After two decades of music and memories, the Hayward Russell City Blues Festival is calling it quits, the event’s lead organizer said Saturday.
That means this weekend’s two-day event — Saturday and Sunday, July 13-14, in downtown Hayward — is the last chapter of what has been one of the longest continually run blues festivals on the West Coast. The festival runs 10:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. both days and features such talents as Lil Jimmy Reed, Lonnie Shields, Terrible Tom Bowden, Fillmore Slim and the Oakland Blues Divas. Visit www.westbluessociety.org for ticket and other event information.
Ronnie Stewart, the executive director of the West Coast Blues Society and longtime organizer of the event, says the “elementary” reason why the festival is coming to an end after this weekend is “we don’t have funding.”
The festival has long depended on the City of Hayward and other sources besides festival revenues for the capital needed to book performers and obtain equipment and other items needed to hold the event. He did not provide details, but Stewart said Saturday the funds have dried up. Hayward city officials could not be reached for comment Saturday.
Unless other sources of funding materialize, Northern California is losing yet another blues festival — Santa Cruz’s American Music Festival has been on hiatus since the 2017 event, and the San Francisco Blues Festival ended in 2008.
The Bay Area is also losing a tuneful historical reminder of the important role that the East Bay played in the blues genre over the decades.
Some people might not even remember Russell City, or understand why it’s included in the title of the festival.
As Stewart has been reminding music lovers for decades now, Russell City was a unincorporated part of Alameda County that blossomed into a hotbed of blues music after World War II. Ray Charles, Big Mama Thornton, and Lowell Fulson were some of the top-flight artists to play the clubs in Russell City, before it became part of Hayward during the 1960s.
Russell City played a significant part in the creation of the horn-heavy “West Coast Blues” sound.
“Russell City is a landmark on the map of America’s contributions to world culture giving Hayward a unique musical leg reflecting the African-American experience,” according to a news release for the festival.
The festival began in 1999 through a collaboration between the City of Hayward and the West Coast Blues Society.
And although the festival is coming to a close in 2019, Stewart says he plans to still honor the Hayward Russell City blues legacy with a concert series in 2020.