Delbert & Glen

by Richie UnterbergerDelbert McClinton and Glen Clark had been knocking around the Texas rock scene for more than a decade before teaming up in California for a couple of albums in the early 1970s. The first of these, Delbert & Glen is, despite their California transplantation, very much a Texas record, blending blues, country, soul, gospel, and rock & roll. The feel of the album is very much that of a seasoned bar band, albeit a bar band with mostly original material. It wasn't the kind of thing that was going to set the charts afire in 1972, though surprisingly enough the pensive ballad "I Received a Letter" sneaked into the bottom of the Top 100. There's an amiable young-veteran air to the record, though it's weighed down some by a few routine straight blues workouts. Several of the songs might be more familiar to some listeners in different versions: the Blues Brothers did "'B' Movie Box Car Blues," Rita Coolidge had already done "I Feel the Burden (Being Lifted Off My Shoulders)," Bonnie Raitt (with whom Clark would play keyboards) did "Sugar Daddy" (as "Sugar Mama"), and McClinton himself would remake "Ain't What You Eat but the Way How You Chew It," "'B' Movie Box Car Blues," and "I Received a Letter" on his solo albums.