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Kevin Hahn: Pat Hare

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Kevin Hahn: Pat Hare PAT HARE • a blues guitarist • by Kevin Hahn ‘Take The Bitter With The Sweet’ During the decade of the ’50s the name of Pat Hare stood among the front ranks of the many fine guitarists playing in Memphis, Houston, and Chicago. As Sam Phillips’ favorite guitarist he appeared on many of Sun’s blues sessions and his ferocious lead work made classics of records by the young James Cotton, Walter Bradford and Junior Parker; later recordings and performances with Parker, Bobby Bland and Muddy Waters served as tutelage for a new generation of blues players. Bob Koester, of Delmark Records, whose interest in blues is primarily as a vocal music, considered Pat as one of the finest non-singing guitarists and one of the few of interest. 1 By the early ’60s, however, his career was over; his last recorded work dates from 1960 and in early 1964 he was sentenced to life in prison for a double murder in Minnesota. Although he lived until 1980 and continued to perform while incarcerated, he was a forgotten figure in the blues community. This article is intended to bring some attention to his brief but important part in the story of the blues, and especially to shed some light on the events that ended his musical life, a story that has been clouded with myth and misinformation. Auburn Hare was bom on December 20, Parkin/Forrest City/West Memphis area and over a wood-pile behind the juke they 1930 in Cherry Valley, Arkansas at the home (Wolf would come out to the Hare farm and were playing at. One night a fight with some of his grandfather on Mrs Fay Van’s planta­ pick him up for the gig and return him at the patrons ended with Pat cracking an antago­ tion. The family, which included Auburn’s end of the night); during the week he drove nist over the head with a handy rake-handle, only sibling, a brother who died at the age of ‘a big John Deere tractor’2 helping his father breaking the rake, his pursuer’s jaw, and his six, remained on the plantation until 1940 on the farm. The band experience was a own little finger, which healed crookedly and when they moved to a farm near Parkin. By heady one for a teenager spending his life on remained bent for the rest of his life. this time Auburn had been nicknamed ‘Pat’ the farm and this early exposure to nightlife Wolf kept Pat in the band despite all this by his grandmother and had already begun to and moonshine encouraged his rebellious and by 1951 he was playing full-time with play on an old guitar he had discovered streak. Feeling his oats, he had several run- the group, broadcasting from West Memphis under a bed at his grandfather’s house. ins with Wolf (who tried to keep him in station KWEM on W olfs radio spot; he also In his young teens Pat came under the check), one time getting up on a chair to broadcast with James Cotton, Willie Nix and musical wings of Joe Willie Wilkins and punch the much-larger Wolf in the mouth Joe Hill Louis, and from station WDIA in Howlin’ Wolf, who lived nearby and knew (Wolf didn’t retaliate, but did tell Pat’s Memphis with his cousin, disc jockey Walter Pat’s parents. From Joe Willie, Pat received parents when he brought him home that Bradford, with whom he made his recording lessons and was allowed to join in playing night, recommending that they give him a debut, cutting six titles in February/June between innings at the minor league baseball good whipping! ), and another time claimed 1952 for Sun Records. The first session’s games in West Memphis. By the late ’40s to have actually taken a few pot-shots at results, ‘Dreary Nights’/‘Nuthin’ But The Pat was spending his weekends playing in Wolf with a small-caliber automatic, Blues’, were supposedly issued on Sun 176 W olfs band when it performed in the laughing with glee while Wolf scrambled up but copies have never been found and they remain unheard. The second session produced four titles, including the very fine ‘Reward For My Baby’ with superb guitar work from Pat. Pat also remembered playing behind Wolf on some RPM titles cut at KWEM (twenty-five years later he could still play ‘The Sun Is Rising’ note for note), but Willie Johnson claims that no titles were actually cut at the station, and that Pat never recorded with the band. 3 In 1952 Pat left Wolf and began playing with Junior Parker’s band and was with Parker in Houston from June 1952 to April 