Pat Hare born 20 December 1930

Auburn "Pat" Hare (December 20, 1930 – September 26, 1980) was an American electric blues guitarist and singer. His heavily distorted, power chord–driven electric guitar performances in the early 1950s are considered an important precursor of heavy metal music. His guitar work with Little Junior's Blue Flames had a major influence on the rockabilly style, and his guitar playing on blues records by artists such as Muddy Waters was influential among 1960s British Invasion blues rock bands such as the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds. 

Auburn Hare, who was African-American, was born in Cherry Valley, Arkansas. When he was 10 his family moved onto a farm near Parkin, Arkansas, where his grandmother nicknamed him Pat. Hare learned his early guitar licks from Joe Willie Wilkins and by 1948 was playing in Howlin’ Wolf‘s band, making the scene around Beale Street in Memphis. He made his recording debut backing Walter Bradford at Sam Phillips‘ Sun Studios in February 1952, and Sam was quick to recognise Pat’s mastery of tone and his coherent solo technique. Sam used him on records by Lillian Mae Harrison and many sessions with Rosco Gordon and Junior Parker‘s Blue Flames. 

Top L-R: Junior Parker, Hamp Simmons, Jimmy Johnson, Eugene Ballow, Pat Hare
Kneeling: Bobby Bland and Joe Frit,. On Tour 1952  

One record Pat cut with Junior in 1953 was ‘Love My Baby’, which has a solo that inspired many rockabilly players with its melodic reverb, and it has been imitated so often so often it seems like a natural phenomenon. His guitar solo on James Cotton's electric blues record "Cotton Crop Blues" (1954) was the first recorded use of heavily distorted power chords, later an element of heavy metal music. According to Robert Palmer, "Rarely has a grittier, nastier, more ferocious electric guitar sound been captured on record, before or since, and Hare's repeated use of a rapid series of two downward-modulating power chords, the second of which is allowed to hang menacingly in the air, is a kind of hook or structural glue. 

                                   

The other side of the single was "Hold Me in Your Arms"; both songs "featured a guitar sound so overdriven that with the historical distance of several decades, it now sounds like a direct line to the coarse, distorted tones favored by modern rock players." According to Allmusic, "what is now easily attainable by 16-year-old kids on modern-day effects pedals just by stomping on a switch, Hare was accomplishing with his fingers and turning the volume knob on his Sears & Roebuck cereal-box-sized amp all the way to the right until the speaker was screaming." 

Pat Hare with Muddy Waters

In May 1954, Pat made some solo recordings for Sun that remained unissued for decades, and one of these, ‘Gonna Murder My Baby’, was to prove prophetic. According to Robert Palmer, this song is "as heavy metal as it gets." Later that year, Pat relocated to Houston and became a first-call session man for Don Robey‘s Duke label, cutting many records with his old friends Rosco and Junior, as well as Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland and Big Mama Thornton. Then Pat was called to Chicago by Muddy Waters, who had already recruited James Cotton to his band. Pat’s first cut at Chess was ‘Forty Days and Forty Nights’ in early 1956, and he played on the classic ‘Got My Mojo Working’, adding his spectacular guitar breaks to Muddy’s performances for almost five years. 

The band played at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1960, and the subsequent live album made Muddy’s name around the world, but Pat was credited as ‘Tat Harris’ on the album cover! Shortly afterwards, Pat was fired for drunken behaviour. A mild mannered and affable man when sober, Pat turned nasty when he had a drink, and when he started turning up drunk most of the time, he was unmanageable. Pat in separate respective incidents, punched and shot at Howlin' Wolf with a handgun, and threatened to kill Muddy Waters' harmonica player, George Buford. 

Pat moved to Minneapolis to work with another ex-Muddy sideman Mojo Buford, but on December 15, 1963, in nearby St. Paul, Pat’s tragedy played out. He shot his girlfriend dead, and when the police came to investigate, he shot an officer too. The officer died in an ambulance en route to a hospital, but the woman lingered for nearly a month, succumbing to her injuries the following January. The suspect, though injured in the gunfire, lived to stand trial and was hastily convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment that February. Pat spent the last 16 years of his life in Stillwater prison, in Bayport, near St.Paul, Minnesota, where he formed a band named Sounds Incarcerated. He developed lung cancer in prison and died there on September 26, 1980 just before he was due to be paroled. 

Shortly before his death, Hare was the subject of a PBS mini-documentary. The guitarist was allowed to continue playing behind bars, and even given permission to play occasional concerts outside prison walls. 

(Edited from Wikipedia, All About Blues Music, Guitar World, Bear Family & Jasmine notes)