Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Bay Area Blues by Lee Hildebrand Bay Area Blues by Lee Hildebrand. LOWELL FULSON / PERCY MAYFIELD Mark Naftalin's Blue Monday Party, Volume 1 with Ester Jones and Dr. Wild Willie Moore. JOHN LEE HOOKER / CHARLIE MUSSELWHITE Mark Naftalin's Blue Monday Party, Volume 2 with Francis Clay and Luther Tucker. Read Lee Hildebrand's review of the Winner videos from the San Francisco Chronicle , May 2, 1999. Blue Monday Party, Vol. 1 | Blue Monday Party, Vol. 2 | Poet Laureate Of The Blues LOWELL FULSON / PERCY MAYFIELD Mark Naftalin's Blue Monday Party, Volume 1 with Ester Jones and Dr. Wild Willie Moore (Winner 111) Video Info Sleeve Notes Back Cover Press Quotes. Mark Naftalin - Blue Monday Blues (1:35) Lowell Fulson - Thing (1:56) Lowell Fulson - You're Gonna Miss Me (2:32) Lowell Fulson & Ester Jones - Night Time Is The Right Time (3:31) Percy Mayfield - Strange Things Happening (4:30) Percy Mayfield - Please Send Me Someone To Love (3:06) Percy Mayfield - Life Is Suicide (2:37) Lowell Fulson - Guitar Shuffle (1:57) Lowell Fulson, guitar & vocals Percy Mayfield, vocals Ester Jones, vocals Dr. Wild Willie Moore, sax Mark Naftalin, piano Bobby Murray, guitar Henry Oden, bass Fred Casey, drums. Recorded at the Sleeping Lady Cafe, Fairfax, California, July 3, 1981 Timed for 30-minute television broadcast. Color. Produced by Michael Prussian Associate Producer - Starr Sutherland Directed by Elizabeth Randazzo Package Design - Virginia Lindsay. Mark Naftalin's Blue Monday Party was a weekly rhythm & blues show and dance held at two San Francisco Bay-Area nightclubs -- the Sleeping Lady Cafe in Fairfax and Uncle Charlie's in Corte Madera -- from March, 1979, through September, 1983. Produced and hosted by pianist-bandleader Mark Naftalin, the Blue Monday Party was the Bay Area's preeminent ongoing blues showcase of its day. Stars of the 237 Blue Monday Party dance-concerts include Buddy Ace, Carey Bell, Boogie Jake, Mel Brown, Roy Brown, Cool Papa, Big Joe Duskin, John Lee Hooker, Dottie Ivory, Lady Bianca, Frankie Lee, Little Joe Blue, J.J. Malone, Maurice McKinnies, Sonny Rhodes, Freddie Roullette, Luther Tucker and many more. The Blue Monday Party was the scene of three half-hour television specials, produced by Michael Prussian for Videotunes: Frankie Lee & Charles Houff (1980); Lowell Fulson & Percy Mayfield (1981); John Lee Hooker & Charlie Musselwhite (1981). The 1981 shows are available on Winner home video. From February, 1982, through September, 1983, the first hour of each week's show was broadcast live and heard throughout the Bay Area on KTIM-FM (San Rafael). Stars of the 86 Blue Monday Party broadcasts include Francis Clay, Albert Collins, Johnny Copeland, James Cotton, Pee Wee Crayton, Sugarpie DeSantos, Lowell Fulson, Johnny Littlejohn, Percy Mayfield, Jimmy McCracklin, Bobby Murray, Charlie Musselwhite, Queen Ida, Eddie Taylor, Irma Thomas, Mississippi Johnny Waters and many others. The broadcast was honored with the Billboard Radio Award for best locally-oriented special programming (1982) and is the source of two Winnder CDs: Percy Mayfield Live and Ron Thompson's Just Like A Devil . ". STRONG ENTRIES. " -- Anthony DeCurtis, Rolling Stone. ". INSPIRED PAIRINGS. " -- Peter R. Aschoff, Living Blues. ". MAYFIELD TURNS OUT laconically hip and effective performances. Fulson's spare but driving guitar work is well displayed. " -- Tony Glover, Blues On Stage. ". ALL THREE VIDEOS boast crystal clear pictures and sound. " -- Kevin Toelle, Illinois Entertainer. *** Blue Monday Party, Vol. 1 | Blue Monday Party, Vol. 2 | Poet Laureate Of The Blues JOHN LEE HOOKER / CHARLIE MUSSELWHITE Mark Naftalin's Blue Monday Party, Volume 2 with Francis Clay and Luther Tucker (Winner 112) Video Info Sleeve Notes Back Cover Press Quotes. Charlie Musselwhite - Help Me (4:42) Charlie Musselwhite - Night Club (4:04) John Lee Hooker - So Cold In Chicago (5:36) John Lee Hooker - Worried Life Blues (4:21) John Lee Hooker - Voo Doo Woman (4:41) John Lee Hooker, guitar & vocals Charlie Musselwhite, harmonica & vocals Luther Tucker, guitar Francis Clay, drums Mark Naftalin, piano Bobby Murray, guitar Henry Oden, bass