Jesse Fuller
Jesse Fuller (March 12, 1896 – January 29, 1976) was an American one-man band musician, best known for his song "San Francisco Bay Blues".
Early life
Fuller was born in Jonesboro, Georgia, near Atlanta. He was sent by his mother to live with foster parents when he was a young child, in a rural setting where he was badly mistreated. Growing up, he worked a multitude of jobs: grazing cows for ten cents a day, working in a barrel factory, a broom factory, a rock quarry, on a railroad and a streetcar company, shining shoes, and even peddling hand-carved wooden snakes. By the age of 10 he was playing guitar in two techniques, as he described it, "frailing" and "picking."
He came west and in the 1920s he lived in Southern California, where he operated a hot-dog stand and was befriended by Douglas Fairbanks. He worked briefly as a film extra in The Thief of Bagdad (1924) and East of Suez. In 1929 he settled in Oakland, California, across the bay from San Francisco, where he worked for the Southern Pacific railroad for many years as a fireman, spike driver, and maintenance-of-way worker. He married, and he and his wife Gertrude had a family. During World War II, he worked as a shipyard welder, but when the war ended he found it increasingly difficult to secure employment. Around the early 1950s, Fuller's thoughts turned toward the possibility of making a living playing music.
