I Feel So Bad

Following World War II, the nation's westward tilt created a huge market in California for locally sourced music, including Blues. Los Angeles built the recording studios and record labels, and the Bay Area grew fresh talent, with Oakland's Lowell Fulson begging an exit-bound lover to “Reconsider Baby” and, across the soup in San Francisco, Willie Mae ‘Big Mama' Thornton wagging a firm finger at a lying “Hound Dog” (later covered by Elvis Presley). In 1959, Jesse ‘Lone Cat' Fuller, a one-man band from Oakland, watched the waves lap the dock almost a decade before Otis Redding and caught a case of the “San Francisco Bay Blues.”