'I'm too big to cry': Phoenix blues icon Big Pete Pearson won't let cancer dim his spirit
Big Pete Pearson takes pride in having drawn a sold-out crowd to see him play the grand reopening of Char’s Live, as the funky Melrose District nightclub Pearson had already torn the roof off countless times through the years in its previous incarnation as Char’s Has the Blues has been rechristened.
“I ran up on a lot of my old friends from yesteryear and they said, 'Man, you sing harder now than you did 40 years ago,’” the 86-year-old Pearson recalls.
“My legs is not as useful as they used to be. But thank God for my voice. He gave me something that I haven't lost yet. So I still got that. And if you think I'm kidding, come on down. I'll light your heart the best I can. Because I'm gonna sing from the heart. I always have and always will.”
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Benefit will help ease Big Pete Pearson's medical expenses
Pearson's next performance at Char's Live is Sunday, April 30, a benefit to help defray the medical expenses he's been racking up in 15 years of battling prostate cancer at a time when decent-paying blues gigs keep getting scarcer.
Pearson is among the many artists scheduled to perform at the event, which runs from noon to 8 p.m. and will be hosted by his lead guitarist Scotty Spenner.
They're also auctioning off items ranging from a brand new Squier Bullet Telecaster to a 2001 Harley Davidson motorcycle and Pearson's own signature Godfather hat, as worn onstage for more than 30 years.
In February, Pearson and his wife, Kelly, started a GoFundMe page, afraid they’ll lose their home in Litchfield Park if something doesn’t change.
“I just don't know how to express my feelings about asking people to help me because I wish I didn't have to,” Pearson says.
“It kind of tears me up inside. But I don’t want to lose our home. I ain't gonna start crying. I'm too big to cry. But inside, my heart is crying because I had to ask somebody else to help me. And that just ain't sitting well.”
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Pearson would rather be giving than asking for help
Pearson says he’s more comfortable giving. In addition to volunteering his time and talents to further music education at schools around the state, the singer has spent many years repairing and donating bicycles to children in the neighborhood.
“Kelly told me, 'Honey, we need to slow down on you spending money buying bikes for kids,’” Pearson says.
“When I couldn't find a used one, I'd go out and buy a new one. I didn't care because I wanted that child to have a bike. And I still feel that way.”
If it were up to Pearson, he’d be covering those bikes, the mortgage and his mounting medical expenses by singing the blues, the way he’s handled his affairs these past 77 years.
“I'm looking for work every day,” he says. “I'm not disabled. If it gets so I can't walk, I'll get a wheelchair. I won’t ever stop singing.”
As Kelly Pearson points out, “Just because we put up a GoFundMe page, that doesn't mean he wants to sit around the house and just give up. He's gonna keep performing.”
Pearson doesn’t blame the nightclubs for the scarcity of decent gigs.
“They have to live, too,” Pearson says. “And the way people support music today, it's kind of rough.”
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Pearson got his start playing blues in a bar as a 9-year-old
Pearson was 9 years old on the day of his first paying blues gig at a bar in Austin, Texas.
“I didn't know I was going to play the blues,” Pearson says.
He’d been playing guitar with a spiritual group at the time, when Ricky Mills and Sonny Ace came by the house and asked if he could go play some music with them.
“I didn’t know I was going to no bar,” Pearson says. “I thought I was going to play for a church. So I hopped in the car and my grandmother said, 'Y'all take care of my baby.' I was being raised by my grandparents. They said, 'Don't you worry, Ms. Pearson. He's gonna be fine. Don't you worry at all.’"
When the car pulled up outside the Triple J, he figured Mills was running in to buy a pack of smokes.
“I'm just a little kid, you know,” he says. “I looked up, I saw beer, I said, 'What is it this?’ They said, 'Well, we at a bar.' I said, 'You want me to play in a bar?'”
The two older musicians explained that they had heard around the neighborhood that he could really sing the blues.
“Which I could,” Pearson says.
“But my grandparents didn't know. They was churchgoing folks. Singing the blues was a big no-no in that house. So these guys, they said, ‘You just sing the blues and we won't tell Miss Pearson. You'll be safe with us.’ I took them at their word. And I made 50 cents. A big old 50-cent piece. I never will forget.”
It felt like all the money in the world to a 9 year old, at least until he realized if he took that money home, his grandparents would know he’d been singing the blues in a bar.
I said, 'I can't take this money home,’” Pearson says. “And Ricky said, 'I'm gonna get you a cigar box. You just hide your money in that box.' And so I did. I hid my money in a cigar box for a long time.”
