“I want to be … a teller of things I’ve done, not the things I do,” offers Delbert McClinton halfway through his authorized biography. Diana Finlay Hendricks rightly lets her subject lay out his improbable rise from Jacksboro Highway nightclubs to Carnegie Hall and three Grammy Awards, while providing thorough support from contemporaries on the Lubbock sidewinder’s importance. Chronicling tumultuous industry turns and career-long road work, the author equally asserts the songwriter’s centrality in forging a uniquely Texas blend of blues, country, R&B, and rock. McClinton rolls through London with the Beatles, early-Seventies L.A., Austin’s progressive country, and outlaw-upturned Nashville. Wild tales prop up the background, but the focus remains the music, with due credit given to wife and manager Wendy Goldstein, who revived both the man and career of Texas’ greatest living embodiment of amorphous eclecticism.

Delbert McClinton: One of the Fortunate Few

by Diana Finlay Hendricks
Texas A&M University Press, 232 pp., $29.95

This article appears in December 15 • 2017.

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