Delbert McClinton

From the New West Records website: The singers who last – blues bards, country music storytellers and true jazz vocalists – tell stories of real life: loss, longing, fulfillment, and the irrepressible determination to keep on keeping on. They also have a saving wit, like in the venerable blues lyric: “I’m gonna lay my head on the railroad track – and when the train comes, I’m gonna yank it back.”

Delbert McClinton embodies these qualities of what I call the life force of music – as in this new session, “Cost of Living,” on which he wrote or co-wrote all of these songs of what he calls “days in the life.” (The one exception is Jimmy Reed’s “I’ll Change My Style.”