After two decades of music and memories, the Hayward Russell City Blues Festival is calling it quits.
The final two-day event — which has been one of the longest continually run blues festivals on the West Coast — is happening Saturday and Sunday (July 13-14) in downtown Hayward.
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 more information.
Ronnie Stewart, the executive director of the West Coast Blues Society and longtime organizer of the event, says there is an “elementary” reason why the festival is coming to an end.
“We don’t have funding,” he says.
The festival has long depended upon the City of Hayward for what Stewart calls “seed money,” providing the capital needed to book performers as well as put deposits on equipment and others things needed to hold the event.
But that capital has now dried up, Stewart says.
Thus, Northern California is losing yet another important cultural event honoring this one of America’s greatest art forms — the blues. Other blues festivals that have gone out of business, or are not currently operating, include ones in San Francisco and the Santa Cruz area.
The Bay Area also loses a significant historical marker, which has long served to honor — and, perhaps even more significantly, remind people 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 really blossomed into a hotbed of blues music after World War II. Ray Charles, Big Mama Thornton, and Lowell Fulson were some of the best-known 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.