Gary Silva, drums. Recorded at the Sleeping Lady Cafe, Fairfax, California, July 6, 1981 Timed for 30-minute television broadcast. Color. Produced by Michael Prussian Associate Producer - Starr Sutherland Directed by Elizabeth Randazzo Package Design - Virginia Lindsay. Mark Naftalin's Blue Monday Party was a weekly rhythm & blues show and dance held at two San Francisco Bay-Area nightclubs -- the Sleeping Lady Cafe in Fairfax and Uncle Charlie's in Corte Madera -- from March, 1979, through September, 1983. Produced and hosted by pianist-bandleader Mark Naftalin, the Blue Monday Party was the Bay Area's preeminent ongoing blues showcase of its day. Stars of the 237 Blue Monday Party dance-concerts include Buddy Ace, Carey Bell, Boogie Jake, Mel Brown, Roy Brown, Cool Papa, Big Joe Duskin, John Lee Hooker, Dottie Ivory, Lady Bianca, Frankie Lee, Little Joe Blue, J.J. Malone, Maurice McKinnies, Sonny Rhodes, Freddie Roullette, Luther Tucker and many more. The Blue Monday Party was the scene of three half-hour television specials, produced by Michael Prussian for Videotunes: Frankie Lee & Charles Houff (1980); Lowell Fulson & Percy Mayfield (1981); John Lee Hooker & Charlie Musselwhite (1981). The 1981 shows are available on Winner home video. From February, 1982, through September, 1983, the first hour of each week's show was broadcast live and heard throughout the Bay Area on KTIM-FM (San Rafael). Stars of the 86 Blue Monday Party broadcasts include Francis Clay, Albert Collins, Johnny Copeland, James Cotton, Pee Wee Crayton, Sugarpie DeSantos, Lowell Fulson, Johnny Littlejohn, Percy Mayfield, Jimmy McCracklin, Bobby Murray, Charlie Musselwhite, Queen Ida, Eddie Taylor, Irma Thomas, Mississippi Johnny Waters and many others. The broadcast was honored with the Billboard Radio Award for best locally-oriented special programming (1982) and is the source of two Winnder CDs: Percy Mayfield Live and Ron Thompson's Just Like A Devil . ". STRONG ENTRIES. " -- Anthony DeCurtis, Rolling Stone. ". INSPIRED PAIRINGS. " -- Peter R. Aschoff, Living Blues. ". RARE AND WORTHWHILE . A pleasant addition to period footage. " -- Tony Glover, Blues On Stage. ". ALL THREE VIDEOS boast crystal clear pictures and sound. " -- Kevin Toelle, Illinois Entertainer. *** Blue Monday Party, Vol. 1 | Blue Monday Party, Vol. 2 | Poet Laureate Of The Blues Percy Mayfield -- Poet Laureate Of The Blues videodocumentary with Mark Naftalin (Winner 113) Video Info Back Cover Press Quotes. A visit with Percy Mayfield in his home. The blues poet talks about his life, times and music -- and sings his famous compositions, including a rollicking rendition of his best-known song, "Hit The Road Jack." Pianist Mark Naftalin accompanies. Onstage, Mayfield sings "Please Send Me Someone To Love" (his "prayer for peace") and more. Plus -- testimonials from Ray Charles and B.B. King. SONGS AND MUSICIANS. Recorded at Percy Mayfield's home, Los Angeles, California, December 8-9, 1982. Percy Mayfield, vocal Mark Naftalin, piano. I Wouldn't Do The Same Thing To You (1:07) Lost Love (1:14) Louisiana (1:29) Loose Lips (:51) Life Is Suicide (2:19) River's Invitation (:44) Ha Ha In The Daytime (Boo Hoo Hoo All Night Long) (:39) The Flirt (:51) Never Say Naw (:32) Hit The Road Jack (3:17) Recorded at Mark Naftalin's Blue Monday Party Sleeping Lady Cafe, Fairfax, California, July 3, 1981. Percy Mayfield, vocal Mark Naftalin, piano Bobby Murray, guitar Henry Oden, bass Fred Casey, drums. Strange Things Happening (2:50) Please Send Me Someone To Love (2:49) Never Say Naw (1:07) Videodocumentary. Color. Timed for 30-minute television broadcast. Produced by Starr Sutherland Executive Producer - Michael Prussian Directed by J. Elizabeth Randazzo Piano Player/Interviewer - Mark Naftalin Testimonials - Ray Charles, B.B. King Package Design - Virginia Lindsay. ". UNAFFECTED INTIMACY. " -- Anthony DeCurtis, Rolling Stone. ". THERE'S A NICE SYNCOPATED SWING to this at-home version of 'Hit The Road Jack'. Rare and worthwhile footage. " -- Tony Glover, Blues On Stage. ". ALL THREE VIDEOS boast crystal clear pictures and sound. " -- Kevin Toelle, Illinois Entertainer. ". CONGENIALLY CAPTURES the final heyday of [the] charismatic blues balladeer. The club footage finds Mayfield totally in the groove, with his relaxed Creole phrasing and elegant style on disarmingly soulful display. " -- Gary Von Tersch, Blues & Rhythm (England) The Library Community. All locations will be closed Monday, May 31 for Memorial Day. The following locations will be closed Tuesday, June 1: AAMLO, Elmhurst, Piedmont Ave. and Temescal/Tool Lending. African Americans Music History. Posted by Marco Frazier on Wednesday, July 11th, 2018. Collections focused on music from our Archives and Library. African Americans in the Art of Music. Jenkins Photo Collection. African Americans have made significant contributions to the art of music in many genres. From gospel legends Shirley Ceasar, to Motown legends Diana Ross and the Supremes, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas and many more. The Bay Area has also produced many legends from Oakland born artist Sheila E., to rap/hip hop artists Too Short, M.C. Hammer, Digital Underground, and R&B artist Goapele. Seeing the need to have the accomplishments of African American music and its musicians recognized, music producer Kenny Gamble and broadcast executive Ed Wright, crafted an idea of celebrating the contributions of African Americans musicians to the art of music while also taking black music globally. Their efforts resulted in President Jimmy Carter proclaiming June as Black Music Month. History of African American Music. Jenkins Photo Collection. The music of African Americans can be traced back to the days of slavery. In the fields as slaves were working you could hear them singing songs to pass the time. These songs were a way for them to share their life stories. Many slave owners began to forbid their workers from using their own languages to chant or use drums. Owners believed this was a form of communication, getting the message out to other slaves about impending escapes or insurrections. One musical genre that has roots back to the days of slavery is gospel music. As slaves became Christians, a religion forced upon them, they began singing hymns later termed spirituals. These spirituals later evolved into gospel music. With the abolition of slavery, a new form of music began to emerge. Free blacks found themselves expressing their disappointment in a post-slavery society. This genre became known as the blues. The African American Museum and Library at Oakland not only has numerous archival collections that include oral histories of Bay Area musicians, but also library materials relating to African Americans in the field of music. Come and view some of the following titles in our library and archives department related to African American music. From the Archives: Our Archives Department has a number of collections relating to African American music and the music scene. From the Reference Library: Our reference library has numerous titles that document the history of African American music. One title in particular, Lift Every Voice by Burton W. Peretti traces the roots of black music in Africa from the end of slavery in the United States to present day. The book documents the different musical genres such as spirituals, ragtime, blues, jazz, gospel, rhythm and blues, rock, soul, and hip-hop—as well as black contributions to classical, country, and other American music forms. In addition to the vast number of books on music legends the Reference Library also has a number of pictorials books that document the history of African American music and musicians with full page photos. The following books can be viewed in our OVERSIZE collection in the library: Carol Friedman: The Jazz Pictures. An impressive collection of photographs of jazz greats and legends taken by Carol Friedman. The book includes blues artist and former Oakland resident the late Charles Brown. The Blue Note Years: The Jazz Photography of Francis Wolff. A book of photos from the collection of Blue Note founder Francis Wolff who photographs rehearsals and recording sessions of many Jazz greats over 25 years such as John Coltrane and Miles Davis. Bay Area Blues. Michelle Vignes & Lee Hildebrand. Lee Hildebrand’s book contains black and white photos