“Terrible” Tom Bowden exhibits up a couple of minutes late for an appointment in West Oakland — and, in fact, a good friend instantly lets him hear about it.
“What are you talking about?” Bowden counters. “I’ve been here since ’38 — 1938.”
And through that point, Bowden, 86, has change into nothing wanting a legend within the space: a immensely proficient bluesman who attracts comparisons to Otis Redding and has traveled in the identical firm as Aretha Franklin, B.B. King and lots of different iconic performers; an old-school robust man who duked it out with a heavyweight champion and lived to inform about it; and a rough-and-tumble, larger-than-life character whose story consists of stints in jail, drug dependancy and, ultimately, salvation.
And it’s extremely doubtless that he’s the one individual on the planet who can declare to have labored as a minister, a pimp and a bodyguard for one of many best stars in music historical past.
“I was Stevie Wonder’s bodyguard for a minute,” Bowden says.
Not all of his previous deeds. in fact, should be celebrated. However, then once more, whose can? But, it’s exhausting to think about that there’s any character in all of West Oakland with a narrative that’s extra colourful and interesting than the person known as “Terrible” Tom. And that’s what’s helped make him such an icon round these elements.
“He’s the unofficial Mayor of West Oakland,” West Coast Blues Society founder Ronnie Stewart remarks of Bowden, a strong R&B/blues belter who has been performing in native venues for not less than seven many years.
Born Dec. 2, 1938, Bowden grew up on Wooden Road — the place he nonetheless lives in the present day — and started singing at an early age, working towards his craft each on avenue corners and in church. He grew to become a fixture within the close by seventh leisure district, gathering nickels from shining sneakers, taking within the lay of land and incomes fairly a repute with using his fists.
“Well, I lived in West Oakland — you had to know how to fight down here,” Bowden causes.
He says he grew up “singing and fighting” — and each of these issues would undoubtedly play sizable roles in his improvement over the many years. In terms of the latter, he’ll nonetheless drop right into a boxing stance at a second’s discover — bobbing and weaving in ways in which ought to carry terror to most would-be opponents — and recounting lots of the males who he vanquished in fights.
“I ain’t never lost,” Bowden remembers. “But I didn’t knock everyone out”
Press him on the topic — in (what we extremely suggest to be) a comparatively light trend — and he’ll recount the toughest hit he ever took, which got here courtesy of boxing nice George Foreman.
“I didn’t go down,” Bowden remembers of the punch he took from the heavyweight champ. “But I went to the observatory — because I saw all the stars and Uranus and Jupiter as well.”
Bowden is ready to handle a little bit of smile, nonetheless, as he remembers the scale of Foreman’s mighty fists.
“He didn’t have hands — he had hoofs,” Bowden (considerably) laughs.
Boxing wasn’t his solely space of specialty within the bodily health realm. He was additionally fairly good at baseball.
“That would have been my calling if I had discipline,” says Bowden, who factors out that his father as soon as performed with the legendary pitcher Satchel Paige. “I hit the ball 480 feet in high school.”
But, it wasn’t baseball and even combating that may become Bowden’s calling — though, for positive, the latter would stay a cornerstone for a lot of his life — however relatively reside leisure. Issues would vastly change for Bowden as soon as he met the the Christy brothers and started reserving exhibits on the siblings’ famed Continental Membership on twelfth Road in West Oakland. Seems Bowden had an amazing capacity to identify rising expertise and was quickly bringing plenty of future chart-toppers in to carry out on the membership.
“I got Aretha Franklin. I got the Temptations. I had Marvin Gaye. We had B.B. King, of course,” remembers Bowden. “(Crowds) knew it was going to be happening at the Continental Club.”
He’d additionally spend loads of time on the stage himself, thrilling crowds on the iconic Esther’s Orbit Room and different West Oakland spots. He grew to become recognized for his uncanny capacity to sound similar to Otis Redding — and reportedly even stuffed in at some gigs for the “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” singer after he died in 1967.
By all accounts, Bowden was — and stays — a charming performer on the reside stage.
“He comes with the real old-school, old church preaching type show,” Stewart says. “The kind you don’t see any more. He’s from the ’40s and ’50s when shows were shows. He’s straight church.”
After making a strong identify for himself within the golf equipment in West Oakland within the ’60s, Bowden went chasing the Hollywood dream and moved off to Los Angeles, the place he’d carry out at such celebrated venues because the Whisky a Go Go on Sundown Boulevard and even run a speakeasy that was frequented by the likes of Frank Sinatra, Pink Foxx and Richard Pryor.
“Oh, yeah, them ’70s — I was wild,” Bowden admits.
Outdoors of the leisure world, Bowden additionally enlisted within the Marines, but it surely turned out he wasn’t effectively suited to the navy life.
“He beat the heck out of his drill instructor,” Stewart says. “So, they kicked him out, of course.”
Then there was the job he had on the outdated GM plant in Fremont — however, actually, the much less mentioned about that the higher.
“I don’t want to talk about General Motors — because I knocked out my boss and put him in a freight train,” Bowden remembers. “They walked me off the property. I couldn’t go to Fremont.”
He was additionally a self-described “crack head,” in addition to a pimp, and spent just a few years behind bars within the Nevada State Jail system, though he gained’t elaborate — not less than not on the report — as to state of affairs that lead him to get despatched there.
“You can’t write about what I did,” Bowden says.
But, he’d ultimately straighten up and fly proper, getting closely concerned with church — ultimately turning into a minister — and began a restoration program. He’s now been sober for 34 years and runs a sober residing surroundings (SL) program in Oakland known as My Brothers Helper. And he offers all of the credit score for this success to God.
“I can’t give the credit to anyone else,” Bowden says. “Who else could change Terrible Tom?”
Bowden has additionally remained lively within the blues enviornment through the years, performing with Stewart within the West Coast Blues Society’s Caravan of All Stars and in different conditions. In 2023, nonetheless, he’d expertise a coronary heart assault throughout one among his performances — though he says God was there to deal with him even in that second.
“I fainted in the arms of a registered nurse — so I know God was with me,” Bowden says.
However he’s each feeling and looking good today, which blues lovers came upon when — for the primary time in some 30 years — he took the stage to carry out at his outdated stamping grounds of the Continental Membership in West Oakland again in January.
“I was testing to see if if I could sing,” Bowden says. “I did alright.”
And now he’s trying ahead to creating much more recollections on the Continental down the street.
“I am going to have my birthday party here,” he says.
