History is never brief, even with the art and history of music, so why should it be any different with the Bash? The following is really the story of the evolution of the present “blues scene” in Charleston, along with highlights of festival’s past. If you’re going to bother to read this, we’ll bother to tell it. So let’s take it from the top!

Before The Bash / 1983 / What? No Blues?

Gary Erwin (Shrimp City Slim) moves to Charleston from Boston. Having grown up in Chicago and lived in New England for a few years, he’s used to lots of eclectic radio programming and vibrant live music scenes including blues clubs and concerts. Charleston, at that point, had a couple of nightspots that occasionally featured blues (the legendary Myskyns on Market St., The Brick on Fulton St., later The Backmarket Cafe on Guignard St., all of which are long gone; the great Spoleto Festival even had Lightnin’ Hopkins at the College of Charleston in its first or second edition, circa late ‘70s) but no blues radio.

1984 / “Hey, Mr. D.J.”

Tired of living without (what Charles Brown calls) “good music on my radio", Erwin approaches Public Radio WSCI 89.3 FM with a proposal for a blues program. The station manager goes for it; it takes six months for a time slot to open. “Blues in the Night” (which ran uninterrupted through early February, 2001) goes on the air at midnight, Friday, December 7; one hour per week. The seed is planted; an audience begins to grow; a scene is born.

1985 / Where’s My Blues?

Erwin works as consultant to the Charleston Folk organization. The group had already presented Roy Book Binder, Sparky Rucker, Bob Brozman, and D.L. Menard, but their emphasis was on Celtic and old-timey music. Erwin helps book piano legend Blind John Davis who, tragically, passes away enroute to the Chicago’s O’Hare airport on his way to Charleston. The group manages to book John Jackson, Cephas & Wiggins, and Beausoleil before eventually folding up its tent (still exists as only a folk dance club). Myskyns Tavern, et. al. continue to book road bands, but what about the roots? Various clubowners swear roots blues will never fly in Charleston.

1986

In May of this year, Erwin gambles and rents the venerable 300-seat Queen Street Playhouse (now called Footlight Players Theatre). His first presentation (in what he hoped would become a series) would be R.L. Burnside, still a commercial fisherman who only played blues part-time. The sole recordings R.L. had out were those few songs recorded by George Mitchell in the early ‘70s and released on “Mississippi Delta Blues Vol. 2” (Arhoolie) and one or two singles on Highwater. So what if nobody knew who he was? mused Erwin. It was great music and, at least, completely authentic. Rule was then being driven around by New Orleans-based harp player Jon Nerenberg (Morris) in Jon’s old Cadillac. Hey, it was the real blues. Assisted by a couple of friends, Erwin does the basic stuff of putting on a show: slapping up posters, plugging the show to the local media, generally pestering everyone in the city about the upcoming event, booking cheap hotel rooms and buying steaks for the musicians, hiring a PA, and schlepping beer. Lo & behold, the concert sold out and the naysayers had to eat their hats. A questionnaire is distributed at the R.L. concert to gauge local interest in forming a blues society. Enough come back in to show some interest. One or two meetings are held and a Monthly Blues Jam begins November (?) of this year at the Pinckney Cafe & Espresso on Pinckney St. (NOTE: The Monthly Jam subsequently moved to three or four other locations before settling in at Cumberland’s for roughly six years. Running for a full twelve years, the Jam had its swan song in December, 1998, a victim of a changing music scene and the arrival of more open-mic and jam opportunities in town). In the next two years (1986-88), Erwin uses the old theatre to present an incredible array of downhome blues talent: Henry & Vernell Townsend, Dr. Ross, Mose Vinson, Eddie “Guitar” Burns, Johnny Shines, Honeyboy Edwards, Jessie Mae Hemphill, and others, as well as series called “Carolina Blues Jam", revues hosting such Carolina performers as Boy Henry, Drink Small, Lightnin’ Bug Rhodes, Algia Mae Hinton, Gilbert “The Rhinestone Cowboy” Barnes, and more. As almost an outreach of the latter phase, Erwin organizes an 11-date Northeastern tour in October, 1988 for Rhodes and Small. The Erwin Music cassette label also is born.

1988-90 / Blues Had a Baby

As availability of hardcore traditional blues artists declines and the Footlight Players re-organize into a serious, full-calendar theatre company (rendering the dear old theatre unavailable), Erwin & friends start to present electric shows, principally at the new Myskyns on Faber St.: Koko Taylor, Professor’s Blues Revue with Gloria Hardiman, Kenny Neal, Kinsey Report with Lester Davenport, Johnny Copeland, Eddie Shaw, Anson Funderburgh & Sam Myers, and many more, and zydeco acts such as Wayne Toups, Terrance Simien, etc. (as well as some amazing reggae and African shows). Increased traffic in electric bands kept blues fans flocking to Myskyns (and now Cumberland’s) into the ‘90s. It was also about this time that Erwin’s band (Blue Light Special) started getting really busy, touring Colombia, South America, in 1989 and working steadily in the Carolinas. Erwin takes Lightnin’ Bug Rhodes to Switzerland for the first time in April, 1990, beginning a long succession of Carolina bluesmen jumping the pond (but that’s a book in itself!).

The Blues Bash Arrives

So after all this groundwork, OK, now it’s time to talk about the evolution of the Bash itself.

