Bobby is a blues sax player, singer and composer who grew up in Oakland and came to Los Angeles because, at the time, this was the happening place for music. He is well-known and regarded on the blues circuit in Los Angeles and has his name on the Blues Walk Of Fame In Oakland. You can find him on: www.bobbyhurricane.com

Bobby grew up in the “ghetto” in Oakland and feels that seeing and experiencing so much violence in his community scarred him. He credits his Jehovah’s Witness grandparents, who raised him, for keeping him straight. He says: “Better things were expected of me and that’s what kept me right. I was an absolute square.”

He kept himself straight–or as he calls it “square”–through his music and through his love of reading. Bobby started playing music early, and was part of many bands in the Oakland area. His mother had subscribed to the Jazztone record club and they would get records regularly. That is how he got introduced to Charlie Parker. He went to UC Berkeley to study music, but soon found that he was not able to support a family on music and so he began to teach in the day and perform his music at night. This is what he had to say about that:

“I had to substitute teach because I had a family to support and bills to pay. I was determined to keep my kids out of the ghetto. That’s what my schooling was all about. I wanted to make enough money to live in a good neighborhood so they would not be exposed to the ghetto life that I grew up in.”

I met Bobby when we both taught at John Adams Middle School in South Los Angeles. Since retiring as a teacher in 2009, Bobby went back to a full-time musical life for himself with the help of his new wife Retha who took over as his manager and publicist. Every musician needs a strong manager. Bobby needs Retha, for in this world, talent isn’t always enough to get people to know you.

Bobby likes to talk about how he learned music and the real way to play jazz and the blues:

“Let’s say you like Coltrane. Until you sit down with Coltrane and listen the hell out of him, pick up some of his licks, you’re not going to get to the stuff. Called coppin’. Coppin’ is when you listen to somebody and learn how they play. That’s how you really learn. And most musicians aren’t going to tell you that.

You got to sit down with a record like Junior Walker—I mean I’m talking rhythm and blues now.

You remember Shotgun? (Singing) “ Shotguuun, shoot him ‘fore he run now. Do the jerk baby. Pum pum pa lo dara dara dada. Darada da da dera da aa rada dera.”

I had to learn all that, its like learning a language. People can learn from a book but if they’re not exposed to the real people talking it’s just not going to be right. Now most of the musicians I’ve been around, they couldn’t read music, they didn’t know anything about theory but they could play—all ear learned.

If you really want to play, you got to pick someone you love. But you got to love someone, otherwise its going to be hard. And you got to listen to that shit over and over.”

You are welcome to read Bobby’s full story here.

 

 

 

 

BOBBY

EARLY LIFE—MOTHER AND MY GRANDPARENTS

I was born in Oakland. My mother, Mildred Elaine Evans Spencer, had 3 children.

My grandmother, Annie Mae Evans, was very affectionate. When I was little, my grandfather, August Evans (Little Bud), used to sneak out with me to San Francisco, to the zoo or to ride horses—something fun.

I moved in with my grandparents early. They were from Louisiana/Arkansas. They lived in a town called Junction City. Half of it was in Louisiana and half of it was in Arkansas. But they were very stable, very strict.

Actually, my grandmother was the boss, not my grandfather, but she wouldn’t admit it. The man’s supposed to be the head of the family, but he wasn’t qualified. He came up illiterate. He couldn’t read. She taught him how to read.

She had taught him back in Louisiana/Arkansas—whatever it was. But she taught. It wasn’t like she had a degree. She would go to teacher school one year and teach the next, then go back the next year.

And she loved the dictionary. Would look up words all the time. And when I was going to Merritt College, she knew I had to have good dictionaries there, she asked me would I buy her a dictionary, which I did.

She was very domineering but she was sweet. She gave me a lot of affection, not like my brother and sister. My brother and sister didn’t get that same affection, and that’s probably what caused their lives to be so screwed up.

I remember I almost got into a fight one day, almost beat this boy up—that’s the atmosphere I was living in. All the kids were out there, school was out. My grandma was out pioneering—Jehovah’s Witness have what they call pioneering, getting so many hours in there in a month. She asked me where we were at—KICKED MY ASS. She had one of those, what you call, ironing cords—knocked the shit out of me.

You know who we were afraid of? My grandfather! He would just threaten for a long time. He would say, “I’ll snatch you bald-headed”.
Then after a while you were bad, he had a razor strap. He would sharpen that thing. You only got it from him one or two times a year. But boy! You could feel it– that’s the way we were raised as kids.

 

He was a nice man. Very warm, didn’t talk much, but we’d like it when he told us one of his stories. Like when somebody was bothering him in the South in those days. He told us how he took them out. He didn’t talk a lot in those days but he’d tell us his stories.

We liked when he’d tell us stories. The day he killed a panther, He had a big scar right here on his hand and he’d tell us how he got that.

My grandma talked all the time. She was very talkative and people really respected her. But she was a nag. That’s how she got her way all the time. Gosh, she was a nag. People loved her though.

I had a friend from school, white boy, and he’d come over to my house all the time to play. We lived in the Alameda Projects then, and there were whites and blacks– but it was segregated.

Then one day, when I was in first grade, my white friend invited me over to his house, but his parents would not let me in. That’s the way they treated us. They had me waiting outside for a long time and they finally came out and told me they wouldn’t let me in.

But my grandmother, she still welcomed him to our house. He was one of my buddies, you know, and my grandmother—it was very racist back in those days-she didn’t respond to racism like you would think. In other words, she was very popular with white people, because she didn’t hold any kinds of grudges about that.