LIVE

This double-disc, 19-song concert recording, which serves as a fittingly funky retrospective of McClinton's 30-year career, is as close to the definitive Delbert as can be imagined. And, oddly enough, his third and best live album was an inadvertent one--a Norwegian radio broadcast captured a festival set too hot to confine to the airwaves.

Here, the Texas honky-tonk blues hero dynamically delivers the core of the live McClinton experience, including an energetic rendition of his 1980 breakout hit "Givin' It up for Your Love," a testifying take on Otis Redding's "I've Got Dreams to Remember," and a rambunctious (and extended) reading of his own "B Movie Boxcar Blues." But Live also fills in around the edges with surveys of McClinton's early influences: "Rebecca Rebecca," a slow-burning, stream-of-consciousness blues medley, features Kevin McKendree recycling some sparkling Otis Spann piano lines while the album closer, the vintage rockabilly romp "Fine and Healthy Thing," offers a great guitar getaway by Rob McNelley. --Michael Point