Jesse Fuller

Born in Jonesboro, Georgia in 1896, he settled in Oakland, California in 1929 after years of itinerant work, including time with the Southern Pacific Railroad as a fireman and gandy dancer. Around 1950 he began performing as a one-man band, playing guitar, harmonica, kazoo, and the fotdella, a six-stringed bass instrument of his own construction, played with the foot via piano-style pedals, its name coined by his wife from the phrase foot-diller. In 1954 he wrote San Francisco Bay Blues, which became his most celebrated song and was widely covered following the British folk revival. He died in Oakland in January 1976.