Music historian and former Austin Chronicle columnist Michael Corcoran reported the news on his Substack, Michael Corcoran’s Overserved. According to Clark’s manager Vicky Moerbe, Clark died at Seton Hospital in Kyle on Saturday morning “just days after doctors found cancer, though his cause of death has not been determined.” His final show took place on Feb. 20 at Giddy Ups, where he held down a standing Tuesday happy hour residency.
After learning guitar at a young age, the Austin native played his first gig as a 16-year-old at the Victory Grill, where he was introduced to Texas blues legend T.D. Bell. He went on to play in Bell’s band the Cadillacs, as well as with Blues Boy Hubbard & the Jets, Houston R&B pioneer Joe Tex, Jimmie Vaughan’s band Storm, Southern Feeling, and Triple Threat Revue. Alongside Stevie Ray and Jimmie Vaughan, Clark was an impactful mentor to famed Austin players including Angela Strehli, Lou Ann Barton, and Marcia Ball – many of whom joined a 1989 celebration of Clark’s 50th birthday on the Austin City Limits television show.
The Austin Music Hall of Fame inductee has also won various Austin Music Awards for both Best Soul and Best Blues.
Clark’s own band, the W.C. Clark Blues Revue, self-released his first recording, Something for Everybody, in 1986. In a review of his 2002 Alligator Records album, the Chronicle’s Jay Trachtenberg wrote that From Austin With Soul “stands proudly as the most satisfying set of good rockin’, soul-drenched blues to come out of Austin in quite some time. Clark’s potent combination of gritty Texas guitar blues and shuffles wedded to the smooth, gospel-rich Stax/Hi sound of Memphis is a total knockout.”
Chronicle writer Christopher Hess featured Clark in a 1998 cover story, “Confessin’ the Blues.” The story included Clark’s telling of a catastrophic 1997 car accident, which led to the death of his fiancée Brenda Jasek and drummer Pete Alcoser Jr. Of returning to performance, and his trademark fedora, Clark said:
“There it is. Right there. I pull that hat down, feel it on my head, see that brim, and I automatically turn into a character. From the time I walk in the door, the feeling hits me right there. I can be tired, have a headache, anything. From the time I walk in the door my body is automatically there. If I don’t have my hat on, I can’t create that character. The audience won’t know that, but I’ll know it.”
Find an excerpt from the story below, or revisit the whole thing here.
Southern Feeling [with singer Angela Strehli and guitarist/pianist Denny Freeman] enjoyed some success locally and some notice outside Austin at the waning of the Seventies, playing and recording on the West Coast between San Francisco and Seattle. When the band broke up, Clark returned to his constant and reliable job as an auto mechanic.
“I had always been a mechanic,” he says matter-of-factly. “My daddy was a mechanic. He owned his own garage.”
It was at this point in time that Clark became reacquainted with an old friend, Stevie Ray Vaughan.
“I had met Stevie long before that – he had been coming around sitting in with us in Southern Feeling,” says Clark. “At that time, he was playing with the Cobras with Paul Ray. They busted up and Stevie was on his own for a while. He used to come down [to the garage] and see me all the time. He wanted to put together a band. He was young and he knew what he wanted to do, but he didn’t have all the tools to do it with. I had amplifiers, guitars…
“Finally, he talked me into it, and me, Stevie, and Mike Kindred started playing. Stevie was an amazing guitar player already, long before that.”
In 1980, the three friends formed Triple Threat, so named because all three musicians were experienced bandleaders by this time. Clark took the role of bass player.
“I still say today I’m a bass player,” laughs Clark. I’m still learning guitar. I could pick up a bass and play anything any time I want to.”
Learning to play bass came to Clark out of necessity. At that time, musicians learned more than just their own particular part of a song. They learned what the drummer was doing and what the bass was doing – often by voice, since many bands used vocals as a substitute for a stringed-bass.
“That way, if the bass player didn’t show up, I could trade over and make the gig. That was the thing: Make the gig, baby, make the gig. …
“I got a lot of things I could say about some of the younger players today. It would have something to do with the old school and the laws that used to be respected that are not truly respected anymore. Some musicians start off right in the middle of something and they’re not interested in the past. Then there are musicians interested all the way – from the beginning all the way up. You see it in people like Jimmie, Stevie. … They studied the beginnings of blues and jazz and that sort of thing.
“What I’m talking about is musicians who don’t have enough respect for the blues to want to learn it correctly. Every musician has a right and a space within the music to do their own thing, but their own thing has to be done in that particular category – bass category or drums or whatever. When it isn’t, they start stepping on other parts.
“Blues is everything in its place and a place for everything. As long as it’s like that, you’re within those laws. They’re not rules like you go to jail if you break them. They’re moral laws that have a lot to do with respect for the next play in order to create the unity you need to play with each other and have a smile on your face when everything’s over.[”]
This article appears in March 1 • 2024.