Fillmore Slim - West Coast Godfather of the Game

Saturday, January 9
First Show: 6:30 PM | Doors @ 5:15 PM
Second Show: 9:00 PM | Doors @ 8:30 PM
Admission: $30 - $55

Fillmore Slim was born Clarence Sims in Louisiana in 1934 and cut his first 45, a jump blues called "You Got the Nerve of a Brass Monkey," for the Los Angeles label Dooto in the late 1950s. Within a few years he was opening for B.B. King and Dinah Washington at the original Fillmore Theater and keeping company with Etta James before the world knew her name. The stage name was never a marketing idea: he was racking balls at Trees Pool Hall, looked up one day at the sign that said Fillmore Street, and has been Fillmore Slim ever since.

Troyce Key of Eli's Mile High Club bankrolled the 1987 debut, "Born to Sing the Blues," and a long run of records followed, from "Other Side of the Road" on Fedora to the Mountain Top trilogy that closes with "The Blues Playa's Ball" to 2019's "Son of the Seven Sisters," cut at Greaseland with Kid Andersen producing, Jim Pugh on keys, and Rick Estrin, who worked five nights a week in Slim's band as a teenager, on harp. He went into the West Coast Blues Hall of Fame in 2008, collected the Lowell Fulson "Jus' Blues" Award in Memphis in 2011, and is a subject of the Hughes Brothers documentary "American Pimp," billed then and now as the West Coast Godfather of the Game. He is in his nineties, he still headlines, and he will be the sharpest dressed man in the room.