Label of love: Eddie Stout's on a mission

The pleasures and perils of running what's basically a one-man record label are many, but Eddie Stout can sum up the essence of his job in three words:

"Get that sound."

His Dialtone Records inventory sits stacked in boxes in the garage of his South Austin home; a spare bedroom with a Mac is the label's office. The label has never paid him a dime.

Nor should he reasonably expect it to. Dialtone is predominantly a blues label, one that traffics largely but by no means exclusively in older African American musicians, a fair number of whom remember fondly playing the chitlin circuit, country roadhouses or East Austin clubs well before integration. It's a niche within a niche, but Dialtone's artists are contemporary connections to — and sometimes former bandmates of — other Texas blues icons such as Lightnin' Hopkins and Blind Willie Johnson. The tradition of preserving these works goes back at least to the recordings of ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax and the bottomlessly weird record collection of Harry Smith that was released as the "Anthology of American Folk Music."

"I like to call Eddie Stout the 'Ambassador of Texas Blues,'" says Roger Gatchet, who's contributed to Living Blues magazine and written liner notes for a number of Dialtone releases. "His efforts to record and promote Texas blues artists have given us invaluable recordings from musicians who otherwise might not have had their moment in the spotlight. Like most of the folks who run independent blues labels, Stout isn't out to get rich — he's doing this for the love of the music and out of respect to the incredible artists on the label. Any history of Texas blues would be incomplete without covering the fine musicians Stout has recorded over the years."

This is, in other words, the Lord's work Eddie Stout is doing, and has been doing for more than a decade. He finds the artists, gets them a modest advance, puts together bands and plays bass himself if need be. He works to get his records overseas — because the American market for this stuff is minuscule — and when it's time for a tour or festival, he'll help out on passports or on navigating a menu in French. You don't get money for that kind of labor; you get credit in heaven.

"Just getting food in Europe is an obstacle," says Stout, who turns 55 on Tuesday . "You have to stay with them the whole way."

Take Little Joe Washington, a frequently homeless Houston guitarist with a formidable talent, a proclivity for picking a guitar with his teeth — or at least gums — and a more-than-nodding familiarity with rehab facilities in the Bayou City. A couple of years back, Stout took Washington, dreadlocked and weather-beaten as ever, to a festival. At the end, Stout paid Washington $3,000, which Washington stashed in his hat. Stout intended to fly from Atlanta back to Austin and arranged for his friend Reg Burns — who introduced Stout to the guitarist — to pick up Washington at George Bush Intercontinental Airport.

Crucial detail: Washington had recently been bitten by a dog, so he was in a wheelchair. Stout's friend was a few minutes late arriving at the airport, so Washington — cash, chair and all — started wheeling himself down the road.

"You have to stay with them so they don't get detained or, in Little Joe's case, arrested, almost, because of the way he looks," Stout says.

Washington is a man who, in Stout's estimation, could be as big as Buddy Guy if he were less erratic. He's shared the bill with the likes of Courtney Love and the White Stripes at the Fuji Rock Fest, a festival in Japan that over three days draws hundreds of thousands of people. (Stout offered to get Washington cleaned up and in a suit; his Japanese hosts insisted he do no such thing.)

And yet when it came time to shoot photos for Washington's 2009 release "Texas Fire Line," Stout had to lend him a Silvertone — Washington didn't have a guitar. Still doesn't. "Every time he plays, he has to borrow a guitar," he says. "Little Joe, when he starts gumming your strings, you don't want that."

"He is really difficult to work with," says Stout, punctuating the sentence with a whoosh of his breath. "He wouldn't do any interviews unless he got paid. But if you shut your eyes, you can hear Albert Collins or Gatemouth Brown." (In fact, Stout says, Washington played drums for both of those guys.)

And that's the distillation of what Stout is chasing, the "get that sound" ethic that's simple and profound. It's either authentic or it's not.