One of the recurring themes of Gatemouth's outlook is his fierce resistance to musical categorization. Being billed as "The High Priest Of Texas Swing" is as close as he'll get to allowing a genre to touch his name. Call him a bluesman, jazz musician, a rock player or country artist only from a safe distance.

Given Gatemouth's 1924 birthplace of Vinton (Louisiana), his father's taste for country music, and his Orange (Texas) upbringing, it is not surprising that even his blues were painted with a richer palette than most. Gatemouth learned guitar and fiddle from his father, a skilled multi-instrumentalist who taught his son to play Texas fiddle music, traditional French tunes and even polkas.

Gatemouth's first band was called the Gate Swingsters. He stayed with them for nearly five years. At 16, Brown joined his first professional band, Howard Spencer and His Gay Swingsters. He also toured with W.M. Bimbo &His Brownskin Models until he was called for military duty. After he was discahrged, he stayed in San Antonio and worked in a big band as a drummer at the age of 21

After he gained early experience with vaudeville and swing revues, pioneer electric blues guitarist T-Bone Walker helped him get some early breaks. In 1947, Gate was in the audience at the Golden Peacock nightclub in Houston, when famed guitarist T-Bone Walker took sick and dropped his guitar onto the stage in the middle of a number. Gate leaped to the stage, picked up Walker's axe and laid into one of his own tunes, "Gatemouth Boogie." T-Bone was not amused by the young upstart, but the crowd went wild, tossing $600 at Brown's feet in fifteen minutes. 

That stunt also got the attention of the club's owner, a Houston businessman named Don Robey. Robey hired Gate to play the club and eventually became his manager. He teamed Gate with a swinging 23-piece orchestra and booked him into venues across the South and Southwest. 

Gatemouth made his first records for Hollywood's Alladin Records in 1947. When Alladin's promotion and release schedules didn't live up to expectations, Robey founded Peacock Records as an outlet for Gate's music. Dozens of Brown's records, including Okie Dokie Stomp, Boogie Rambler, Just Before Dawn and Dirty Work At The Crossroads, became big hits. Beginning with Gate's hits, in a few years Peacock grew to become a major independent R&B record label, with an artist roster that included stars like Bobby "Blue" Bland, Junior Parker and Joe Hinton.

The artist and label put each other securely on the musical map. Into the 1960s, Gatemouth released gems of strikingly powerful, clever blues and jazz on Peacock. Gatemouth became a major influence on blues guitar stars Albert Collins, Guitar Slim, Johnny "Guitar" Watson, and even Frank Zappa. Forty-five years after he recorded it for Peacock, his classic instrumental hit "Okie Dokie Stomp" is still required learning for aspiring blues guitar players.

It was to Walker that Gatemouth explained the breadth of his musical vision by saying "Variety is the spice of life." He also rebelled against what he perceived as the negativity in too many blues and would say, "I hate a downer." After his association with Peacock ended, Gatemouth's flexibility served him well. He led the house band on the syndicated mid-1960s rhythm and blues TV show The Beat!!!, did recording sessions mainly in Nashville.

During a brief hiatus from music in the late sixties, Gate moved to New Mexico and became a deputy sheriff. It wasn't long, however, before he was drawn to Europe by a newly developing blues audience there. He toured throughout Europe in 1971 as part of a blues package. 

For much of the 1970s he was playing a mix of roadhouse music in the U.S., in between touring Europe with small swing bands and taking his own band to the Soviet Union for six ground-breaking weeks. Gatemouth's first American album was 1978's Blackjack for Seattle's Music is Medicine label. His affiliation with country guitarist Roy Clark led to a TV appearance on Hee-Haw! and an MCA album together.

Eventually Gatemouth signed with Rounder Records. In 1982, his debut album for the label Alright Again! won a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Recording. Rounder also issued the first U.S. album of Gatemouth's Peacock highlights. Since then he has dazzled audiences around the world totally on his own terms and added to a to a discography formidable in both quantity and quality. He has received seven Grammy nominations, multiple W.C. Handy Awards, and a prestigious Pioneer Award from the R &B Foundation.

In 1999, Brown was inducted into the Blues Foundation Blues Hall of Fame. In 2000, he was given a Lifetime Achievement Award from the New Orleans? Big Easy Awards.

American Music, Texas Style (Verve, 1999) continued the direction set in 1997 by its predecessor Gate Swings (Verve). Both feature a thirteen-piece horn section arranged and conducted by Wardell Quezergue. The illustrious brass and reedmen on American Music, Texas Style include trumpeter Nicholas Payton and saxophonists Eric Traub, Tony Dagradi, Wes Anderson, and regular featured soloist Eric Demmer. Vocalist Kaye Dorian helps update Gatemouth's Peacock recording "Rock My Blues Away"and set the tone for an irresistible musical ride.

