Tommy McClennan born 4 January 1905

Tommy McClennan (January 4, 1905 – May 9, 1961) was an American Delta blues singer and guitarist. 

McClennan was born in Durant, Mississippi, and grew up in the town. He is shown with his mother Cassie and his siblings in the 1910 census in Carroll County, and in 1920 the family was living on a plantation near Sidon in Leflore County. McClennan and his wife Ophelia were also enumerated in the 1930 Leflore County census, with his occupation listed as teamster. His name was variously spelled McClinton, McLindon, McCleland, and McClenan on these documents, although the McClennan spelling was used on all of his recordings. 

Ishman Bracey

While growing up, he taught himself to play guitar influenced by Delta masters Rubin Lacy, Charley Patton, Ishman Bracey and Tommy Johnson. At a young age he began to play on the streets of Greenwood, Mississippi for nickels and dimes, while working the cotton fields during the day. Later he worked in juke joints and for dance parties, playing both the guitar and the piano Other bluesmen remembered him from elsewhere in the Delta, including Bolivar County and Vance, but he was best known around Greenwood, where Booker Miller, a protege of Charley Patton, knew him as “Sugar,” and Yazoo City, where local resident Herman Bennett, Jr., and others called him “Bottle Up,” after his most popular song, “Bottle It Up and Go.” When Miller quit playing in 1937, he sold his guitar to McClennan. 

Honeyboy Edwards

In the Greenwood area, McClennan’s performing partners included Robert Petway and Honeyboy Edwards. When Samuel Charters traveled to Yazoo City doing research for his book “The Country Blues” in the 1950s, he learned that McClennan had lived on the Sligh plantation and liked to hang out on Water Street at the Ren Theater, an adjacent barroom, and a pool hall. Bennett also recalled him from the Cotton Club, a popular blues spot on Champlin Avenue. 

                                    

McClennan began his recording career in 1939 after white Chicago record producer Lester Melrose came looking for him. Big Billl Broonzy recounted that Melrose had to make a hurried exit when his presence angered locals who thought he was recruiting laborers to leave Mississippi. In Chicago McClennan, “one of the most ferocious blues singers to get near a microphone,” in the words of Charters, unleashed his gruff, unbridled blues in the studio, sometimes further energizing the recordings with lively comments urging himself on. Among McClennan’s most notable numbers were “Bottle It Up and Go,” “Cross Cut Saw,” “Travelin’ Highway Man,” and “New Highway No. 51 Blues.” McClennan, famed for his raucous, uninhibited singing and guitar playing, frequented this section of Yazoo City when he lived on the nearby J. F. Sligh plantation. 

Big Bill Broonzy

According to Broonzy, McClennan was chased from a Chicago party when revelers objected to the controversial lyrics McClennan sang in “Bottle It Up and Go.” McClennan’s friend Robert Petway also recorded sixteen songs for Bluebird. Petway (aka Petaway or Pettiway) shared a similar, if less rough-hewn and exuberant, performing style with McClennan. They were of similar diminutive height with McLennan standing just 4 feet 10 and weighing somewhere around 133 pounds, and were sometimes taken to be brothers. Their recording careers both ended in 1942,  At this point, Lester Melrose of Bluebird Records had decided to release McClennan from his services, citing his unreliability and alcoholism, although Bluebird and RCA Victor continued to release McClennan singles for several years. McClennan moved to Chicago but there are few reports of him performing there. 

Robert Petway

Honeyboy Edwards would  later recall in his biography running into McClennan again, in 1962. Destitute and living in a truck trailer he had converted into a makeshift house, Edwards attempted to bring McClennan back to the stage. His unskilled guitar playing was now clearly absent, but his mighty vocals remained. And McClennan's constant desire for alcohol had not diminished either; a fact that rekindled the word of his unreliability and ultimately brought forth an end to this second opportunity at fame. 

Edwards returned him to his life in the slums, and shortly afterwards, McClennan took sick and was hospitalized in Chicago. Unable to speak at all, McClennan died there of bronchopneumonia on May 9, 1961 alone and penniless, although blues researchers have been unable to agree or confirm the date or circumstances of his death. Throughout his life, he was a sickly man, who may have suffered from tuberculosis, and he was definitely plagued by chronic alcoholism. 

In retrospect McClennan's music can now be considered as some of the most compelling and important of its period, alongside the recognized legends, Son House, Robert Johnson, and Charley Patton. 

(Edited from Mississippi Blues Trail and Casscade Blues Association)