Clarence Gatemouth Brown was already in his seventies when he recorded this memorable blues number. Just don’t call it blues.

For someone with such a memorable name, it’s surprising – and disappointing – that it doesn’t ring a bell with too many music fans.

It’s perhaps less surprising for someone who got his nickname for the way he sang (“like a gate,” according to his schoolteacher) that most of his music is instrumental.

Clarence ‘Gatemouth’ Brown learned the guitar at ten years of age and was playing drums in local groups by his teens. Just don’t go calling him a “bluesman” – the term always riled him up.

‘Gate’, as he was universally known (not to be confused with his brother James ‘Widemouth’ Brown), grew up in Orange, Texas, where his dad played a strict diet of country, Cajun and bluegrass – but not the blues – and his son developed a taste for the big bands of Count Basie, Lionel Hampton and Duke Ellington.

He started out performing in the mid-1940s, filling in for an ailing T-Bone Walker at a Houston nightclub, where his blistering riffs quickly became an influence on local stars-to-be including Albert Collins and Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson.

He also played the mandolin, harmonica, viola and violin – and was prone to switch suddenly from the blues into an old-time fiddle hoedown in concert.

Gate’s multi-instrumental dexterity and eclectic range of styles may have been what held him back from wider fame: he was, when it came to the blues he was an anti-purist.

Following a spell as a TV star in the mid-1960s. and a stint as a deputy sheriff in New Mexico, by the 1970s he was blending country, calypso and jazz into his performances.

After recording with Professor Longhair he moved to New Orleans in 1979 and embarked on a vast concert tour of the Soviet Union – the most extensive ever undertaken by an American band.