Lowell Fulson and the West Coast Blues

Although he may have started out in the Southwest, Lowell Fulson became an exceptionally prolific and influential artist of the West Coast blues sound that emanated from Southern California in the 40’s and 50’s. He wrote several blues standards that remain in the arsenal of just about any blues guitarist and even hearing them now, the retain a timelessness of true blues classics.
Fulson (also known as Fulsom in his early years) was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in March, 1921 to Martin Fulson and Mammie Wilson. Martin, a Choctaw Indian, died in a sawmill accident. In 1927 his mother relocated her young family to the ‘Choctaw stamp’, a tract of ‘some land of the Choctaw Freedman Indian, mixed blacks between Ataxia and Wopanockee’, as described by Fulson. “It belonged to my grandfather, that’s where I was brought up, a mission school’. It was there that he became enamored with music; singing spirituals at the local Methodist church and tap dancing at local events.
At the age of 12 he began to teach himself guitar, learning country and western songs. While still in the early stages of his self-education, Fulson became fascinated by the acoustic Texas blues of Blind Lemon Jefferson and Blind Boy Fuller. His first performances were picking guitar and singing at the church but that soon proved insufficient to appease his needs and he began playing ‘country balls’ around Tulsa while still a young teen.
In 1938 Fulson joined up with Dan Wrights String Band and took his place in the line up that included two guitars, two mandolins, three violins and two banjos and toured Oklahoma and Texas. By 1939, Fulson had left the String Band and hooked up with blues guitarist, Alger ‘Tex’ Alexander (a vocalist and guitarist who had through the course of his career played with Lonnie Johnson and Howlin’ Wolf). In Meeting The Blues, Fulson described his time with ‘Tex’ as “First, we started out in Western Oklahoma and played Saturday night fish fries and whatever else they had going on. They cut the nickelodeon if they thought you sounded pretty good. They let you play there, and they’d pass the hat around and take up a little collection.”
After parting ways with Alexander, Fulson relocated to Gainesville, Texas where he worked as a fry cook while still playing Saturday night fish fries and country balls, this time as a solo act. In 1943 he was drafted in the U.S. Navy. After training, he spent some time at the Alameda Air Station in Oakland, California. When he would be able to get off the base on leave, Fulson would catch T.Bone Walker shows as Walker was touring the West Coast heavily at the time. Walker’s brand of flamboyant guitar playing set against a more jazzy background had a profound affect on Fulson and the direction his music would take a little later in his career.
From Alameda, Fulson spent time on the island of Guam where he would often entertain fellow troops by singing and playing at USO shows. After his discharge in 1945 Fulson returned briefly to Oklahoma but was drawn back to Oakland, California where he hit the local clubs to revive his music career. A chance meeting with blues producer Bob Geddins proved to be the spark that gave him the jump-start he needed. Fulson formed a small combo and began to record sides for Geddins’ Big Town and Down Home labels. Geddins recalled his initial meetings with Fulson in an interview in Honkers and Shouters. “Lowell Fulson was the first great bluesman I put on wax – I bought him an electric guitar and an amplifier. It cost about $180 and he did a lot of rehearsing in the Seventh Street Music Shop.” His first two sides he laid down for Geddins were ‘Crying Blues’ and ‘ Miss Katie Lee Blues’.
In 1948 he recorded ‘Three O’clock In The Morning Blues’ which was later recorded as ‘Three O’clock Blues’, the first hit for B.B. King. King was never shy about giving props to Fulson either. “I learned a lot Lowell Fulson. In fact my first big record, ‘Three O’clock Blues’, was written by Lowell. I used to love him – still do…” In 1950 Fulson hit again with ‘Everyday I Have The Blues’ for Swingtime, which, in turn, became another hit for B.B. King.
Lowell formed up a road band for touring that included legendary pianist Ray Charles (who recorded Fulson’s ‘Sinners Prayer’ for Atlantic a few years later) and jazz saxophonist Stanley Turrentine.
In 1954 Fulson signed with Chess sister West Coast label, Checker Records. In a Checkers studio in Dallas, Fulson recorded his most enduring record, ‘Reconsider Baby’, a blues classic that has been covered by both Elvis Presley (shortly after his release from the Army) and Eric Clapton on his release ‘From The Cradle’.
By the early 60’s, Fulson had relocated back to Los Angeles permanently and hooked up with the Kent Label. In the mid-60’s, he had two more minor hits with ‘Black Nights’ and ‘Tramp’. (‘Tramp’ was covered well by both Otis Redding and Carla Thomas). But Fulson had the same drop off that so many blues artists went through in the late 60’s – early 70’s; genuine blues musicians found themselves taking a backseat to blues rock and the more psychedelic and hard-core rock. And like so many of his contemporaries, Fulson hit the circuit again, playing clubs and festivals around the country. Interestingly enough though, Fulson didn’t simply offer up a recitation of his catalogue, he continued to write new music and grow as a performer.
In the 90’s, he recorded the albums ‘Hold On’ and ‘Update Them Blues’ for Bullseye records as well as appearing on several compilation and tribute discs. His deteriorating health forced him into an uneasy retirement by the late 90’s. For the last five years of his life, Fulson needed dialysis three times a week for his failing kidneys yet he still managed to join Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and others for 1998’s ‘Blues, Blues, Blues’, a tribute to the late Jimmy Rogers.
Fulson died March 7, 1999 as a result of complications from kidney disease, diabetes and congestive heart failure.
Blues author Frances Davis said of Fulson in The History Of The Blues, “The blues coming out of the Southern California clubs in the 40’s and 50’s were workingman’s music, as gritty as anything from Chicago. It differed from the blues elsewhere, however, in being more flamboyant in presentation and in bearing a more direct resemblance to jazz …”
And ‘gritty’ is as about a perfect a word to describe Fulson’s blues. Gritty with a hint of jazz.
An odd combination that sits perfectly in the ear.