of the Bay Area blues scene including artist Beverly Stovall, Lowel Fulson, John Lee Hooker and many others. Black Beauty, White Heat a Pictorial History of Classic Jazz. Frank Driggs & Harris Lewine. Over Time: The Jazz Photographs of Milt Hinton. Other titles of note in our library collection include: Who Shot Ya? Three Decades of Hip Hop Photography. Photography documenting the hip hop scene from the 1970s Cold Crush Brothers, to the days of Kurtis Blow, The Fat Boys and Run DMC of the 1980s to the 90s rap artist Tupac and Biggie and early 2000s artist such as DMX. The Illustrated Story of Jazz. Spend your day learning about the history of jazz, its roots and beginnings as Shadwick takes you on a journey through classic jazz, swing, bebop to the days of cool jazz and beyond. Satchmo: The Wonderful World of Art of Louis Armstrong. This book tells the life story of Louis Armstrong through colorful pictures of using his writings, scrapbooks and artwork. Come to the African American Museum and Library at Oakland to learn more about the archival collections and books that we have on African American music. Did you know that the AAMLO now has a YouTube page to view archival footage? Subscribe TODAY at African American Museum and Library at Oakland. Check this video out from the Jay Payton Show with the below link. Bay Area Blues by Lee Hildebrand. Blues on Seventh Street | Recollections of the West Oakland scene in its heyday. By Lee Hildebrand Ten-year-old Ronnie Stewart had an epiphany late one Saturday morning in 1959. His mother had sent him down the block from their Adeline Street home to buy her a pack of Camels at Pearl Harbor Liquors on the corner of Seventh Street and Adeline—the heart of West Oakland’s then-bustling African-American community. She’d given him a quarter—20 cents for the cigarettes and the remaining five for a candy bar. The boy spotted a handsome, sharply dressed man leave the store and get into a shiny new Cadillac. The man, recalls Stewart, now 63, was surrounded by a bevy of adoring “ladies with these short dresses and big, old butts.” “He had on a black suit,” Stewart adds. “I’ll never forget all the gold on his fingers.” “Lowell, you so crazy!” he remembers one of the women playfully calling out to the man. Later that day, after mowing his family’s lawn, Stewart ripped a cardboard placard off a telephone pole in front of the house to use as a dustpan for the freshly cut grass. On the poster was a photograph of the man he’d seen, with the name “Lowell Fulson” in large letters. Stewart ran into the house to show his mother. “Mama,” he said excitedly, “this is the man I saw. This is him. This is that man with that funny name.” According to Stewart, who now lives in Vallejo, his mother was not impressed. “She said, ‘Oh, that’s a musician,’” he recalls. “‘You don’t even wanna look at that. Just go on and get outta here, boy, and put the grass on that.’” But spotting blues-singing guitarist Fulson that day changed the young man’s life. “That was my first introduction to the music industry, looking at the glamorous life,” says Stewart, who was playing blues guitar himself by the time he was in junior high school. He now serves as executive director of the Bay Area Blues Society, an organization he formed a half century ago with veteran bluesman Haskell “Cool Papa” Sadler. The society is known for producing annual blues festivals in Hayward and Pittsburg, as well as the blues component of Oakland’s Art & Soul festival. For the past seven years, members have also been working with the city of Oakland to place commemorative plaques along the wide sidewalk in front of the West Oakland BART station in memory of musicians who performed, from the 1940s through the ’60s, at such Seventh Street venues as Slim Jenkins’ Supper Club, Esther’s Orbit Room, and Lincoln Theater. As currently envisioned, the project involves placement of some 80 brass plaques, each 18 inches by 18 inches. Honorees are to include nationally known Bay Area blues and R&B artists who appeared in West Oakland early in their careers, such as Fulson, Ivory Joe Hunter, Pee Wee Crayton, Jimmy McCracklin, Sugar Pie DeSanto, and Joe Simon. Lesser-known East Bay