Kelso: Icon? Nah, Antone was even better

The bottom line on Clifford Antone: He was one heckuva good fella.

The Austin blues club owner was found dead Tuesday. I didn't know Clifford as well as I would have liked. When I interviewed John Lee Hooker at Antone's first club at Sixth and Brazos streets in the early '70s, I didn't even know there was a Clifford Antone.

But the one time I ever asked him for a favor, he delivered. And he didn't have to do it. He owed me nothing. He just had a good heart.

Last fall a friend of mine, Jana Spangler, who has a barbershop up near the University of Texas called the Banana Moon Hair Saloon, had a problem. One of her hips had gone out and she needed hip replacement surgery. Jana, who lived with pretty much constant pain, didn't have much money. And I was getting real tired of watching her limp while she trimmed my beard.

So I gave it some thought, and decided I'd call Clifford Antone to see if he could help out by letting us use his club for a fundraiser.

Before I called Antone for help, I'd had just one major discussion with him — for a smart-aleck column I wrote three years ago when he was working as a greeter at Güero's Taco Bar while living in a halfway house.

"So what do you do for work when you're a famous former Austin blues club owner and you finally get out of the joint after being busted for dealing 9,000 pounds of pot?" I wrote. "You work as a greeter at a South Austin Mexican food restaurant. What else?"

I wouldn't have talked to me if I had written something snotty like that about myself. But when I called Antone, laid out Jana's problem, and explained how we could sure use his club to raise money for her operation, he invited me over to his apartment in one of those fancy towers on Town Lake.

Then, when I got there, he said, sure, the place is yours.

No if's, and's or but's. Sure, go ahead, he said. It's all yours. All you gotta pay is the sound guys, he said.

He didn't have to do that.

The fundraiser went just great. We raised about $5,000, and Jana got the surgery, meaning she can now cut hair without wincing. Kinky Friedman showed up and played, as did a funny musical duo called Rick 'n' James, who have a song out called "Aggies Like Sheep." The Calvin Russell Band and Dale Watson played. Jana paid the sound guys about $350 for their work, but guess what? The sound guys gave her the money back.

"And the bartenders had their own little pool going and they gave me about $600," Jana recalled.

So sure, Clifford Antone was a local legend for his music business. He's one of the reasons Austin is called the Live Music Capital of the World. Muddy Waters, Doug Sahm and Pinetop Perkins played at his clubs. And some day, I'll just bet you there will be a statue of him next to Stevie Ray Vaughan down on Town Lake.

But when I think back on Clifford Antone, the main thing I'll remember about him is that he was just one really nice guy. Or, as Jana put it, "It oozed out of him, and it affected other people."

When you get right down to it, isn't that all that really matters?

John Kelso's column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Contact him at 445-3606 or jkelso@statesman.com.