2019 OK Blues Hall of Fame Inductees (2024)

Pat “Bar Room Preacher” Moss works regularly in the Clarksdale, MS area. He has deep roots and blues grooves.

The following is from a 2019 article from the Tahlequah Daily Press:

Tahlequah musician Pat Moss had no idea he was being inducted into the Oklahoma Blues Hall of Fame, until Selby Minner threw that tidbit into her introduction of him before he played a benefit a couple of weeks ago.

“It was quite a surprise. I always thought it would happen after I was gone,” said Moss. “Someone did nominate me, but I don’t know who.”

Moss is fondly known as the Juke Joint Preacher, and he said the name comes from a conversation with D.C. Minner.

“We were talking about how we feel when we play. I told him that when it feels good, I feel like a preacher. He said, ‘You are. You’re a jook joint preacher.’ I just stayed with it,” said Moss.

Moss explained that a “juke” is a “box you put a quarter in.”

“A ‘jook’ is a house in the deep South where they take all of the furniture out and everyone who has a birthday that month, they come over and have a potluck and music and dance all night. You can hear the house breathing with all the dancing,” said Moss.

Famed Blues D.C Minner and his wife, Selby, founded the Oklahoma Blues Hall of Fame in 2004 in his hometown of Rentiesville, one of Oklahoma’s all-black towns.

“I was around when D.C. created it. I thought it was a great thing. He saw there wasn’t one, and he helped empower himself by creating it,” said Moss. “I like that it took a rural, hard-working person to do that.”

Moss said he wouldn’t be where he is today without the kindness of musicians, most of whom were black and uneducated.

“Music has done great things for me. I appreciate everybody who’s supported me all through my career. It means a lot to have the support of local people,” said Moss.

Other 2109 inductees are: Morris Atchison, Kelvin “Mr. Guitar” Drake, Smilin’ Vic Gutierrez, Melvin Tank Jernigan, Hollywood Jenkins, Shy Willie Mabrey, Wonda “Sunsetter” Macon, Michael “Magic Mike” Updegrove, and Lauree Watkins.

Moss said he has been around the other inductees at one show or another throughout the years.

“Wonda Macon is real good. She’s done a lot to help elderly musicians in Oklahoma City. She gets them to the blues festival every year. Smilin’ Vic’s been around forever. Mr. Guitar, I’m glad to see him get some respect here. Magic Mike is someone everyone knows,” he said. “I’m honored to be inducted with all of them.”

The requirements for induction state that it’s preferable if the artist is alive. The blues artist should be over 60 years old – and Moss qualifies there, too, as he is 63.

Currently, Moss has a project in the works at Royal Studios in Nashville. It is being produced by Mark Ronson, of “Uptown Funk” fame.

“They say the sophom*ore album is always the hardest album. It’s taken me five years. I hope to finish it this year,” said Moss, who released “Jook Joint Preacher” in 2010. “I’m constantly composing songs.”

Moss said he’s not really seeking to play the local area, but he gets offers from promoters, such as Joe Mack, and will usually play events hosted by Cherokees for Black Indian History Preservation Foundation.

“You always seem more exotic over the state line,” Moss said.

He still travels to play, including to the Dallas area, and to Mississippi about 10 times a year.

“It’s usually in the Delta area. I’m playing Clarksdale quite a bit – so much so, people think I’m a local. There’s a lot of jook joints there,” he said. “In the summer, I go to Colorado or New Mexico. I didn’t go last summer, but I hope to this year.”

Another requirement to be inducted into OBHOF is that the musician have a “track record” – meaning that he doesn’t just play local bars, but has toured or “worked with people of note.”

Moss has played with big and small names in Detroit, Mexico City, Southern Australia, Liverpool, England, and other places.

“I’m not better than anyone else. I just have a lot more fun than other people,” said Moss.

The original article can be found HERE

Robert “Hollywood” Jenkins was 15 years old, growing up in Oklahoma, still yearning to own his own guitar.

“It would have been sooner, but my parents wouldn’t buy me a guitar,” Jenkins said. “They didn’t want me playing that sinful music.”

That “sinful music” was the blues, which Jenkins has entertained audiences with for more than 40 years, including upcoming gigs New Year’s Eve and Saturday at Vino Godfather on Mare Island in Vallejo and at Seven Artisans Winery in Fairfield on Jan. 9.

Remaining close to home approaching 2016, Jenkins played Fuso’s in Vacaville this past Monday.

And it all goes back to that first guitar — and a credit account the then-teenage Jenkins never had to apply for.

“I’d go to the only music store in town and take it off the shelf and play it,” recalled Jenkins. “This would go on for several weeks until the owner finally says to me, ‘You ever going to buy anything?’ I said, ‘I don’t have any money.’ So he takes the guitar off the shelf, gets me an amp, and says, ‘If I give it to you on credit, can you promise to pay me $20 a month?’”