American Music, Texas Style was co-produced in Louisiana by Gatemouth and his long-time manager Jim Bateman. The results show how much the proceedings benefited from the familiarity, focus, comfort, sense of possibilities, level of expectations, and ability to bring out the best the two brought to bear. In the lavish and sympathetic framework, Gatemouth showcases his dexterity (as bluesman Lonnie Brooks put it, "That Gate can do more with a guitar than a monkey with a peanut!") and wit on vocals, guitar, and fiddle. The program balances vocals and instrumentals, combining a healthy portion of originals with classics from Duke Ellington, Jay McShann and Percy Mayfield. While conceding generous solo space to his ensemble mates, "Gatemouth" leaves no doubt that not only is he worthy of any musical company he chooses, but after fifty years of being an influence, there's nobody like him.

For his 2001 album, Back to Bogalusa (Blue Thumb Records), Brown presented nearly an hour's worth of music spread over 13 tracks. While Gate explored the sounds of the Lone Star State on American Music, Texas Style, with Back to Bogalusa he took the listener back across the state line to his beloved Louisiana.

"Gate's last two albums emphasized the big band, Texas swing side of his music," sayd co-producer Jim Bateman at the time. "This time we were more song oriented with an emphasis on a Louisiana and Southern feel."

For the Back to Bogalusa sessions, Brown used his regular band of Harold Floyd-bass, Joe Krown-keyboards, David Peters-drums, and Eric Demmer-sax, augmented by Mike Loudermilk on electric and acoustic guitar and an additional horn section. Some of Gate's Louisiana neighbors-slide guitarist Sonny Landreth and Cajun accordion champ Zachary Richard-are featured guests on several songs.

Central to the Louisiana theme are the tracks "It All Comes Back" and "Why Are People Like That," composed by Louisiana songsmith Bobby Charles, whose credits go all the way back to "See You Later Alligator" in the 1950s. "Bobby's always been one of my favorite writers," Gatemouth says.

Brown also reached back into the past for a string of Bayou-flavored tunes. "Breaux Bridge Rag" and "Louisian'" (both with Zachary Richard), "Bogalusa Boogie Man," "Folks Back Home," and "Dixie Chicken" (with Gatemouth and Landreth trading guitar solos) are new versions of tunes Gate first cut in the mid-'70s for the Europe-only Barclay releases. Brown, who rarely plays anything the same way twice, completely reworked all five tunes. The late Lowell George, who composed "Dixie Chicken," once said that he liked Gate's take on the song even better than his own with Little Feat.

Other songs on Back to Bogalusa include a pair of band instrumentals-"Grape Jelly" and "Slap It"-along with Don Nix's "Same Old Blues," the Delbert McClinton tune "Lie No Better," and Gate's own "Dangerous Critter"-a tune about livin' above an alligator on a waterway that his neighbors call Gate's canal. "I'm built right up over the water, and I can fish off the back of my deck. The gator don't bother me. If I leave him alone, he leaves me alone," he says.

Despite big-jawed reptiles, Brown maintains that Louisiana is one of the few places left in America where people and nature co-exist comfortably. "I'm only 32 miles from New Orleans, but it's another world out here. I think we've got some music on this album that will let people know what it's like in the bayou," he adds.

Gatemouth recorded Back to Bogalusa at his favorite studio, Bogalusa's Studio in the Country, a classic analog facility where everyone from Louis Prima (The Jungle Book) to Blues Traveler has recorded. Studio in the Country is also the site where Gate did several albums in the mid-1970s for the French Barclay label, as well as Blackjack (reissued by Sugar Hill) and Alright Again!, his 1982 GRAMMY? winner.

"I love working at Studio in the Country," Gatemouth says. "It's about as far away from big-city pressure as you can get. There's a great sound to the place, and I can relax and do things my way."

In April of 2004, Brown turned 80. He released a new album that year, Timeless (Hightone, 2004). It reflects a Gatemouth live show and includes jazzy covers of "Satin Doll" and Joe Zawinul's "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy", country honky tonkers "Tennessee Blues" and "Dark End of the Hallway", blues workouts "Jumpin' the Blues" and "The Drifter", plus the extended crowd pleaser, "Unchained Melody." Recorded live and in the studio under the guidance of Gatemouth's longtime manager and producer, Jim Bateman.

In September on 2004, Brown, then 80, announced that he had lung cancer. After seeking advice from doctors at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, he decided to go without treatment. At the time of the diagnosis, a defiant Brown refused to consider farewell scenarios. He did not doubt that he would continue to perform and record.

American Music, Texas Style (Blue Thumb)

Gate Swings - (Verve 314-537-617-2)

Long Way Home (Verve/Polygram 529-465-2)

The Man - (Verve 314-523-761-2)

Gate's On The Heat (Verve 519-730-2)

No Looking Back (Alligator 4804)

Standing My Ground (Alligator 4779)

Pressure Cooker (Alligator 4745)

Real Life (Rounder 2054)

Texas Swing (Rounder 11527)

One More Mile (Rounder 2034)

Original Peacock Recordings (Rounder 2039)

Alright Again! (Rounder 2028)

Back to Bogalusa (Blue Thumb Records, 2001)

Timeless (Hightone, 2004)