figures also make the grade—for example, Eddie Foster, Johnny Fuller, L.C. Robinson, and the Green Brothers. National stars who performed along Seventh Street, such as Charles Brown, Sammy Davis Jr., Billie Holiday, B.B. King, Ike and Tina Turner, and T-Bone Walker, are also slated to receive plaques. Ditto for songwriter and record producer Bob Geddins—who made Fulson’s debut recording in 1946 at his makeshift studio at the corner of Eighth and Wood—and went on to cut hits by McCracklin, DeSanto, Jimmy Wilson, and others. Although Stewart told the East Bay Express in 2010 and the Los Angeles Times in 2011 that the society’s “The Music They Played on Seventh Street” markers would be in place “soon,” their manufacture and installation was put on hold when the financially strapped Oakland Redevelopment Agency dissolved in February 2012. Mohammad Barati, a civil engineer for the city who oversaw the now-largely-completed $1.9 million redevelopment of Seventh Street, including streetscaping, tree planting, and new lighting, says he’s trying to get funding for the blues society’s project from Caltrans. Stewart has his fingers crossed that funding for his dream project will come through soon. “Me and Cool Papa used to always talk about a hall of fame or walk of fame or some way to honor, like, the Fuller Brothers and people nobody never heard of nationally,” he says. “Oakland had so many local heroes, like Lafayette ‘The Thing’ Thomas.” African-Americans have lived in West Oakland since the city’s earliest days. A black woman named Jennie Prentiss nursed young Jack London, for instance, and as he was growing up, the future author heard sea stories from William T. Shorey, a black captain who sailed whaling barks out of West Harbor. Shorey Street, which crosses Seventh, the area’s main thoroughfare, was named after the captain. During the early part of the 20th century, West Oakland was home to Greeks, Slavs, Italians, Portuguese, Spaniards, Irish, and African- Americans. The black population increased dramatically during World War I and mushroomed during World War II. The first-known venue to feature African-American music on Seventh Street was the Creole Café, where pioneering New Orleans “tailgate” trombonist Kid Ory (then an Oakland resident) appeared regularly in 1921 with his Original Creole Jazz Band. A year later, the group traveled to Los Angeles and became the first black jazz band ever to make a recording. The Jan. 7, 1922, issue of the California Voice, the oldest black newspaper on the West Coast, contained an editorial titled “Oakland’s Shame.” Bemoaning the recent decline of a number of black-owned businesses in West Oakland, it read in part: “The Creole Café, the finest of its kind west of Chicago, can attribute its failure to lack of patronage by the Race, hence they were forced to ply for patronage to the whites and slowly but surely race prejudice crept in; this was the beginning of the end.” If racial tension doomed the Creole Café, it apparently had subsided by the time Harold “Slim” Jenkins opened a nightclub and restaurant next door to the cafe’s former site on April 7, 1933—the day that Prohibition ended. Born in Monroe, La., Jenkins came to California right after World War I, worked as a waiter, and saved his money. Slim Jenkins’ Supper Club became one of the most celebrated black nightclubs in the state. It attracted a racially mixed clientele, including several mayors of Oakland and other of Jenkins’s white friends in the city’s Republican establishment. Unlike the Creole Café, it managed to stay in business for 39 years. Jenkins’s club contained a first-class restaurant with a huge banquet hall, a market, and a liquor store. He presented some of the biggest names in African-American popular music over his four decades of operation, including the Ink Spots, Louis Jordan, Earl “Fatha” Hines, Dinah Washington, Charles Brown, and B.B. King (with a young Aretha Franklin as his opening act), as well as such locals as the Peter Rabbit Trio and Dell Graham. Ivory Joe Hunter, a major R&B star of the 1950s, got his start there in the mid-’40s, when he recorded a number for the Pacific label in Berkeley titled “Seventh Street Boogie.” My late friend, singer-pianist Dave Alexander, for whom I played drums in the early 1970s, recalled working for Jenkins during the late ’50s and early ’60s. “He [Jenkins] was really proud of his achievements but set in his ways,” Alexander told me in 1979. “He figured that the way he did it would work in any era. He repeatedly talked about how he made Ivory Joe Hunter a star. He was always telling me, ‘I can make you a star the same way.’ I tried to tell him politely that Ivory Joe Hunter’s time was a different time, but he never would hear it. I never would push back. I’d just politely back off and say, ‘Yes, sir.’ He always liked to be referred to as ‘sir.’” Jenkins moved to Jack London Square in 1972, but the business didn’t last long. “Slim had a talent for everybody,” says his friend Walter Davis, now 87. “He had everybody in there—whites, everything—but after he moved down to Jack London Square, ain’t no blacks going down there. I went down there once, and there wasn’t nobody in there.” Jenkins died in 1967 at age 76. Esther Mabry kept the Seventh Street club scene jumping for nearly a decade after Jenkins left. She had landed a job as a cook at his supper club after taking the Southern Pacific from Texas to West Oakland in 1942. Eight years later, she opened her own restaurant, Esther’s Breakfast Club, at the corner of Seventh and Wood, diagonally across the street from Jenkins’s place. In 1961, she opened the adjacent Esther’s Cocktail Lounge and, after Jenkins left the following year, launched Esther’s Orbit Room. During its heyday in the ’60s, the nightclub presented such stars as Fulson, Lou Rawls, Joe Turner, Etta James, and Pee Wee Crayton. Soul singer Al Green made his Bay Area debut at Esther’s. Lowell Fulson remained an attraction in the black community into the late ’60s, thanks to such then-recent hits as “Black Nights” and “Tramp.” He was one of my heroes, too, and in 1968, while I was working as an unpaid correspondent for Blues Unlimited magazine in England, I decided to try to meet him during an engagement at Esther’s. I don’t remember much about the encounter, other than that the blues giant was both regal and gracious. But I’ll never forget what his valet said before leading me to the dressing room: “Before I take you upstairs, give me that pistol you have in your pocket.” I obligingly opened my coat to show him the half-pint of whiskey—Cream of Kentucky Straight, if I recall correctly—in my breast pocket. Four years later, I performed for two nights at Esther’s Orbit Room as the drummer with the Little Frankie Lee Revue. I’d put together a four- piece band that featured soon-to-become-famous guitarist Robben Ford to back the Texas blues and soul singer and his three female vocalists, the Lee-ettes. I was so broke at the time that I had to borrow a few dollars from my stepbrother to buy gas to get to the gig. The promoter who was sponsoring the show had promised to pay the band $20 per man per night. But few people attended either of the performances, perhaps because Frankie Lee was not yet well known in the Bay Area, and/or because Seventh Street was beginning to show a severe decline in business, a circumstance many attributed to the recent arrivals of BART and the massive post office facility across Wood Street from Esther’s. As we played to a near-empty house for the second night in a row, I could smell the scent of soul food filtering over from Esther’s Breakfast Club and told myself I’d have an early breakfast there after I got off work. But when the gig was over, the promoter handed me only $120. Once I’d paid my band, there would be nothing left—and no breakfast—for me. “It should be $160,” I protested. “There are four of us.” “You can see that I didn’t make any money, Frankie Lee didn’t make any, and the Lee-ettes didn’t make any,” he explained coldly. “You’re part of the organization, so you didn’t make any money either.” Less than a year later, Mabry sold her property to the post office for an employee’s parking lot and moved her business to a storefront across the street from the complex. For a period, she featured Lafayette Thomas, whose alternately moaning and rhythmically propulsive guitar work on