In 1962, a 22-year-old from a Texas bar band cornered John Lennon backstage at a UK club and gave him a harmonica lesson, and for Delbert McClinton that was barely the prologue. Born in Lubbock in 1940 and raised in Fort Worth from age eleven, he came up in the Straitjackets, a roadhouse band that backed touring giants like Sonny Boy Williamson II, Howlin’ Wolf, Lightnin’ Hopkins, and Jimmy Reed. His harmonica riff drove Bruce Channel’s international smash Hey! Baby, and after a minor 1965 hit with the Ron-Dels, he relocated to Los Angeles in 1972, formed the duo Delbert and Glen with Glen Clark, and launched a solo career.

This episode traces the paradox of a songwriter whose biggest successes came in other people’s voices, from Emmylou Harris taking Two More Bottles of Wine to number one on the country chart in 1978 to the Blues Brothers covering B-Movie Boxcar Blues on Briefcase Full of Blues. It follows his 1980 top-ten pop hit Giving It Up for Your Love, the near-decade of relentless touring that followed, the Grammy-nominated 1989 album Live From Austin, his first Grammy for the 1991 Bonnie Raitt duet Good Man, Good Woman, a top-five country duet with Tanya Tucker, Weatherman in the film Groundhog Day, the collapse of Rising Tide Records after 1997’s One of the Fortunate Few, and the New West Records era that produced Grammy wins for Cost of Living in 2006 and Tall, Dark and Handsome in 2020.

• What backing Howlin’ Wolf on the Texas roadhouse circuit taught a teenage musician about survival
• How a gritty blues harmonica technique became the pop hook on Hey! Baby
• Why a top-ten hit in 1980 was followed by nearly a decade away from recording studios
• Etta James covering two of his songs on Let’s Roll and a posthumous 2016 pairing with Frankie Miller
• Induction into the Texas Heritage Songwriters Hall of Fame alongside Bruce Channel and a star on Austin’s Paramount Theatre Walk of Fame