Clifford's Blues is a 1999 historical fiction novel by John Alfred Williams. Williams is considered one of the "founding members of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s." Like Williams' other novels, Clifford's Blues is told through the eyes of a Black protagonist. According to Publishers Weekly, "Williams's ear for black dialect--especially musical references--is superb and his knowledge of jazz impressive."
The novel is set in Germany during World War II (in which Williams himself served in the navy) and highlights the mistreatment and oppression of Black individuals by the Nazis. A large part of the story takes place at the non-fictional Dachau concentration camp in Southern Bavaria, and concludes on April 29th, 1945, the actual date on which the camp was liberated by the Americans.
Clifford's Blues also features sexuality as a major theme and issue in the story. The titual character is gay and has relationships with multiple men over the course of the novel, including an SS officer who uses Clifford as a servant, but later becomes his lover. Although Williams himself was not gay, he faced discrimination in the years following his marriage to Lorraine Isaac, a Jewish woman. The couple moved from Manhattan to Teaneck, New Jersey in 1975 because they believed Teaneck "would not be inhospitable to a mixed marriage."
In an interview six years before Clifford's Blues's publication, William revealed that he was "pessimistic" about a solution to black-white racial tensions, but thought that it was "the kind of pessimism that would be delighted to be proved wrong, absolutely wrong."
