Don’t blame me for the title. Blame Delbert McClinton, he named his new album “Prick of the Litter”. While you may blame him for that (and you shouldn’t), you definitely can’t for the music he has come up on his new, 28th! album, if I’m right in my count (and I had to count manually).
If you are not familiar with Delbert and wonder about the number of albums, he is 76 after all and has been around since the early Seventies (1972 to be precise). Listening to his latest outing, you wonder whether this old ranch hand (something to do with his Texas roots, I guess) can come up with a lousy album since he did earn a status of a legend among the roots/Americana musicians and fans. Sure, there were some albums that were not up to the standard of something like “Victims of Life’s Circumstances” from 1975, but there was not a single one that did not come up with at least a solid batch of good tunes.
“Prick of the Litter” is definitely not in that category. It is actually among his best and maybe the best of his recent albums. McClinton has decided here to cover the whole range of his musical taste as well as his interpretations. It doesn’t matter what McClinton handles - the blues-inflected opener “Don’t Do It”, pure soul of “Doin’ What you Do” and Middle of Nowhere”, swinging R&B of “Skip Chaser”, jazz of “san Miguel” and “Bad Haircut”, to just good old singer/songwriter Americana of the closer “Roxy”. He does it with the knowledge, experience, flair and pure talent of a somebody who had earned his legendary status the hard way. Maybe that legendary status should start earning him an even wider recognition in this, shall we say, ripe day. He surely deserves it, even if you judge based only on this album.
