![]() “You want to come to my shows?” Hooker asked. “He always dressed in sharkskin suits and wore a Homburg hat,” Andreas recalls.Īn unabashed fan who was quickly becoming a groupie, Andreas went to Foster City to catch a Hooker show and the guitarist spotted him. Andreas saw that the group got the best seats and strong drinks quickly served. Hooker and his ladies came in every weekend to watch them perform. The Jackie Ivory Quartet - which had opened for Junior Walker and the All-Stars - was Jack’s Tavern’s house band. John Lee was enjoying himself and I told the doorman to make sure no one bothered him,” he says. “It was just after he cut a single with Bonnie Raitt and he walked in the front door with his small entourage - a couple young girls and his driver. “I was also doing production coordination for TV commercials,” he says, “but if I asked my boss at Jack’s for a day off, he’d give me a permanent vacation.”Īndreas met the legendary John Lee Hooker in 1990. But his bartending gig at Jack’s quickly proved he would rather be an owner than sling pints and shots. A year later, Alexander Andreas - born and raised just off Fillmore and a wannabe filmmaker - landed a bartending job there.Ī Marquette University grad, he used to trek during college from Milwaukee to Chicago to hang out at the city’s blues bars and jazz clubs. In 1988, Jack’s Tavern moved to its current spot at 1601 Fillmore, hard by the Geary bridge. It was also called Jack’s of Sutter and the New Jack’s Lounge in days gone by. It was one of the first nightclubs in the neighborhood to cater to African Americans. And if you listen to the current owner, Alexander Andreas, he did.įillmore jazz genealogists Elizabeth Pepin and Lewis Watts, authors of Harlem of the West, say the bar opened in 1933 as Jack’s Tavern and was originally located at 1931 Sutter Street. So did swashbuckling blues guitarist John Lee Hooker really own the Boom Boom Room as a side gig? If you believe the sign above the door, he did. John Lee Hooker’s red leather booth at the Boom Boom Room is still reserved only for him.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |