H-Bomb Ferguson
By David S. Rotenstein

©1991 D.S. Rotenstein

FOOTNOTES (Atlanta, Ga.)
December 1, 1990

Robert "H-Bomb" Ferguson has a hellhound on his trail. Unlike Robert Johnson's imortalized fictional hellhound, Ferguson's has been chasing him for all of his 60 years. With a career spanning forty years, H-Bomb Ferguson is an established R & B piano player who has been singing the blues since childhood. Through the years he has witnessed changes in attitudes toward blues singers, toured with B.B. King, and shocked audiences with his booming voice and colorful collection of wigs he wears on stage.

Though Ferguson has lived in Cincinnati for the past thirty years, his first two decades were spent in Charleston, South Carolina. His father was a minister who had a little storefront church. Times were tough during Ferguson's childhood. "There was 12 of us, 7 girls and 5 boys," says Ferguson of his family during an interview from his home in Cincinnati, Ohio. According to Ferguson, his father's weekday job as a bank messenger "didn't pay that much and the church didn't either." To help support the family, Ferguson's father took 50% of any money that young Robert made working at a grocery store or cutting lawns.

"I used to play [piano] for the kids in Sunday school and my father would pay for the lessons." The 25 cents-an-hour piano lessons with Miss Curry -- he spells her name out -- are still vividly etched in Ferguson's mind. Because his father made him play at church, the same church Miss Curry attended, Ferguson was under added pressure to excel. "She used to come to church and hear me. Everbody would say, 'Miss Curry taught him'," says Ferguson.

Ferguson's father was adamant about keeping his son from playing "the devil's music" -- the blues. To avoid discovery by his father, Ferguson had a friend who lived across town who owned a piano. "I would ease over there and play the boogie woogie cause my daddy didn't allow that," says Ferguson. "So I would go over there and beat out the boogie woogie 'cause I always loved the blues. But you couldn't do it in my house. He [Ferguson's father] would have killed me." And from what Ferguson says about his father, this is no exaggeration.

"My father, being a minister, forget about that part. People think all ministers are nice. No, he whupped our asses. He whipped my ass with a belt. He was real hard on us," booms Feguson. "He'd get up in the church Sunday morning and act like a real Christian and he beat the hell out of us when we got home." Emotional abuse accompanied Ferguson's physical trauma. "If you did something real bad," said Ferguson, "he used to take your clothes, lock them up in his room and leave you in your room naked."

Ferguson's emotional shouting style of singing is his catharsis. "I sing to get it out of me," he says. "Every time I sing, it's a relief for me, I think about that."

By the time that he was 16, he was hanging around Charleston's clubs. Though too young to enter, he hung around the back doors to hear visiting bands. "I would listen to the cats and say, 'I'm gonna be like that'," he says.

Ferguson was big for his age, but kind of skinny. "I got to be about 17, I lied to them and told them I was 18 or 20 and they would let me come in and sing. Sometimes they would put a hat out and whatever people put in I would get." Coming home late, Ferguson told his father that he was doing odd jobs and had between 75 cents and a dollar to show for it.

When Ferguson was 18, a band came to town and offered him a ticket to go on the road to sing the blues. "So I took some clothes and put them in a paper bag and jumped out my bedroom window. I left with the band."

Ferguson left Charleston with the band and traveled to North Carolina, Savannah, and Atlanta. In Atlanta the band told Ferguson that there was no more work for a while. The rent on his room was 3 dollars a week and he was getting 2 dollars a night for gigs at the Poinciana Club. "So I stayed there for a month and I just played around with different bands in Atlanta," says Ferguson of his first time in Altanta.

Ferguson left Atlanta with Ted Anderson and his band, bound for New York City. "That's when I got my break. And the first break I got was a little company called Derby Records," says Ferguson. The band adandoned him in New York to return home to visit their families. Ferguson found himself solo again and he became known as the Cobra Kid. A representative of Derby Records thought the name fit Ferguson's constant moving around while he was away from the piano.

