Bluesman Big Daddy 'O'
by Webb Williams
I’ll tell ya’ right off the bat that I’m a huge fan of this incredible guy. I’ve known Owen Tufts (Big Daddy ‘O’) since I met my wife, his first cousin, some 98 years or so ago. Whenever I walk into a place he’s playing, he announces me over the microphone as his “First Cousin-in-Law.”
His 6-foot-6-inch, 285-pound physical appearance is a cross between a huge walrus, a huggable bear, a hippie and a Viking—but he has a gentle heart that’s pure and a soul that’s earned his right to sing the blues. And sing the blues he does, with a legion of fans—who are more like family—that is growing around the world.
About his name, he says, “I got the nickname Big Daddy ‘O’ from a kid who was friends with my son, Owen Jr. It stuck, and I’ve been Big Daddy ‘O’ ever since.” Big Daddy ‘O’ and his wife, Gretchen, his brother Allen and often their perfect 3-year-old grandson, Davin Jr., enjoy 40 wooded acres at their home in Mt. Hermon in Washington Parish.
The family suffered a tragic heartbreak about a year ago. Owen chokes up when he talks about the loss of his daughter, Celeste. At age 22, this beautiful young lady, a new mama and nursing student working as a medical assistant, suddenly collapsed and died. After an extensive autopsy, the cause of death was determined to be heart arrhythmia. The effect of her death still has Big Daddy ‘O’ and our whole extended family reeling. “I still can’t really talk about it,” he says. Owen and Gretchen are helping to raise their beautiful grandbaby at their country retreat. “But music”—he pauses to contain his anguish—“is a healer. As a matter of fact, on the day we buried her, I played a gig that night. And it made me feel better. It was a healing moment after the worst crisis of our lives.”
He finds solace kicking back down at his tranquil creek, sitting in the natural spring water, feeding the fish oatmeal. “Not many people are able to get into their aquarium to feed their fish.” From time to time, he’ll bring his guitar down to the creek and serenade his aqua critters. It’s an unlikely spot for a city boy, originally from Algiers, to settle down. But he made the move 27 years ago, and except for the commutes to gigs, he loves the country life.
The Birth of a Bluesman
“The first time I ever got on stage to sing was in third grade, performing ‘Peg o’ My Heart’ to a little girl I was sweet on,” Owen says. “My dad was a vocalist, so my brother ‘Tico’ and I sang around the house all the time. Dad was the lead singer of our family barbershop quartet and then a baritone, but, after years of cigars, he ended up singing bass. The quartet was called ‘Abiogenesis Abyssus,’ Latin for ‘Generation Gap.’”
Owen first picked up a guitar at 13, but quit after Werlein’s insisted on his playing “Down in the Valley” and such instead of something by the Rolling Stones. At 18, he picked it up again and hasn’t put it down since. He put some tunes together and started street performing for tourists on Bourbon Street. A club owner liked what he heard, and Big Daddy ‘O’ got steady gigs at the Ivanhoe at Bourbon and Toulouse. “They paid me 50 bucks and let me set up a tip jar, and I was on my way—a small way, but I knew better things were to come.”
Bid Daddy ‘O’ also played other joints in the late ’60s and early ’70s—Your Father’s Moustache, The 544, 7-11, A Better Mousetrap, The Wrong Place and more. He played a lot of Donovan, Bob Dylan—mostly folk music. “Then I fell in love with the blues. I still like folk music. I like to mix it up, y’know?” In the ’70s, he fell in love with Gretchen, whom he met while they attended LSUNO. She’s been his promoter, manager, photographer and soul mate for 35 years now. “She’s my biggest groupie. She’s with me at all my sets and leads the cheer. Wow! I’m a lucky bluesman.” Recalling the time they were driving back from a gig in Arkansas and the radio was broken in the truck, he says, “She made me sing for her the whole trip.”
Around the year 2000, Big Daddy ‘O’ started hitting it big enough to give up his day job. “I was a sanitary engineer, a plumber, a diver for Roto-Rooter. I’m a third- generation plumber and glad it’s behind me, so to speak. Dad was a feisty kinda guy who shut down his plumbing business when the feds told him how to run things, so he went to work for the City of New Orleans and retired with no aggravations. Mama sang with the ‘Sweet Adelines’ female group, loved my music, and could cook like the angel we all knew her to be.
“I had a Southern rock kinda band at the start of the new century called ‘Savannah.’ We played all over the northshore—in Amite, Kentwood, Montpelier, Covington’s Bluesberry Festival and other venues that were part of the dues a bluesman has to pay to make it.”
