s

In the 1960s Brown moved to Nashville, Tennessee to participate in a syndicated R&B television show, and while he was there recorded several country singles. He struck up a friendship with Roy Clark and made several appearances on the television show Hee Haw. In 1966, Brown was the musical director for the house band on the short-lived television program, The !!!! Beat.
However, in the early 1970s several countries in Europe had developed an appreciation for American roots music, especially the blues, and Brown was a popular and well-respected artist there. He toured Europe twelve times, beginning in 1971 and continuing throughout the 1970s. He also became an official ambassador for American music, and participated in several tours sponsored by the U.S. State Department, including an extensive tour of Eastern Africa. Brown appeared at the 1973 Montreux Jazz Festival, where he jammed with American blues rock band Canned Heat. In 1974, he recorded as a sideman with the New Orleans pianist Professor Longhair on his album, Rock 'N' Roll Gumbo (originally a Blue Star Records release). He moved to New Orleans in the late 1970s.
Later years

In the 1980s, a series of releases on Rounder Records and Alligator Records revitalized his U.S. career, and he toured extensively and internationally, usually playing between 250 and 300 shows a year. He won a Grammy in 1982 for the album Alright Again! and was nominated for five more. He was also awarded eight W. C. Handy Awards and the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences Heroes Award.
Clarence Brown was featured as one of the stellar musicians on the Southern Stars poster created by Dianna Chenevert to help promote him and historically document his contribution to the music industry. On October 12, 1983, USA Today reporter Miles White highlighted Brown as being included on the poster, which provided him with more nationwide attention. In 1997 he was honored by the Rhythm and Blues Foundation, and in 1999 was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.

In his last few years, he maintained a full touring schedule, including Australia, New Zealand, and countries with political conflicts in Central America, Africa, and the former Soviet Union. His final record "Timeless" was released in 2004.

In September 2004, Brown was diagnosed with lung cancer. Already suffering from emphysema and heart disease, he and his doctors decided to forgo treatment. This greatly affected his musical career.  Later his home in Slidell, Louisiana was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and he was evacuated to his childhood home town of Orange, Texas, where he died on September 10, 2005 at the apartment of a niece, at the age of 81. Brown is buried in the Hollywood Cemetery in Orange, Texas. However, flooding caused by Hurricane Ike in September 2008, damaged his grave.