A ustin has long been a blues town. From the post-World War II period to the early 1960s, a music and cultural scene thrived on East 11th and 12th streets. While the blues deeply influenced the rock music that followed it, in the post-segregation era — as the city let the eastside fall into disrepair — many families relocated to other parts of town, disrupting the fabric of the neighborhood now celebrated as Austin’s African American Cultural Heritage District.
Clifford Jamal Antone arrived in town a few years before Charlie’s Playhouse, one of the hottest eastside clubs, shut down. Famed bandleader T.D. Bell took a day job driving a truck. The scene was dying down.
A Lebanese American who grew up in a tight-knit immigrant community, Antone came to recognize the blues — this roots music that wrings the blood out of our country’s soul — as the most American thing in the world. It infuriated him that America wasn’t taking care of it. He went on a one-man crusade to save it himself. In the process, he reshaped our city’s music scene and amplified our position on the world stage.
Oh yeah, and he also moved over 1,000 pounds of marijuana through Austin. Antone landed in jail twice on drug charges. Where the money from his misdeeds ended up is one of many unanswered questions in his personal saga. Always teetering near the verge of closure, the clubs have never been flush and his personal life was not particularly lavish. There are, however, countless stories of Antone paying musicians — often career sidemen who took top billing in Austin — from his own pocket…