Leaving Blues - Ron Hacker

"The first time I got the blues, I mean really got the blues, was in 1956. A friend and I got caught breaking into parking meters. I was eleven - he was twelve. Off we went to the juvenile center.

The counselors in the center were young Afro-Americans in their twenties and they loved their music, like young dudes do. In '56 their music was Elmore James, Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Jimmy Reed. I fell in love with the music and it's been a part of my life since then.

As I've gotten older I've tried to concentrate more on playing the Blues than living them."

After teaching himself to play guitar, Ron met the late Yank_Rachell, partner of Sleepy John Estes. Yank trained Ron on the finer points of Delta Blues, and they became life-long friends in the process.

The actor Peter Coyote helped Ron get his first gig in San Francisco at a neighborhood coffee shop. It wasn't long before Ron put together the Hacksaws and was tearing it up in clubs all over the San Francisco Bay Area.

Since then, Ron has played every major festival in Northern California, including the Monterey Jazz Festival, the San Francisco Blues Festival, the Marin County Blues Festival and the Long Beach Blues Festival. Ron has also toured extensively in Europe playing major festivals in Belgium, Denmark, France, Holland, Germany, and Norway.

Ron has put out eight albums, which include "No Pretty Songs", "Bar Stool Blues", "I Got Tattooed", "Backdoor Man", "Burnin", “Live In Holland”, “Mr. Bad Boy”, and, “ My Songs”.

Movie credits: "The Blues Guy" in “Just Like Heaven”, September 2005

In June of 2006 Ron put some slide guitar on Tom Waits’ Grammy nominated CD, “Orphans” released 11/21/06.

Ron has written a pulp memoir, “White Trash Bluesman”
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