José Luis Villegas and John Orr blues project

By John Orr

Back in the late '80s, early '90s, Jose Luis Villegas, an excellent photographer who loves blues music, and I were working at the San Jose Mercury News, based at the southern end of the San Francisco Bay Area.

The Bay Area is great for blues lovers. Kick a rock, a blues player crawls out. Peek behind a tree, there is a blues musician, with a pocketful of harmonica and a heart full of music.

And, I was loving it. Hanging out at the Emerson Street Bar & Grill in Palo Alto or one of the J.J.s clubs (there were two, then three, in those days), listening to amazing people, drinking whiskey, and not having to wait too long, sometimes, before some woman would ask me to dance.

I started writing about the blues, for that newspaper and others, and Jose started making photographs of the blues players. Often we worked together, sometimes separately.

Our biggest collaboration, at the time, was a free-lance project for the Sunday magazine, West, edited by Jeffrey Klein (who has since returned to Mother Jones, which he co-founded). Very nice display, thanks to designer Sandra Eisert (who has also gone on to other things), but not enough room for all of the photographs Jose had ready for the project, and I had to trim my words to down nubbins.

We wrote about, and made photographs of, some of the many wonderful blues musicians working then. Some of the great old timers, some of the great up-and-comers.

Some of the older guys have since died. Some died during the time we were working on the project.

"Each time, each one makes history, makes their mark in history," B.B. King told me. "We each do it and it will never die, because it has to do with people, places and things, and as long as those are here, it'll never die."

These days, I spend most of my non-day-job time working on line, and don't write about the blues or anything else for that newspaper. And Jose is at the Sacramento Bee, where he continues to add to his blues portfolio.

What we are doing here is taking the images Jose had ready for that West magazine project and more, and a bunch of the words I strung together back in those days (and since), and putting them up so you can take a look.

I have looked at thousands of photographs of blues people, and can easily say that Jose's is the finest collection of blues photographs I have ever seen.

I do not make such a claim for my writing about the blues. I just do the best I can. And ... much of this information is certainly dated. I am going through and freshening some of it as I go along, but don't expect up-to-date facts. That's not what this is about. This is about a feeling.

Archival prints of Jose's photographs are available for purchase. Send him e-mail at jvillegas@sacbee.com if you are interested. They are priced at $275 for an 11 x 17 print.

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