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Pearson worked alongside Muddy Waters
By his teenage years, Pearson was playing with blues and R&B acts when they came through Austin, from B.B. King to Big Joe Turner, T-Bone Walker and Etta James.
“I worked with Muddy Waters for almost a year,” he says.
“But they was gonna do a lot of traveling and I didn't think I could do it. So I started working with Blues Boy Hubbard and the Jets at Charlie's Playhouse, stuck with them for 13, 14 years, on and off.”
He’s traded vocals with Ray Charles in Los Angeles (on “Night Time Is the Right Time”) and toured with Ike and Tina Turner as a member of Jimmy DeKnight and His Knights of Rhythm, their opening act.
As Kelly sees it, “Every blues legend that’s ever been, he's probably performed with them. There’s so many, it’s endless."
Wolfman Jack turned him onto the blues
Pearson discovered his love of the blues as a little boy tuning into the radio on the sly at his grandparents’ house.
“My grandparents would go to sleep and I'd turn on the radio at night,” Pearson says.
“Wolfman Jack would be on. And I'd be sitting there, quietly singing along until I'd fall asleep. That’s where I got my inspiration, listening to all these different old blues artists on the radio.”
It’s the feeling he got from the blues that really spoke to Pearson.
“Blues is something that comes from the heart,” he says. “If you can't bring it from the heart, go ahead and go on a picnic, eat a sandwich, forget about it.
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B.B. King's advice? 'You've got to bring it from the heart'
B.B. King was probably his biggest inspiration, giving him advice that shaped the way he looks at what does.
As Pearson recalls the conversation, “He said, ‘Pete, anybody can get up there and play guitar and holler out some stuff. You've got to bring it from the heart. You’ve got to mean it. Don't depend on someone else's songs to get you where you need to go. Why don't you write your own stuff?’”
That’s when Pearson started writing his own blues songs.
“I couldn't record anything, because I didn't I didn't know nothing about recording,” Pearson says. “But man, I had a stack of stuff.”
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When Big Pete Pearson left Austin for Phoenix
He moved to Phoenix in the 1950s, hitting the blues jam every Monday at the local Veterans of Foreign Wars while working days in the kitchen at Sky Harbor Airport.
“All the musicians would come into the VFW and play and sing,” he says. “So then I started getting jobs around town.”
He’d played the American Legion any chance he got until his friend Duke Draper helped him break into better-playing gigs in Scottsdale. It wasn’t long before he’d formed his own band, Big Pete Pearson & the Blues Sevilles.
“We took off like a rocket,” Pearson says. “And it’s been going for me ever since.”
In 1995, he was inducted to the Arizona Blues Hall of Fame.
Nearly 30 years later, Pearson has been sitting down to sing at recent gigs, but he’s still out there shouting the blues with the authority and power of a young man.
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He’s been told he’s the last of the blues shouters, a school of singing he says is like “having the Holy Ghost” in church.
“You get that feeling that you want to shout,” he says. “It just takes over and you lay the hammer down. I go ahead and try to take the roof off the house. It’s just such a good feeling.”
Pearson credits God with giving him the voice to lay that hammer down at any given moment and his grandmother, the choir director at church, with teaching him to not abuse that precious gift.
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“I used to like to sing falsetto, way up there,” Pearson says.
“I can hit notes that's out of this world. And my grandmother said, 'That's not the way you should sing all the time. That's just a toy. You play with your toy. And then you put it away and leave it alone.’ That's what I did and that’s what I’ve been doing all my life. If I need your attention? I’ll get it.”
As long as he’s still breathing, you can rest assured that Pearson will be out getting your attention at any club that will have him.
“I’ve had a good life,” he says, “and it kind of keeps coming. If I had to do it over, I would do it all the same. I wouldn’t change a thing.”
Big Pete Pearson Benefit
Performers: Dr. Fish, True Flavor Blues, Jimmy Payton's Midnite Blues, Hans Olsen, Ron Trapiano, Alice Tatum, Chuck Hall. Something Funky, Honest Soulz, Kenny Brown Bam Jam, Lucius and Lamar Parr, Kirk Hawley, Tommy Washington, Brian Lovings, Cadillac Assembly Line, Brian Fahey, Matt Rowe, Rocket 88s and Big Pete Pearson with his band (Scotty Spenner, Curt Arndt, Jim Robertson, Claire Griese).
When: Noon-8 p.m. Sunday, April 30.
Where: Char's Live, 4631 N. Seventh Ave., Phoenix.
Admission: $15.
Details: 602-607-5568, charslive.com.
Reach the reporter at ed.masley@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4495. Follow him on Twitter @EdMasley.
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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Phoenix blues icon Big Pete Pearson won't let cancer dim his spirit
