One of the foremost figures in postwar blues over a period of several decades, Lowell Fulson possessed an impressive ability to adapt to or set his own trends in the blues. Born on a Choctaw Indian reservation in Atoka, Oklahoma, on March 31, 1921, Fulson learned in a variety of settings in his early years in Oklahoma and Texas, ranging from a large string band that played no blues to traveling with prewar blues star Texas Alexander. After World War II, Fulson relocated to Oakland, a city he had gotten to know while serving in the U.S. Navy. He recorded his first tracks for producer Bob Geddins, very much in a yearning Texas country blues vein, and moved to the fore of West Coast urban blues with hits such as ‘Everyday I Have the Blues’, ‘Blue Shadows’, and the original version of the Yuletide standard ‘Lonesome Christmas’. ‘Reconsider Baby’ from 1954 was his most enduring classic, but more were to follow with ‘Black Nights’ and ‘Tramp’, a song that can be considered a forerunner of funk, with a beat that has been sampled dozens of times by hip-hoppers. Fulson even joined the Muscle Shoals crew for a rock-flavored foray and continued to write and perform with the aplomb of a master into the 1990s. He died in Long Beach, California, on March 7, 1999.
— Jim O’Neal
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