Local blues hero John Broadway Tucker celebrates 35 anniversary.

An epic eight-hour gathering at Planet Gemini Saturday, April 23, paying homage to one of Monterey’s treasured performers John “Broadway” Tucker, isn’t a quintessential fundraiser, but musical collaborator/ bassist/engineer Gary Souza had to connect the many moving parts. So the event celebrates 35 years of the Broadway Blues Band, featuring past and present bandmembers (over 25 expected) and special guests (Red Beans & Rice), and raises funds to send Tucker to Mississippi to see his 96-year-old mother.

The son of a sharecropper, Tucker left Mississippi at 17 for Memphis, where he fell in love with the blues after seeing B.B. King up close. After the army stationed Tucker in Fort Ord, he kicked off his own career. He played nightly with The Invaders, the unofficial resident band at Jimbo’s Show Lounge, a wonderfully seedy bygone-era Seaside joint on the corner of Fremont and Broadway. From mainstream Motown pop to early Curtis Mayfield soul to primitive electric Chicago-style blues, Tucker vows, “We played just about everything.”

The stories of Jimbo’s during Pop Fest weekend remain legendary: Grateful Dead members dropped in to jam with Tucker’s band, as did Otis Redding’s brass section and Jimi Hendrix, who borrowed a guitar from Tucker’s band. 


In 1981, in midst of a lively music/party scene on the Peninsula, the Broadway Blues Band formed. The outfit played six days a week from 1981-88. According to Souza’s records, the group has performed over 2,200 shows over its 35-year tenure with 50-plus players.

Souza thumbs through piles of old calendars at his Real to Reel Recording Studio in Sand City, marked with show details. He says they never turned down gigs – Souza recalls performing Narcotics Anonymous-sponsored events while most of the band was on “marching powder.” But the BBB, complete with its horn section, always delivered a tightly intertwined R&B/soul torpedo of Memphis and Chicago blues-inspired goodness.

While BBB never disbanded, Souza says the outfit dealt with curveballs through the ’90s as players checked in and out of rehab. But there’s no judgement coming from Tucker’s direction.

“These guys stuck with me through storms and vehicle breakdowns,” he says. Now they reunite for a monster night.

JOHN BROADWAY TUCKER and the BROADWAY BLUES BAND 4pm-midnight Saturday, April 23. Planet Gemini, 2110 Fremont St., Monterey. $10. 899-1969.