countless Bob Geddins productions helped define the style that has become known as Oakland blues. Thomas played there on Sunday evenings, but by the end of the ’70s, a DJ was spinning disco records. The business remained open, however, until shortly before Mabry’s death at age 90 in 2010. For the past three decades, there has been little if any live music on Seventh Street. The Bay Area Blues Society plaques honoring many of those who played there are still in limbo. The original Esther’s Orbit Room neon sign is still attached to the front of her now-boarded-up business, though it and the cocktail glass that once flickered atop it no longer shine in the night sky. And the scent of the soul food I never got to sample remains vivid in my memory. ———— Lee Hildebrand is a freelance writer whose work appears frequently in the San Francisco Chronicle, Oakland Post, East Bay Express, and Living Blues magazine. He lives in Tracy with his wife and daughter but makes it back to Oakland every chance he gets. Sharp-dressed man: Ronnie Stewart, director of the Bay Area Blues Society, credits 1960s West Oakland blues musician Lowell Fulson with inspiring his career. Launch pad: In the 1960s, Esther’s Orbit Room at Seventh and Wood streets drew stars like Etta James, Al Green, and Lou Rawls. Photo by SpiralA Photography. “Me and Cool Papa used to always talk about a hall of fame or walk of fame or some way to honor, like, the Fuller Brothers and people nobody never heard of nationally.”—Ronnie Stewart, Oakland blues guitarist and bandleader. Photo © 2012 Bob White/CRW Photography. West Oakland blues heyday recaptured in new film. In the weeks before Cheryl Fabio started working on her new documentary “Evolutionary Blues …West Oakland’s Music Legacy,” she happened to be reading Isabel Wilkerson’s “The Warmth of Other Suns,” the journalist’s award-winning account of the Great Migration that saw millions of African-Americans flee the South looking for better lives. Fabio not only recognized the story of her own family, which left Tennessee in the 1950s and settled in the Bay Area, she realized that Wilkerson’s epic history provided the framework for telling the story of the fervently creative West Oakland blues scene. “Her book slammed it home for me, that I could tell a story and start where it needed to,” says Fabio, who premieres “Evolutionary Blues” Sept. 27 at Oakland’s Grand Lake Theatre. “With that background of folks heading west from Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana, I could tell the story with the voices of the musicians. I didn’t want a narrator. I wanted the people to tell us.” Filmmaker Cheryl Fabio says she had to earn the trust of the East Bay blues community before making her new documentary. Courtesy of Cheryl Fabio. The Pulitzer Prize-winning Wilkerson is one of the experts who appears on screen in “Evolutionary Blues,” along with noted music journalists Lee Hildebrand, Rickey Vincent (“Funk and Party Music”) and Robert O. Self (“American Babylon: The Struggle for Postwar Oakland”). But the film belongs to the musicians. Fabio interviewed some three-dozen artists who participated in the glory days of 7th Avenue, when the thoroughfare was a focal point of a thriving music scene in the mid-20th century, including Sugar Pie DeSanto, Freddie Hughes, Faye Carol and Marvin Holmes. The leader of the Uptights, a pioneering Oakland soul band, Holmes proved to be a key to unlocking the tight-lipped scene. But before he would open up to Fabio, she had to prove her commitment to telling the story from the ground up. Like the Oakland Tribune Facebook page for more conversation and news coverage from Oakland and beyond. “Marvin grilled me for three hours,” she says. “Once he decided I was OK, he called around to all of these people and encouraged them to talk to me. They’ve been waiting to have their story told, but people like Marvin are very particular. They don’t trust people. But these big macho guys are the sweetest men I’ve ever come across. I feel like I’ve got 30 big brothers. Just about all come out of the church, and they’ve got this spirit in them.” Some of the distrust Fabio had to overcome stems from the contentious history