W.C. Clark left Austin convinced its R&B scene was dead, joined Joe Tex’s national touring band, then quit two weeks after sitting in on bass at an East Austin jam with Jimmie Vaughan and Paul Ray. Born Wesley Curley Clark on November 16, 1939, he started in a church choir, picked up guitar around 14, absorbed jazz and blues, and drew attention from Big Joe Turner, Albert Collins and Little Johnny Taylor before that fateful night sent him home for good.

This episode looks at how he built rather than joined a scene: forming the W.C. Clark Blues Revue in 1975, playing the Triple Threat Revue with Lou Ann Barton and a young Stevie Ray Vaughan, teaching Charlie and Will Sexton as kids, and being honored on Austin City Limits for his 50th birthday in 1989. It also confronts the March 1997 van crash near Sherman, Texas that killed his fiancee Brenda Jasek and his drummer, the tribute album Lover’s Plea, and a career that continued through Alligator Records and self-releases until his death on March 2, 2024 at 84.

• Gospel soul, jazz theory and blues grit combined into a rare musical vocabulary
• Sharing stages with James Brown, B.B. King, Albert King, Freddie King and Sam and Dave
• Stopping rehearsals to teach young guitarists the space between the beats
• Are You Here, Are You There, the song dedicated to Brenda Jasek’s memory
• Rough Edges on the 2016 Texas Blues Voices project with Italian harmonica player Fabrizio Poggi