While with Derby, Ferguson cut two records in 1950 and 1951. After a year and a half he switched to the Savoy label and acquired his new name, H-Bomb. "Lee Magid, of Savoy Records, changed me. He said, 'I'm gonna name you after this new bomb they made -- the H-Bomb'," says Ferguson. According to Magid, Ferguson's voice was as powerful as the new bomb.

The name, H-Bomb, was not something that Ferguson took to immediately. After all, what performer wants to be labelled as a bomb? He and Magid agreed to keep the name on a six month trial basis. "Well before the six months was up, it was like 3 1/2 months, I told Lee Magid I like it. So I said I'm going to leave it."

In 1951, B.B. King recorded his first hit song, "Three O'Clock Blues," and went to New York where Savoy Records paired King with H-Bomb Ferguson. "When I saw B.B., man I laughed," says Ferguson, his voice rising to a roar. "I came out in a gray suit. He came out in a purple suit, man. This cat came on stage with a purple suit, red shirt, and green tie." King told Ferguson that the promoters suggested that he dress "flashy."

"I said, man you look like a clown. Man, you look like Ringling Brothers." According to Ferguson, King took his advice and bought a gray suit to wear on stage. "I said, 'Man, if we going to work together, I don't want nobody to think I'm like you."

Ferguson's stage aesthetics obviously have shifted through the years. These days, Ferguson's wardrobe is not complete unless he is wearing one of his 70 wigs. Inspired after seeing Rick James during one of his "retirements," Ferguson decided that he would never again go on stage without at least one wig for every hour of the show. "I came back with the new H-Bomb look. That's when I started with the wigs."

"I'm gonna quit when I get 200," says Ferguson of his wigs. "I got any color that comes into your mind. I don't care what it is -- purple, red, I got 'em two-tone and all." Just to make sure that he doesn't wear a wig twice during any gig, he keeps a tally. "I got enough, I don't have to. I mark it down!"

Through the years, Ferguson has acquired an acute case of the blues that only singing can cure. Though he cites his childhood and his relationship with his father as his primary inspiration, there is another source: racial prejudice.

Ferguson remembers a time when African-Americans bought hamburgers at the back doors of restaurants and when sheriffs would tell the band to leave town right after a gig. Ferguson says, "I know about the Ku Klux Klan." He carries strong memories of dance floors separated by rope, whites on one side and blacks on another. "Most whites said when you sing the blues, you aint shit. It's alright for me to work with you and it's alright for me to cook for you, but I can't shake your hand," says Ferguson of earlier attitudes.

The fact that the blues has crossed so many social, racial, and economic barriers to become popular in mainstream America excites Ferguson. "I love it," he says. "I've been through all this, but see, sooner or later, people will cross the same paths."

Ferguson prefers to play in racially mixed clubs, rather than to an all African-American audience. Playing to an all black audience reminds Ferguson of segregation. "It reminds me of down home, the separate shit, no way about that, man." He wants to tell non African-Americans about the blues.

The point that he tries to get across is, "Hey, this is the way I feel. This is what life is about." And when he's through wrenching the demons from his soul at the end of the night, "it feels like somebody gave me a real hot shower and it's gone. It might come back later, but I feel good."

At 60, H-Bomb Ferguson is still going strong. In 1985, Ferguson began recording again after a 25 year break. Recently his song, "Medicine Man," won the W.C. Handy award for best 45 of the year. A new album with ten songs is slated for release in 1991. Ferguson says that all but one of the songs are originals. "Caledonia's Back" is a reworked cover of Junior Walker's "Clio's Back." Ferguson says laughing, "My masterpiece on the album will crack you up; it's suggestive -- it's called the 'Woodpecker Song'."

Things have changed a lot, according to H-Bomb Ferguson. "Anybody who sang the blues used to be called low down and came from a gut-bucket family and you aint no good. Now, everybody wants it." And Atlanta, get ready for a bomb scare, because H-Bomb Ferguson will be bringing his wigs to shout some blues at Blind Willie's December 14 and 15.