Page 53 - Blues Festival Guide Magazine 2015

When I lived in ended up playing a kazoo. It turned out Bruce Iglauer really was
Berkeley, I was in in the audience and there I was – playing the kazoo and jumping
a rooming house around like an idiot. I’ll never forget that night.
upstairs from the great I want to mention some of the great R&B stylists: King Curtis
“Wild” Willie Moore, from the ’50s and ’60s rock 'n' roll and soul; Junior Walker is in
who had played with a category of his own, which I would call soul-sax; the honkers
Jimmy McCracklin. from the early ’50s – Big Jay McNeely, Joe Houston, Red Prysock
One time when my and others; and funk with Maceo Parker. All the old jazz players
only horn was in the were great bluesmen. They could all get down and really play
repair shop, I had a the blues…Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, Coleman Hawkins, the
gig and he loaned father of the tenor sax, Illinois Jacquet, to mention a few. This is
me one of his horns. just the tip of the iceberg. There are hundreds more sax players
When I got to the gig, who were, and still are, important and influential.
it wouldn’t play at all.
Blues man Keith Crossen has been playing saxophone “No, I didn’t think to put your horn in the bathtub.”
since he was 11 years old Photo by © Marilyn Stringer The pads were dried
up. Later when I gave Over the years I’ve been able to work with people like Etta
it back, I told him his horn didn’t play. He said, “Didn’t you soak James, Bonnie Raitt, Allen Toussaint, Lee Dorsey, Tracy Nelson,
it in the bathtub?” I said, “No, I didn’t think to put your horn in Jimmy McCracklin and Sunnyland Slim, and jammed with more
the bathtub.” people that I can remember. The horn has taken me to some of the
Another time, I was living down in Monterey and had a gig far corners of the globe, but I still can’t play a Charlie Parker solo.
at Larry Blake’s in Berkeley. I was excited because there was a
rumor that the head of Alligator Records, Bruce Iglauer, might Terry Hanck is a seven-time Blues Music Awards nominee,
attend the show. I drove up and opened the sliding door of my including a 2015 nomination for Best Instrumentalist, Horn,
van and my horn wasn’t there. I just shut the door and said, “That which he won in 2012. He also was the 2012 Living Blues Critics
didn’t happen.” I opened the door again and it still wasn’t there. Choice winner for Best Horn. His band includes Butch Cousins
I went in the club and called up every horn player I knew in the on drums, Johnny Soubrand on guitar and Tim Wagar on bass.
Bay Area and everyone was working, nobody had a horn. I His website is www.terryhanck.net

Blues Festival Guide 2015 51