Arkansas Love
“My favorite place to play depends where I am. If I’m in Mandeville, it’s Ruby’s. If I’m in Angie, it’s Birdie’s. If I’m in Florida, it’s the Salty Dog Saloon. But if I’m in Arkansas, it’s anywhere,” says Owen. “I love Arkansas because that’s where people actually come to listen to music. There’s no booze or smoking. If you start talkin’ loud or makin’ noise, the crowd tells you to shut up! If you don’t shut up, they ask you to leave. They call it the ‘In-home Concert Series,’ and they set it up in school cafeterias or churches, with donuts, cake and coffee instead of booze. Totally different audience. They just hear and love the music!”
The difference in the Arkansas audience intrigued me. (It’s always bothered me whenever a performer is on stage and the crowd is disrespectful to the point of talking louder than the musician. I guess it’s the age we live in, with people shouting into cell phones and talking in TV-watching levels at movies and concerts. But it bugs me no end.)
I asked Big Daddy ‘O’ how the different audience demeanor affected his performance. “The Arkansas audience politeness actually frightened me! I said, ‘I’m a Louzeeana blues boy who ain’t used to this. Y’all are scarin’ me! It’s too quiet in here! Y’all got to make noise, clank your coffee cups or somethin’ so you don’t hear all my mistakes! Man, with this kind of serious listening, attention and appreciation, I really can stand this kind of audience! Plus, there’s no smoking.’” (Owen quit 15 years ago, but feels he’s still smoking secondhand in most of the clubs he plays.)
Sittin’ In
Owen and Gretchen hosted a “Memorial Day Jam” sporadically through the years for friends and family. I recalled seeing then-unknown Theresa Andersson and Anders Osborne play and sing at the first jam, before they were big hits on the music scene. It was a way to get musicians together in a no-stress environment to perform if they wanted to, or just lay back in the serene 40-acre hill country Big Daddy ‘O’ calls home. It was grand layback fun, with folks camping out and music everywhere. Mornings might begin with a fiddle playing in the distance. Owen says, “Around noontime, we’d sit in what we called the ‘Round.’
All acoustic, the musicians would take turns playing. Then, about three or four o’clock we’d break out the amplifiers and microphones and things started rockin’ through the evening!” The annual event grew untenable as the years went by, with too many friends telling too many other friends about this rare musical happening, so Owen and Gretchen reluctantly stopped having it. “Too much of a good thing.”
I told Big Daddy ‘O’ I was in awe over what a phenomenal magnetic attraction he has with other musicians and singers. Often, on a gig where he’s the only paid performer, there may be as many as ten musicians sitting in with him. “Why that happens, I don’t know,” he says. But I know that his good heart, kind spirit and genuine warmth are something folks want to be close to.
Not to mention his wonderful voice and guitar prowess. Big Daddy O’s Blues Revue began with friends sitting in. And it grew to a seven to eight-piece band with incredible energy. All-pros Cherie Mannino on vocals, Milo Mannino on trumpet, Tim Ernest on sax, Hutson Brock on guitar, and, of course, producer-organist John Autin are the core of the group.
“Jerry Crowell, a banjo-pickin’ friend of mine, once told me that the reason so many musicians sit in with me is ’cause I give ’em enough rope to hang themselves! It happens everywhere I go, too. Not just here in Southeast Louisiana. Musicians feel free to sit in with me in Florida, Arkansas, North Carolina—all of a sudden, there’s people up there sittin’ in with me.
“The farthest I’ve ever played away from home was two years ago for an engagement at the Westin Maui Resort. Gretchen and I were in heaven. What a gig. I also played on a local radio station there—I thought for one or two songs—but they wanted me to keep on, so I played and sang for three hours! Still have fans in Hawaii who listen to me on that station and on XM satellite radio’s Bluesville.”
His fan base is growing, with more than 200 radio stations throughout America, a dozen in Canada, both BBC stations in England, nine in Australia, plus the Netherlands, Germany, and who knows where else. “After 34 years playing the blues, I was named by Offbeat magazine as ‘Best Emerging Blues Artist.’ Yeah, I’m emerging,” he laughs.
Doin’ It His Way
“I’ve been described as a ‘modern day bluesman,’ and ‘eclectic,’ whatever that means,” Owen says. I explain that it means off the wall and not cookie-cutter or same old, same old. “I like that. It reminds me of what Gatemouth Brown said—it’s okay to play other people’s material, but don’t play it like they play it. Make it yours. That’s what I try to do with my music. I did it top-40 parrot-style back in the day. Booring! So I just started expressing songs the way I felt them. Blues music is for everybody to use, but you gotta use it your own way.”
