Zuzu Bollin born September 5, 1923

Zuzu Bollin (September 5, 1923 – October 2, 1990) was an American Texas blues guitarist and singer from Frisco, Texas. Two 78s in the early '50s and a 1989 rediscovery album don't add up to much of a recorded legacy. But Zuzu Bollin's contribution to the Texas blues legacy shouldn't be overlooked, as his T-Bone Walker-influenced sound typified post-war Lone Star blues guitar.

A. D. Bollin was born in Frisco, Texas. His social security records say he was born in 1923, though most music references give his birth year as 1922. As a boy, Bollin was influenced by two uncles, amateur guitarists, who played the records of Blind Lemon Jefferson and Leroy Carr and other early blues musicians. He moved to Dallas with his mother by the 1930s, served in the navy from 1944 to 1946. He did earn the odd dollar strumming hillbilly songs, of all things, in the officer’s club, but he didn’t take it seriously. He planned on pressing clothes for a living. Later, after his discharge, Bollin discovered that a new blues subgenre called jump was popular. Still with no plans for a musical career, he began listening to T-Bone Walker, Wynonie Harris, and Eddie Vinson.

Then, almost overnight, it happened. Bollin moved to Omaha, where he often visited a joint that featured a comic called Rabbit. On a whim Bollin convinced Rabbit, a fellow Texan, to let a homeboy sing one with the band. Bollin let ’em have it with a natural bluesy baritone so impressive he was hired on the spot as the club’s singer. For two months he performed there, following Rabbit. Bollin forgot all about pressing clothes; he was in showbiz! After the Omaha gig played out, Bollin moved back to Texas, where he played in local bands. It was a giant step up when he joined the mighty Ernie Fields jazz/jump orchestra.

Zuzu sang for four months with Fields, during which time they entertained at prestigious civilian venues as well as Army camps in Washington, Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada. After Fields told him to “stick with singin’, boy, ’cause you’ll never be no guitar player,” Bollin, irked, got a guitar of his own and set about honing his skills. He got good enough to hire on as a guitarist on a Percy Mayfield show but quit after touring several states because Mayfield wouldn’t let him sing. In 1947 he was living in Denton, where he played in the band of Texan E. X. Brooks. He also performed in bands with such illustrious Texas reedmen as Buster Smith, Booker Ervin and Adolphus Sneed. During this time he took the nickname "Zuzu" from his favourite brand of ginger cookies called Zu Zu ginger snaps.

                                  

In 1949 Bollin formed a group with renowned saxists Leroy Cooper and David "Fathead" Newman. Both of these musicians played on his 1951 recording of one of the true classics of Texas blues, "Why Don't You Eat Where You Slept Last Night?" (flip side "Matchbox Blues"), for the short-lived label Torch. Bollin's voice was deep and strong, and his guitar break was in the jazzy T-Bone Walker style. The 1951 piece garnered a bit of regional fame for Bollin, so he figured he was entitled to raise his performance price a bit. Reputedly this irked Dallas nightclub boss Jack Ruby, who used his influence to quash the record.  If it happened, the power play doesn’t seem to have done much real damage. A Torch follow-up, "Stavin' Chain"/"Cry, Cry, Cry," found Bollin backed by Jimmy McCracklin's combo. No more recording ensued after that and Zuzu simply started taking more out-of-town dates, touring again with Ernie Fields, this time for three months.

The work and the money were good, but life on the blues circuit could be grim. In late 1957, Zuzu hit the road with the Joe Morris outfit. Morris was a Lionel Hampton alum who knew how to do absolutely nothing but blow trumpet, and that’s precisely what doctors had told him not to do. Joe Morris died on the road, far from his Alabama home. Zuzu led the band for the rest of the tour.  When it was over, he sent Morris’s few possessions back to his widow. Zuzu’s next tour was with Jimmy Reed, a raging alcoholic who could still slay audiences despite his legendary boozing. The tour broke up after a bad car accident in New Mexico in which Zuzu almost got killed. Zuzu kept working but in lesser venues, and he wasn’t as eager to go on the road as he once had been. The death blow to his career came when the Black musician’s union, Local 168, merged with all-white Local 147. Still, its deleterious effect was that various Black entertainers of merit could no longer get enough work to stay in the business.Zuzu Bollin was one. He faded from sight, and no one in the world music community heard a word from him for a quarter century. 

His obscurity lasted until 1987, when blues enthusiast Chuck Nevitt found him in a poverty-row rooming house near downtown Dallas. He asked the bluesman if he’d like to go to some joints, sit in with the bands. Maybe they could lay the groundwork for a comeback. Hell yes, responded Bollin, who said he was on hard times indeed and if given a chance to sing his way out of them he’d take it, and that was for damn sure. The first place they hit was Fort Worth’s Bluebird, the old-style blues bar with the ambience of a bait store.  Zuzu took the stage with the band of U.P. Wilson, a guitarist who counts Zuzu as an influence, and let fly.

Nevitt took Bollin down the comeback trail, acting as his manager and producing the acclaimed LP Zuzu Bollin: Texas Bluesman, sponsored by the Dallas Blues Society and released on the Antone's label in 1989. Bollin was suddenly ubiquitous in Dallas nightspots. The friendly, personable bluesman sometimes performed with the Juke Jumpers, but his most empathic accompanist was Brian "Hash Brown" Calway. In 1989 Bollin played at the Chicago Blues Festival and toured Europe, playing at Holland's prestigious Blues Estafette. During April 1990 he sang and played on four tracks of Hash Browns T Is for Texas album (not released until 1993). His impressive comeback was curtailed by cancer, from which he died on October 19, 1990.

(Edited from Texas State Historical Association, Record Town Texas & AllMusic)