“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 eleven albums, which include No Pretty Songs, Bar Stool Blues, I Got Tattooed, Backdoor Man, Burnin’, Live In Holland, Mr. Bad Boy, My Songs, Filthy Animal, Going' Down Howling', and Live at the Old U.S. Mint in New Orleans.
In June of 2006 Ron put some slide guitar on Tom Waits’ Grammy nominated CD, Orphans released 11/21/06. He has also written a pulp memoir, White Trash Bluesman. Movie credits include "The Blues Guy" in “Just Like Heaven”, September 2005.
Live at the Old U.S. Mint
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Ron Hacker
News & Updates
Our CD Live at the Mint got a really nice review in Offbeat Magazine here in New Orleans
Ron Hacker & Friends, “Live At The Old U.S. Mint” (Independent)
It’s hard to remember the last time New Orleans had a good old-fashioned blues summit meeting, but that’s more or less what Ron Hacker and his very famous friends have done with this live release, recorded on three separate dates last April thanks to Ron, who is tangentially connected to Sleepy John Estes, landing a job booking acts at the Mint. But this is no open-mic night, not with Johnny Sansone, John Fohl, Jason Ricci and Nancy Wright sitting in. That kind of firepower doesn’t necessarily lead to the local blues album of the year, but it did this time. As one of Hacker’s rare originals proclaims, he does a pretty good job at trying to “Sing Like Elmore James,” but like all good live blues albums, this one is mostly about the groove, which is practically an encapsulation of every great electric blues style the American heartland has produced.
The first third, which features Sansone on harmonica and accordion, is straight Chicago blues, although Johnny’s squeezebox on the traditional “Keep Your Hands Off Her” and Willie Dixon’s “Evil” are a revelation about the missing link between Cajun music, swamp blues and its Midwest counterpart. The second third, featuring Fohl on guitar and Nancy Wright on saxophone, wanders between the Excello sound of Nashville (check out Slim Harpo’s “Gonna Miss You (Like the Devil)” and the jazzier Memphis strain found in Sleepy John Estes’ “Going to Brownsville” and the deathless “It Hurts Me Too.”
The four songs that wrap things up are pure Chicago all the way, with Jason Ricci doing his best Little Walter on harp and Hacker’s originals sitting comfortably and unobtrusively next to Estes’ and Jimmy Rogers’. Hacker even proves his cred once and for all by climaxing with “Two Timin’ Woman,” a rave up about his ex that’s fueled by real cuckold anger and humiliation and tempered with humorous bookends: “Y’all woulda loved my first wife,” he snickers. “She loved all my friends.” Then, after eviscerating the memories with his guitar: “Yeah, she was a good old gal.” A real authentic barn burner, this one.