“People couldn’t believe their eyes, seeing a young girl playing left-handed! It was so odd for them, both men and women, to see a young black girl, especially around these parts, playing a left-handed guitar and singing the blues.”
Barbara Lynn started rocking Beaumont clubs while still in high school, fronting an Elvis-loving all-girl band. At age 20, the soulful southpaw shot from bars to American Bandstand as her self-penned 1962 single, “You’ll Lose a Good Thing,” bumped Ray Charles from atop the R&B charts.
“My manager and I sort of had a good idea that this song might hit, but we thought ‘Lonely Heartache,’ the flip side, would go,” Lynn explains. “It just so happened that they put ‘You’ll Lose a Good Thing’ for the A side, and it really took off.”
Lynn walked away from music in the 1970s, moving to California to raise a family. When she picked up her guitar again in the late 1980s, Clifford Antone was among the first to call.
“Clifford would always say, ‘Barbara, you need to put all that other music down and come in the studio and let us record a strong blues album with you.’ He felt all that other music was just garbage. He said the blues will always be around, and he told the honest-to-God truth.”
At 66, nearly five decades since her chart-topping debut, Lynn’s career is far from done: “I might be signing up with Daptone Records out of Brooklyn. Boy, they have been calling me.”
Lynn cuts a single for the catalysts of Sharon Jones’ retro-soul revival in September and hints a full LP could follow. Now that would be a good thing. more at austinchronicle.com