1991 / Charleston Blues Festival

Several local investors initiated a version of “Blues in the Schools" and brought in Billy Branch & Sons of Blues from Chicago to spearhead the program. The idea was culminate the few weeks of classroom activity with a mini-festival to be held one night in at the King Street Palace, a cavernous shoebox of a space once called County Hall (which, in its ancient days, hosted such luminaries as Fats Domino, James Brown, and Chuck Berry). Ten days before the planned “Charleston Blues Festival", the committee still had no performers (except for the Sons of Blues and their junior-high students), so Gary Erwin was called in to help, essentially becoming, by default, the Artistic Director. Erwin got on the phone and booked Junior Wells (with his new, improved horn-heavy band), Drink Small, and his own combo Blue Light Special to round out the evening. It was a bodacious beginning to what we now know as the Lowcountry Blues Bash.

As the music critic for Charleston’s daily newspaper for several years, Erwin had to listen to club owners miffed about the city’s popular Piccolo Spoleto Festival each year taking over some vacant storefront and opening its own (“Coconut") club for the festival period. It was Erwin’s idea to expand the blues fest out of one location and introduce it to the city; the logic being that, if the clubowners find that blues is good biz, then they would be more willing to book blues on a regular basis. The more blues for all of us, he reasoned. The Second Annual Charleston Blues Festival stretched out into several other locations that year. Erwin invited Koko Taylor, John Delafose & the Eunice Playboys, Guitar Gabriel, Big Boy Henry, Chubby Carrier, Skeeter Brandon, Jimmy Walker, and Lightnin’ Wells, and a handful of local and regional acts, as well making room for Shrimp City Slim (Erwin & his band) and of course Billy Branch & SOB’s. This was also the first year of the Blues Talent Search.

This was the year the fest first really spilled into the city. It was also its last year known as “Charleston Blues Festival”. Erwin assembled an unreal smorgasbord of artists: Little Milton, Pinetop Perkins, H-Bomb Ferguson, Chick Willis, Smokin’ Joe Kubek, Eddie Shaw & the Wolf Gang, Debbie Davies, Sue Foley, Frankie Lee, Chicago Bob Nelson, Catfish Keith, Lynn August, Big Daddy Pattman, Steve James, Sandra Hall, Billy C. Wirtz, Blind Johnny Miller (Cootie Stark), and a host of invited European blues all-stars. The Blues Talent Search was won this particular year by Deborah Coleman (now on Blind Pig Records). Erwin parted company with the committee after this edition and took the metrowide Blues Bash concept with him.

Blues Bash 4-Ever!

The next four years showed a refinement of the “venue crawl” formula; get a number of good-spirited, courageous venues who are able and ready to put on a good blues show, book (and pay!) the talent, advertise it and the fans will come!

Here are some of our past featured artists.

1994

Lil' Ed & The Blues Imperials
Satan & Adam
Paul Geremia
Maurice John Vaughn
Geno Delafose
Microwave Dave & the Nukes
Dave Peabody, and more.

1995

Roy Roberts
Eddie Shaw
Beverly Guitar Watkins
Deborah Coleman
Steve James
Kent Duchaine
Cora Mae Bryant
Frank Edwards
Pat Boyack & the Prowlers, and more.

1996

The Radiators
Studebaker John & the Hawks
Deanna Bogart
Jordan Patterson
Eric Culberson
Deborah Coleman
Skeeter Brandon
Wesley "June Bug" Jefferson & Sir Lowdown
Mudcat, and more.

1997

Zora Young
Lil Brian & Zydeco Travellers
Terry Garland
Sean Costello
T.J. Wheeler
The Love Dogs
Paul Rishell & Annie Raines
Mark Sallings
Carl Weathersby
Cootie Stark (Blind Johnny Miller), and more.

1998

Jimmie Lee Robinson
Carey Bell
John Mooney
Detroit Jr.
Big Lucky Carter
David Maxwell
Greg Piccolo
Sonny Rhodes
Eddie Taylor Jr. & Vera Lee Taylor
George Higgs
Spencer Bohren
Little Pink Anderson
Paul Dudley Kershaw & the Bayou Ramblers
George Herbert Moore, and many more.

1999

Robert Lockwood Jr.
Bobby Rush
Long John Hunter
Johnnie Bassett
Eddie Kirkland
Big Jack Johnson
Anson Funderburgh & Sam Myers
Kenny “Blues Boss” Wayne
Roy Carrier
Alvin Youngblood Hart
Rockin’ Johnny Band with Mary Lane & Little Arthur Duncan
and many more...

2000

Roy Gaines
Paul Oscher
Nappy Brown
Tinsley Ellis
Eric Bibb
Toni Lynn Washington
Paul Geremia
Detroit Junior
James Armstrong
Drink Small

2001

Delbert McClinton
Lazy Lester
Walter Wolfman Washington
Harmonica Shah
Murali Coryell
Chubby Carrier
Sharrie Williams & the Wise Guys
Eugene “Hideaway” Bridges

2002

Robert Lockwood Jr.
Honeyboy Edwards
Phillip Walker
Mighty Sam McClain
Michael Burks
The Griswolds
Greg Piccolo & Heavy Juice
Tail Dragger
Mem Shannon
Drink Small
Rockin' Johnny Burgin
Randy McAllister

2003

Motor City R&B Pioneers
Roy Roberts' Rock House Revue
Creole Zydeco Farmers
Sonny Rhodes
Chick Willis
Eddie Shaw & the Wolf Gang
Bobby Radcliff