Dave Acosta

El Paso Times

Long John Hunter, an El Paso-based blues guitarist who became a border legend playing at the Lobby Bar in Juárez in the 1950s and 1960s, died Monday, his family announced on his Facebook page.

"The great Texas singer/songwriter, guitarist and bluesman Long John Hunter (born John Thurman Hunter, Jr.) died in his sleep early Monday morning, January 4, 2016, at his home in Phoenix, Arizona. He was 84 years old. He is survived by his wife, Gayle. Funeral arrangements are pending," the post said.

"He began performing in 1953 and moved to El Paso, Texas in 1957, and had a regular gig across the border at the Lobby Bar in Juárez, Mexico. He released seven albums during his career, and received international fame touring around the world."

Hunter counted Billy Gibbons, leader of famed Texas trio ZZ Top, among his many fans.

“I was sad to hear of the passing of the great Long John Hunter," Gibbons said in a statement to the El Paso Times. "He was El Paso and Juárez’s gift to the blues. I fondly remember listening to his 'El Paso Rock' on (Del Rio, Texas radio station) XERF when I was a kid. It didn’t get more Texas border boogie than that.”

Hunter was born July 13, 1931, in Ringgold, La., before growing up in Arkansas and Beaumont, Texas, according to Eddie Hinojos, who interviewed Hunter several times in 2013 for a biographical short Hinojos wrote while he was a student at the University of Texas at El Paso.

Hunter wasn't inspired to pick up a guitar until around the age of 21, when he and a friend saw legendary blues guitarist B.B. King perform in Beaumont, he told Hinojos. Hunter purchased a guitar the next day.

According to Hinojos, Hunter said he practiced and performed relentlessly in Beaumont, then the Houston and Port Arthur areas before deciding to move to El Paso. He performed at the Lobby Bar on Avenida Juárez from 1957 to 1970, when the bar closed.

Jim Paul, CEO of Hospice El Paso and former owner of the El Paso Diablos baseball team, recalls making the journey to Juárez on a regular basis during Hunter's Lobby Bar heyday.

"(My friends and I) would get there about 9 o'clock, give Hector, the doorman, a 50-cent tip to get sat up front and dance all night long," Paul said. "The stage was maybe three feet tall, but the place had low ceilings and if it had been any higher, (Hunter) wouldn't have been able to perform. There wasn't anything he couldn't play and we liked everything he played."

Many legends surround Hunter's Lobby Bar performances. James Brown supposedly jumped onstage during a break — and was shouted down by Hunter's fans, according to a 2011 El Paso Times story. A then-unknown Buddy Holly is said to have choked up the courage to talk to Hunter after a gig.

El Paso's best-known rocker, Bobby Fuller of "I Fought the Law" fame, used to cross the bridge to see Hunter play.

Longtime El Paso musician Rod Crosby, who was a friend and contemporary to Fuller, said Hunter's influence on "the golden era" of El Paso rock 'n' roll from the 1960s through the early 1980s is unmatched.

"The portion to which he influenced people was legendary in itself," Crosby said. "He became a legend while he was alive because he influenced all the major El Paso musicians from that era. He had a uniqueness about him. ... He was the definition of individuality. The fact that he played and stuck around as long as he did demonstrates his importance. That is something to be admired. That's what legends are made of. He was the real deal."

Hunter played for several years at the King's X in West El Paso after the Lobby Bar closed.

"He was the house band for a long time," said Teddy Aikman, current owner of the King's X and the son of longtime owner Gil Aikman.

Aikman's was a child at the time, but recalls seeing Hunter perform and hang around his dad's bar.

"I remember my sister and I would watch (Hunter) play and he'd sit down at the stool of a player piano and play the guitar one-handed," Aikman said. "He and my dad were good friends for a long time. My dad loved the song 'Stagger Lee' and he loved the way Long John played that song. He would always play it for him."

Before leaving El Paso in 1987, Hunter continued to play in "just about every nook and cranny" in El Paso in the late 1970s and early 1980s, said Robert Banta, who played with Hunter during that period.

"We would just turn those places upside down," Banta said. "Most of the time, there would be standing room only. He would do this thing where he would get up on the bar or take his guitar and play it one-handed in front of the prettiest lady or with the guitar in her lap. There was never a dull moment playing with him. I learned so much from him."

While a legend in the El Paso-Juárez area, broader fame eluded Hunter until the 1990s, when he signed with Alligator Records and released two albums, "Border Town Legend" and "Swinging from the Rafters," and re-released "Ride with Me."

Those albums brought him new followers in the United States and Europe. Hunter played numerous well-known blues and music festivals, including The Chicago Blues Festival, the San Antonio Cultural Festival and the Long Beach Blues Festival. In 2013, Hunter performed at the New York's legendary Apollo Theatre in Harlem.

Jim Murphy, director of development for the El Paso Museum of History, is the former director of the New York State Blues Festival in Syracuse, N.Y. As the festival's director he booked Hunter to perform at the festival in the early 2000s. Murphy included Hunter in his recent book, "My Favorite El Pasoans: Past and Present."

"He was a gentleman, gracious and very happy to be a performer at the festival," Murphy said. "Like all artists from that generation, he was an elder statesman, so to be on tour and welcomed at a festival was an honor."

His last El Paso performance came in 2011.

"Like I said, anything I've done, I didn't know what I was gonna do. Something come to me and I'd do it," he said in a Times interview promoting the show.

Dave Acosta may be reached at 546-6138; dacosta@elpasotimes.com; @AcostaDavidA on Twitter.