Breaking Out: John 'Broadway' Tucker From Mississippi to Monterey By Scott Barretta (The following article appeared in a recent issue of the blues publication, "Living Blues") Historically the typical path of migration for Mississippi-bred bluesmen has been northward, but a significant number -- including Smokey Wilson, Robert "Bilbo" Walker, Johnny Dyer, Johnny Fuller, and K.C. Douglas -- have made California their home. Add to that list John "Broadway" Tucker, who spent his youth in Natchez and has been leading the Broadway Band from his base in Monterey/Seaside for nearly 20 years. A stand-up vocalist, Tucker has been fronting bands since the mid-1960s and singing for audiences since he can remember, but his talents have been relatively unheralded beyond his idyllic coastal home. Recently, however, he has gained broader attention through the release of two strong CDs -- last year's "Impromptu Blue" (Blue Movie Records) featuring pianist Bill Held, and 1999's largely acoustic "Mississippi to Monterey" (Messaround Records). These records suggest the diversity of Tucker's vocal interests -- Sonny Boy II to Sam Cooke to James Brown -- as well as his comfort in varied musical settings, although he has a predilection for a full-fledged soul show band. In mid-August Tucker visited the offices of "Living Blues" on the University of Mississippi campus during his annual visit back to Mississippi to visit his mother in Greenville. Tucker was born in Dermott, Arkansas, on October 2, 1943, but his parents, who worked as sharecroppers, moved to Mississippi soon after his birth. Tucker recalls as his earliest musical inspiration his father's gospel quartet: "My mom and dad would travel around with my uncles and sing in a spiritual quintet. And they would come in during the week and rehearse. That's where I first fell in love with the voices. My dad remembered me trying to pull up on his leg and try to tap my feet and sing along with them." Tucker's parents separated when he was seven and he began living with his paternal grandmother in Natchez. Although blues and R&B were discouraged in her household, Tucker recalls listening to the music on Nashville's WLAC, while his eyes were opened to the secular world at a local house of pleasure: "Across from my grandmother's house was Jake Fisher's juke joint -- a Jewish guy who owned this place where everybody went on Saturday night. Every once in a while he'd have Papa George Lightfoot there. People would like to listen to me sing songs from the jukebox when they were drinking beer. My dad would be in the back room at the gambling table, and they'd say, 'Where's that son of yours?' As long as I was doing all right in school, he didn't care. As Tucker entered his teens, he began visiting other clubs in town: "One club called the Spot, my girlfriend's mother owned it. I'd go down there to sing along with the jukebox because it brought people in. Sort of like the karaoke now. I'd stand by the jukebox and sing along with the records. I liked to play Sam Cook, Roscoe Skelton, Little Junior Parker, Nappy Brown. It was my way of rehearsing for what I really wanted to do." Around the same time, he also began sitting in with the Jesse Ware band at the Cross Keys club in Natchez, located across from the site of the 1941 nightclub fire memorialized by Howlin' Wolf in "Natchez Burning." "I would sit in with them on this Roscoe Shelton tune, "Baby Look What You're Doing' to Me," (sings) "Baby, I got news for you." In his late teens Tucker moved to Memphis, where he continued his "karaoke" singing at private parties and spent much of his time at the Flamingo Club on Beale Street, where he met many R&B stars backstage and made his stage debut during a talent contest: "Nat D. Williams was the emcee and they had Junior Walker and the All Stars backing us up. I went on and did "You Know It Ain't Right," a Joe Hinton song. David Porter (of Stax fame) did "Funny How Time Slips Away." He beat me out at the talent show and I came in second." Tucker recalls his conversion to the blues as resulting from a magical evening that began backstage at the Flamingo, there he met Sam Cooke, who chaperoned the under-aged Tucker to a late-night club: "After the Flamingo closed up at 2 o'clock, all the musicians -- William Bell, the Valentinos, the Lyrics -- would go over to the Club Handy, on the corner of Beale Street and Hernando (now Rufus Thomas Blvd.) for the after-hour thing. And when the show was over Sam Cooke asked me, 'Aren't you going with us?' So I ended up being chaperoned by Sam Cooke. "And B.B. King was playing that night with the Jimmy Charles Orchestra. That was the first time that I really dug the blues. Before I went to see that show I was into stuff like Sam Cooke, Solomon Burke, Mary Wells, Marvin Gaye, that type of music. But that night I sat there and listened to B.B. King live, and I fell in love with his music right there." In 1964, Tucker left Memphis after joining the Army. But his military service only solidified his commitment to music. He started singing with a trio during his first assignment at Fort Hood in Texas, and once stationed in Germany, he was recruited to do U.S.O. work with a group he formed. "That got us out of our regular duty -- I was a cook. So all we had to do was do music for my last six months in Germany. The troops had 10 o'clock curfews, but we had automatic passes to go out after our performances, and that's when I started playing with German bands." Tucker also had the opportunity to sit in with fellow servicemen Buddy Miles and Billy Preston. Despite offers to stay in Europe with the U.S.O., Tucker decided to return to the U.S. with his young family. After a short reprieve from the military, Tucker reenlisted and was stationed at Fort Ord in Seaside, California, on Monterey Bay. He immediately began sitting in with local bands, and soon became a staple at local clubs. Tucker recalls as a highlight from this period the Monterey International Pop Festival in June of 1967 when many of the festival guests, including Jimi Hendrix and Otis Redding's horn section, sat in with his band at Limbo's Show Lounge. Still in the military at the time, Tucker was assigned to Vietnam, and after completing his service in 1969, he settled in Los Angeles, where he took advantage of the G.I. Bill to enroll in the Sherman School of Music. As usual, he quickly fell in with the local R&B scene. After briefly moving to Oakland, where he performed at the Showcase Lounge, Tucker resettled in the Monterey area. While working as a cook he met up with harp player David Holehouse, and it was during his time with the Holehouse Band that Tucker gained his nickname from his performances of "Boogaloo Down Broadway," a top ten R&B and pop hit in 1967 for Fantastic Johnny C. Corley. The Broadway Band also emerged from this group, allowing Tucker to pursue his broad interests in blues and R&B: "I played the first Monterey Jazz Festival in 1981 with the Holehouse Band, but we broke up because Holehouse thought we played too much funk music, and he wanted to play strictly Chicago Blues. That's when I formed the Broadway band." Next year the Broadway Band will celebrate its 20th anniversary, and Tucker will soon be recording another CD with the band. While the band's membership has changed considerably over the years, a constant is Tucker's passion for singing and paying tribute to his heroes: "When you cover a great song, you need to do it in your own way. I try to do any song. If I don't have the instruments to cover the songs right then I won't do them. Since I grew up around those guys, I feel I'm still going to follow their teachings. In other words, if you don't do it as well, then do it different. But you get close sometimes." Tucker and the Broadway Band appear regularly in Monterey (at Sly McFly's on Cannery Row) and monthly at The Saloon in San Francisco. His first two CDs, "Mostly You" and "Mississippi to Monterey," are available on Messaround Records, while his most recent CD, "Impromptu Blue," is on Blue Movie Records. Copyright©2000 Scott Barretta. Article reprinted by permission of author. 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