Blues Family Tree Project

W. C. Clark

Like Blues Boy Hubbard, Clark has been a mainstay in the Austin blues scene since the Victory Grill years. Unlike Hubbard, Clark has a broad West Side audience -- perhaps the only Black East Side veteran to have continued career success.

Clarks career illustrates the fundamental premise of the project -- that present-day Austin blues/R&B can be directly linked to the times and figures of the East 11th/12th Street heyday. Clark came into the local scene through familial ties, and worked with music legends of the Austin 1950s, such as T. D. Bell and Erbie Bowser, and now maintains the traditions he learned as an apprentice in those East Side barrooms.

Today, however, that same music is being played for very different audiences in very different venues. Clark is very much aware of how the East Side has lost its practical connection to the local blues scene, and his insight and personal history are important to the Blues Family Tree. Clark's membership (often as leader and mentor) in bands with younger white blues players also provides a striking illustration of the evolution of Austin's modern day blues scene. The next generation of Austin blues players, the current students of the African American blues tradition, are with few exceptions Anglo and male.

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