And so, Jenkins had his first guitar. More importantly, “my parents frowned, but they let me keep it and I taught myself how to play,” he said.

That guitar was far more memorable — at least happily memorable — than the Oklahoma weather, which is one reason why the Fairfield resident doesn’t get back to see what’s left of his family.

Seems Jenkins was about 17 and went to visit his father in San Diego. When December rolled around, the lad asked, “When does it snow here?” He was told it doesn’t.

“When I realized I didn’t have to go through that (Oklahoma winter) every year, I was sold,” said Jenkins. “Every year, you didn’t know if you would survive through the winters of traditional blizzards, floods, and we were close to Tornado Alley.”

“I’m not in a hurry to get back,” Jenkins said.

The guitarist was still a teen in San Diego when the band he was in opened for James Brown, though the legend didn’t OK these young people taking the stage before him.

“He’d yell, ‘You didn’t clear it with me, but I’m not going to disappoint these kids’ so he told us to go on and play, just don’t play any James Brown,” remembered Jenkins.

Standing about three feet from the icon, “I was so nervous, I could barely hold my guitar pick,” Jenkins said.

Here it was decades later — only a year ago —when Jenkins found himself playing guitar at Twin Pines Casino in Middleton for — what else? — a one-time only James Brown tribute show.

“I had a good time doing that,” said Jenkins, who does his best to have fun wherever and whenever he’s playing.

Though declining to acknowledge his actual age, Jenkins said he “sometimes feel about 50, sometimes I feel 70. My health is pretty good overall. I’m very fortunate.”

As long as he can get up on stage and perform, he’s a happy man.

“I just love to play. The bigger crowd, the better,” Jenkins said.

Oh, he still gets nervous. Even a bit of stage fright.

“I took one of those tests and found out I was an introvert,” Jenkins said. “But the stage is like a drug. It’s like a high. I feed off the energy of the crowd and it keeps feeding me.”

As for the nickname, Jenkins joined a band in Oakland, which already had a “Robert.” So he told the group to call him “Hollywood.”

“Some of my friends had called me that,” Jenkins said. “It was the way I dressed on my job where most for the guys dressed down for the warehouse kind of job. I still wore shiny shoes and pressed jeans and a nice shirt. They said, ‘You’re too clean for this job. You’re just Hollywood.’”

Just as Jenkins never forgets the roots of his nickname, he’ll never forget the roots of his playing — that family-owned music store back in Oklahoma, though it’s been closed down for years and the owner deceased.

No matter, Jenkins said, he’ll never forget the leap of faith in letting a teen buy equipment on non-existent credit.

“I’m forever in debt, for it allowed me to do what I love to do,” Jenkins said.

As for the guitar that Jenkins took six months to pay for, “I gave it to my brother. He took it and played gospel for a long time and ended up being a preacher while I kept playing that ‘sinful’ music to this day.”

Original story can be found HERE

Melvin Ray Jernigan was a tenor saxophonist, arranger and songwriter and was nicknamed “Tank”. He did the flute intro solo on the 1960’s Canned Heat hit “Going Up The Country”

He was also a member of the band “Charles Wright & The Watts 103rd St Rhythm Band”. They were a funk band, formed in the mid-1960’s in Los Angeles, California. Successful both as a backing group to others (most prominent of them being Bill Cosby) as well as a group in their own right, best known for their 1970-hit Express Yourself.

Born: June 12, 1942 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Died: July 9, 1985 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Muskogee musician Willie Mabry isn’t shy about singing the blues.

The man often seen in elegant black and white attire has performed with such greats as Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf.

“It’s nice of them to put me in there,” Mabry said, referring to his induction.

He said his father sang blues music. Others in his family opted for a different sound.

“My mother and grandmother were gospel singers,” Mabry said. “My grandfather sang gospel, too. We all came up singing.”

Mabry said he still sings gospel with his family.

“We have a gospel group called the Mabrys,” he said. “We’ve had that since we were 5, 6 years old.”

He said blues originated from gospel.

“The trials and tribulations we went through, we sing about it in gospel and we sing about it in blues,” he said.

“Smilin’ Vic” Gutierrez was a drummer, but also has succeeded as a front man.

Gutierrez, who has been in music 50 years, said he’s honored to be inducted. He recalled growing up being influenced by the music.

“When I was about 9, we lived near a musicians’ union practice hall,” he said. “I listened to Ernie Fields, he was a big name in 1959, early ’60s. He let me sit in there and listen to him if I didn’t make any noise.”

He recalled hearing the drummer.

“And I thought it was something I might be able to do,” he said.

Lauree Watkins played tenor sax in the San Francisco area and was a fixture of the music scene. He could be found in local music venues in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, particularly in the North Beach area.

In addition to music, he was in movies, TV series, commercials, and jazz festivals. When San Fransisco celebrated the Golden Gate bridges 50th anniversary, Watkins lead the marchers blowing his saxophone all the way.