Delbert McClinton: Nothing Personal

I saw Delbert McClinton at the now defunct Little Roxy in Little Rock, Arkansas in the exceptionally hot summer of 1984. He had his big band, horns and all. He played "Two More Bottles of Wine", "The B-Movie Boxcar Blues" and "Lipstick Traces". I thought, "Can it get any better than this?" I have spent a good deal of time away form McClinton's music while always hearing it respectfully over the past 20 years. Twenty years...that is half of McClinton's performing life. On the road since the early 1960s, McClinton is almost like a myth, having been everywhere and done everything and gotten all of the tee shirts to prove it.

Nothing Personal is McClinton's first independent recording in a number of years. This change has offered him more creative control and it shows. When listening to the disc opener. "Livin' It Down" began to compare it to his last song to get airplay, "Every time I Roll the Dice". The production on Nothing Personal is scaled down significantly as compared to past releases. It also contains all original tunes penned by McClinton and/or Gary Nicholson, who also produced the disc with McClinton. "Livin' it Down" is basically the metaphysical flipside of "Every Time I Roll the Dice." Witness how

differs greatly from:

Sounds like things at the McClinton house have changed a bit.

Nothing Personal turns out to be very personal. Personal songs of love lost ("Livin' It Down", "Nothing Lasts Forever", to love found ("Birmingham Tonight"). "When Rita Leaves" is the perfect antithesis to Warren Zevon's "Carmalita". Rita does not hold her no-account man tighter on the out skirts of town, she drives his vintage Ford Mustang there... and burns it. There are also those songs of Lust ("Squeeze Me In", "All Night Long") that reveal how clever Country & Western song writing can be. This is all music with a roadhouse grind that is perfectly played and heard in one's convertible, with the top down, driving 100 miles an hour.