The John Campbell Tribute Show

Who:    The Bones and Blues Club
What:    12 hours of music
For:       Tribute of John Campbell
Why:    To Restore The Ritz Theatre
When:  October 11, 2008, 2pm – 2am
Where: Dr. Rockits Blues Bar
              709 N. Chaparral
              Corpus Christi, TX 78401
Cost:    $10- One Time Entry & $15- All Day Pass



Who is John Campbell?

    In 1973 John Campbell fell in love with his wife and her native town’s blues music scene in Corpus Christi.  He started a band called Junction and toured all around South Texas in Corpus, Rockport, Kingsville, and Harlingen. By 1975 he was on his own opening for Willie Nelson at The Ritz Music Hall, now The Ritz Theatre. After John Campbell moved away from Corpus Christi, he went on to bigger and better things, touring in Europe with Buddy Guy. He tragically died of a heart attack in 1993 but his fans never stopped worshipping his music.
    John Campbell had a very authentic style of blues that not only fused the influences of other musician’s techniques, but also drew people to him because of his own outstanding talent on the steel guitar. He was born on January 20, 1950 and raised in Shreveport, Louisiana into a very musical oriented family. He quickly started to become a child prodigy on the guitar at the age of 3 when his grandmother taught him how to play on her Hawaiian lap guitar. Unfortunately, like most bluesmen of his time, his childhood would have a catastrophic tragedy and almost cost him his life and career. When he was 15 he got into a car accident while drag racing and had to get 5,000 stitches in his face and lost his right eye. This tragic event shaped the way he viewed the blues and how he used it to escape from his pain and suffering. It was through the blues that helped him tackle and overcome his agony by channeling it through his songs and lyrics. John once said the blues reaffirmed his life, and got him living again.

Interesting facts

When he lived in Corpus, he played a concert at Driscoll Children’s Hospital and did a magic show afterwards. His ex-wife, Jerry Sue Sutton, said “John had a big heart that was full of compassion, and a giving of himself with nothing asked in return.”

He used a national steel guitar made in 1934 and was once owned by the great late Lightlin’ Hopkins.

When Freddie Fender got out of jail he had a concert in Corpus Christi but did not have proper boots so John let him borrow his shoes for the show.

In the 1986, he moved to New York City and signed with Electra Records. He became global touring with Buddy Guy through European and American tours.

He played at the Montreal Blues Festival in 1992 and at the New Orleans Heritage Jazz Festival in 1993.

 John Campbell Quotes

“I realized that if I was going to attempt to do this-this was going to be a lifetime of work. It’s not something that I would understand in a year- that I had to live. I Think you have to ultimately develop to a point where you can sing from the heart and then just do the best you can- and that’s the way I have treated it over the years. I have no choice about it really.”

“Listening to music, Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker; playing along with those records, I felt something I’d never felt before. I wasn’t able to express myself verbally at the time; I became very introverted. So the blues was a release. I realized that this was what I was going to do for the rest of my life.”

Thomas Gieger Quotes

“You would remember John as both passionate and consumed with the power of music as a form of human expression.” His thoughts and emotions in his music “were ideas that are rooted in the lessons learned in a lifetime playing the blues. He is expressing more than musical ideas.”

 “John was doing more than merely entertaining. He was making a statement about himself and also about the blues. He wanted everyone to understand what they were listening to. He was lecturing about the roots of the music, about the roots of the blues, and also about the roots of John Campbell.”