of West Oakland, a community hit hard in the 1960s by freeway construction and urban renewal. Many musicians and club owners also feel the city has long targeted venues catering to African-Americans, a campaign described by Geoffrey Pate, who runs Geoffrey’s Inner Circle. A production of KTOP, a city-owned production facility, and co-produced by the Sarah Webster Fabio Center for Social Justice, which is named after Fabio’s late mother (a scholar, educator, cultural critic, and Black Arts Movement poet), “Evolutionary Blues” creates a densely detailed portrait of the scene. In the process of telling the story of the musicians, Fabio captures a larger story of 7th Street, with its music venues, black-owned business, demanding public school teachers, and entrepreneurs like Bob Geddins Sr., who built his own recording studio, launched more than half a dozen indie record labels, and produced records by seminal blues and R&B artists Lowell Fulson, Jimmy McCracklin, Sugar Pie DeSanto and Etta James. Part of what makes “Evolutionary Blues” such a vivid document is that Fabio draws on earlier works, like “Long Train Running,” which launched the career of the late groundbreaking documentarian Marlon Riggs. She also found a treasure trove of images by E.F. Joseph, a prolific street photographer whose invaluable record of daily life in Oakland can be found in Careth Reid and Ruth Beckford’s “The Picture Man: From the Collection of Bay Area Photographer E.F. Joseph 1927-1979.” What comes across throughout the film is the way that the music flows from the lives and experiences of the musicians. Carried from the South, electrified in the East Bay, and funkified when the scene got grittier in the late 1960s, the blues evolved as conditions on the ground changed. “This is just one sliver of that community,” Fabio says. “What I walked away with is that we are a resourceful people hard working, quick on our feet, quick thinking. We could continue to thrive if people just stopped blowing up our neighborhood.” Pamela Rose presents. . . News! BLUES IS A WOMAN was awarded Best Musical Direction (Tammy Hall) by Bay Area Theater Critics Circle. We are so proud of our amazing cast and show! EVEN BIGGER NEWS - BLUES IS A WOMAN now available for booking as a live concert. Check out our new video! Six Bodacious women tear up the stage in a celebration of Blues and Blueswomen. “Firing up audiences…a stageful of powerful Blueswomen!” San Francisco Chronicle. For two years following her successful national touring show, Wild Women of Song: Great Gal Composers of the Jazz Era , Bay Area singer- songwriter Pamela Rose has worked closely with five exceptional blues musicians to develop a new multimedia project that tells the remarkable story of women and the blues. Creative Direction by Jayne Wenger. Rose's BLUES IS A WOMAN blurs the boundaries between concert and theater, using storytelling, rare film footage, and music to bring to life the colorful history of the bold and singular women who wrote and popularized the blues. Some of the names are well known – Nina Simone, Aretha Franklin, Janis Joplin – and others should be – Ma Rainey, Ida Cox, Memphis Minnie, and so many more. The voices of these women are vibrant, challenging, inspirational, and dynamic, and BLUES IS A WOMAN seeks to ensure that these women, their histories, and their message will be remembered and celebrated. " A mix of performance and history, with a crackerjack all-woman band, making the case that women powered the development of the blues from Alberta Hunter to Janis Joplin. " - Cy Musiker, KQED's The Do List. A full theatrical presentation of BLUES IS A WOMAN will premiere in August 2017 with a month long run at the Custom Made Theatre in San Francisco. Following that engagement, the show will hit the road, sharing its compelling narrative of the essential role women played in the development and performance of this quintessential American musical form with many different audiences. All of the ensemble members are highly-regarded Bay Area musicians: Tammy Hall (piano), Ruth Davies (bass), Kristen Strom (saxophone), Daria Johnson (drums) and Pat Wilder (guitar). The Creative Director is Jayne Wenger.