1953. When he returned to Arkansas he joined up with Cotton until Floyd Murphy left Parker in 1954; Pat then rejoined the Blue Flames. As Pat recalled those days: ‘I stayed on the farm all the time I was playing with Wolf and Junior Parker and Bland... I knew Wolf before I started playing with a band. Wolf was the first band. And in between them times I was playing with Johnny Ace, Ike Turner or just a bunch of us guys would meet up and go play a gig someplace. For a short while I played alone [his ex-wife Dorothy Mae Hare Adams, whom he had married on Joe Willie Wilkins Christmas Day 1949, remembered Pat l to r: standing: Junior Parker. Hamp Simmons, Jimmy Johnson, Eugene Ballow, Pat Hare; kneeling: Bobby Bland. Joe Fritz, on tour in South Carolina, 1952 (©Norbert Hess / Joe Fritz collection) working as a one-man band in the late they were issued on a Dutch bootleg LP. ’40s]... I didn’t leave the farm at all Although much has been made of the theme because whenever I came off the road I of his ‘I’m Gonna Murder My Baby’ as would always make it out to the farm. I revealing a side of his nature (and fore­ hung around Memphis a lot tho. ’4 shadowing events in his life), the song is in fact a reworking of Doctor Clayton’s 1941 Pat did indeed hang around Memphis a ‘Cheating And Lying Blues’ (also captured lot, soon becoming known, along with Willie on tape in 1964 by Robert Nighthawk as Johnson, Floyd and Matt Murphy and, a bit ‘Goin’ Down To Eli’s’); both of his titles, later, Hubert Sumlin, as one of the city’s according to Pat, had been given to him to premier young guitarists. Pat became a record by someone in the studio. The second favorite of Sam Phillips and between tune, ‘Ain’t Gonna Be That Way’ (Eddie 1952-55 backed up a number of Phillips’ Vinson’s ‘Bonus Pay’) employed a much artists in the studio, among them Bradford, simpler guitar part than his other work of the Parker, Walter Horton, Big Memphis Ma day, suggesting some lack of familiarity with Rainey, James Gayles, Kenneth Banks, Hot the song. Cotton was to have blown harp on Shot Love, Rosco Gordon and others. Pat’s sides, but he and Pat had a fist fight The musical event Pat spoke of with the between sessions and was unable to play. most pride from his days in Memphis, Shortly after this session Pat headed back however, was playing with Memphis Minnie to Houston with Junior Parker (who would on one occasion around 1960 after Minnie become his son Larkin’s godfather), who had had returned to town on her retirement: left Sun and signed with Duke Records. Minnie was one of Pat’s guitar heroes (along Parker and Bobby Bland were touring with Joe Willie Wilkins and Lonnie Johnson) together and sharing the same backup band; and he tried to see Minnie and Son Joe Pat required a better amplifier for this level frequently when in Memphis. of playing and so rather than the raw and On May 14, 1954 Pat and Cotton each distorted tone of the Sun recordings his recorded two vocal sides at the Sun studio. playing with the Parker/Bland group in Cotton’s ‘Cotton Crop Blues’/ ‘Hold Me In Houston was smoother, cleaner and jazzy. Your Arms’ were released on Sun 206 and Because Duke/Peacock did not keep records featured Pat as guitarist; ‘Cotton Crop’ was a of the session men it is sometimes difficult showcase for Pat’s blistering, over-amplified to absolutely identify Pat’s work at Duke, soloing, derived from his earlier solo on but between 1954 and 1956 he seems to have Bradford’s ‘Reward For My Baby’. His played on almost all of Parker’s records and playing here pushed Memphis-style guitar to shared the duty behind Bland with Roy new standards and, although he soon became Gaines and Clarence Hollimon; he may also, much more technically proficient, this must as he claimed, have been the guitarist on re­ remain the milestone of his recorded work, a cordings by Harold Conner, Connie landmark of ’50s Memphis blues-playing. McBooker, Big Mama Thornton and Johnny Pat’s own two cuts, the only vocals he would Ace (i. e. possibly on the latter’s ‘How Can record during his career, showed an engag­ You Be So Mean’). ing, countrified style but were not released Pat never spoke of Gaines or Hollimon, on Sun and did not appear until 1976 when 9 have Pat’s guitar way down in the mix, oftentimes barely audible, although there are a few fine examples of his playing such as on ‘She’s Into Something’ and ‘Take The Bitter With The Sweet’.
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