Delbert McClinton: Lost In A Dream & Early Tracks

Delbert McClinton wasn’t pleased when his “Crazy Cajun Recordings” for Huey P. Meaux were released, and he didn’t cooperate or share any session information.  Delbert’s a packrat whose treasure trove of mementos was opened to his biographer Diana Finlay Hendricks (author of Delbert McClinton: One Of The Fortune Few).   

It’s common practice that early recordings get released when an artist becomes famous—or that an odds & ends album is released by their former label when an artist scores a hit on another label.   

Houston’s Huey P. Meaux had a hand in many artists’ success, producing hits for George Jones, The Sir Douglas Quintet, Freddie Fender, The Big Bopper, and Barbara Lynn.  A former barber, Meaux used to say he went from “cutting hair to cutting hits,” and he got his start when records were still being sold out of the trunks of cars.  

Delbert recounted that he was recording for Meaux’s Fort Worth’s counterpart Major Bill Smith, who thought “If You Really Want Me To, I’ll Go” might have potential.  “He called up Huey Meaux in Houston, and played it for him.  Huey offered Bill five hundred dollars for the song on the spot.  That’s when Major Bill knew he had something.”  The song was licensed to Smash Records but was pulled off the air because the ownership of the publishing was clouded—becoming a country hit for Waylon Jennings in 1967.  

Major Bill recorded artists in a basement studio at a local radio station KFJZ, often hiring Delbert & The Rondells as the backing group.  That’s how Delbert wound up playing harmonica on Bruce Channel’s “Hey Baby”.  When there was time left on the clock, he’d let Delbert cut something.  Major Bill released at least 18 singles by Delbert’s band The Rondells between 1963 and 1970, several of them becoming regional hits.

That’s where a lot of the tracks on Lost In A Dream & Early Tracks are from.  Lost In A Dream became a bit of a holy grail for me.  I was unable to track down the cassette version that I found online, but pieced together the ten tracks listed from the best available sources.  In the process I found a whole mess of tracks on YouTube, & the rest were most likely recorded for Meaux.

Ronnie Kelly, Billy Sanders, & Delbert broke away from McClinton’s previous band The Straitjackets, and they combined Ronnie & Delbert’s first names to form their new band name, The Rondells (sometimes credited as The Ron-Dells).