Though he’s writing more and more these days, his repertoire for years has been rearranging other people’s songs. “I refer to the process as ‘de-ranging,’” he corrects. A particular favorite of mine is an a cappella version of his friend Kenny Oliverio’s “Ain’t Gonna Worry.” You can see and hear ‘O’ perform it at his website, bigdaddyo.net. “Kenny did it bluegrass-style. I slowed it down and ‘deranged’ it. I do it ‘Acapulco.’” He says he can’t say a highfalutin’ word like ‘a cappella.’
Another favorite of mine is his rendition of—of all things—“Help,” by the Beatles. He explained, “I remember reading that John Lennon originally wrote it to be sung slowly and tenderly—a plea for help. His producers wanted everything upbeat, so a moving, gentle song became a typical Beatles rock hit. That stuck with me. It’s so appropriate when you consider the lyrics. So I do it differently.” He did the same treatment to Kenny Rogers’ hit “Just Dropped In,” transforming it to something lyrically his own.
His influences? “I listen to Freddie King; Crosby, Stills & Nash; Jeff Beck; Albert King; Stevie Ray Vaughn; Johnny Winter; Dan Fogelberg; Leon Redbone; Louis Jordan; and so many more…”
Big Daddy ‘O’ has recorded three CDs on the Rabadash Records label, produced by master keyboard and organist John Autin: “That’s How Strong My Love Is,” “Deranged Covers” and “What You Gotta Go Through.” Remarkably, he records most of the songs in one day. “On the first CD, I laid down 24 tracks in the studio in a day, and 19 songs made the cut.” I asked if he was exhausted after such a feat. “Nah. Music’s FUN, man!”
What’s the latest with Big Daddy ‘O’? “My producer wants me to do a different kinda Christmas album real soon. You know I will. And I’m writing more than ever before. I recorded Lonnie Mack’s ‘Oreo Cookie Blues’ that’ll be in a new animated movie fantasy called ‘The Magistical.’”
An annual fixture and crowd-pleaser at the French Quarter Festival, the Washington Parish Free Fair and the new Crescent City Blues & Barbeque Festival, our local ‘emerging’ bluesmaster will close out the Pontchartrain Vineyards’ Jazz’n the Vines Festival November 15. He’ll most probably play at the next Jazz Fest for the first time as a solo act. T-P reporter Keith Spera said that his absence from the lineup last year was an omission of a deserving northshore acoustic-blues singer and guitarist that “someone in Jazz Fest’s office should pencil in … for the 2009 festival now.”
Amen to that. Way to go, first-cousin-in-law Big Daddy ‘O’!
Big Daddy's Friends are talking...
Dennis “Big D” Schalby:
“I first met Big Daddy ‘O’ while looking for a band to appear on WWOZ’s Jam Session. Little did I know that I was about to find some of the dearest friends of my life. ‘O’ and Gretchen are two of the most wonderful people that I am proud to call friends. ‘O’ has the kindest, most noble spirit of anyone I’ve ever known, and he possesses an innate musical talent to take any song and make it his own. With stellar guitar skills and the angelic voice that is ‘smooth as butter,’ I truly believe he is destined to be one of the great music legends of New Orleans.”
— Dennis “Big D” Schalby
WWOZ 90.7FM Show Host
John Autin:
“I met Big Daddy ‘O’ in the 80s through our mutual friend, singer Nora Wixted. Back then, Big ‘O’ would come and jam with us on Bourbon Street with his electric guitar. He always had a joy for playing. It wasn’t until I happened into an acoustic gig of his that I experienced his true magic. He has developed a touch on the acoustic guitar that is at a world-class level, and his wonderful voice is just one of the most beautiful creations on the planet.
“When I’m recording him, I try to just get out of the way and capture what’s there naturally. I used some of the best vintage tube microphones in the world and tried to capture his voice and guitar as perfectly as possible, just as they are. He’s truly a remarkable talent. He’s never lost that joy for playing.
“He touches me every time he sings a note or plucks his acoustic guitar. People who are able to stop for a moment and take it in understand what I’m talking about. Listening to Big Daddy ‘O’ is an experience like seeing the Grand Canyon. You have to shut everything else out and just take it all in. It’s truly one of the greatest experiences in my life. A gift from God.”
John Autin
Musician, Producer
To order Big Daddy ‘O’ CDs, go to bigdaddyo.net, and click on “Releases.”
