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.

Jesse

Jesse /ˈdʒɛs.iː/,Isai or Yishai (Hebrew: יִשַׁי, Modern Yishay, Tiberian Yīšáy, meaning "God exists" or "God's gift"; Arabic: يَسَّى‎ Yassa; Syriac: ܐܝܫܝ‎ Eshai; Greek: Ἰεσσαί Iessai; Latin: Isai, Jesse) is the father of David, who became the king of the Israelites. His son David is sometimes called simply "Son of Jesse" (Ben Yishai).

Jesse was the son of Obed and the grandson of Ruth and of Boaz. He lived in Bethlehem, in Judah, and was of the Tribe of Judah, he was a farmer, breeder and owner of sheep. He was a prominent resident of the town of Bethlehem. Jesse is important in Judaism because he was the father of the most famous King of Israel. He is important in Christianity, in part because he is in the Old Testament and mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus. Later rabbinic traditions name him as one of four ancient Israelites who died without sin, the other three being Benjamin, Chileab and Amram.

San Francisco

San Francisco (/sæn frənˈsɪskoʊ/), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the cultural, commercial, and financial center of Northern California and the only consolidated city-county in California. San Francisco encompasses a land area of about 46.9 square miles (121 km²) on the northern end of the San Francisco Peninsula, which makes it the smallest county in the state. It has a density of about 18,187 people per square mile (7,022 people per km²), making it the most densely settled large city (population greater than 200,000) in the state of California and the second-most densely populated major city in the United States after New York City. San Francisco is the fourth-most populous city in California, after Los Angeles, San Diego and San Jose, and the 13th-most populous city in the United States—with a Census-estimated 2014 population of 852,469. The city and its surrounding areas are known as the San Francisco Bay Area, and are a part of the larger OMB designated San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland combined statistical area, the fifth most populous in the nation with an estimated population of 8.6 million.

San Francisco Bay Blues

"San Francisco Bay Blues" is an American folk song and is generally considered to be the most famous composition by Jesse Fuller. Fuller first recorded the song in 1954 (released 1955) for a small label called World Song. The song was brought into wider popularity in the early 1960s by club performances by Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Bob Dylan, and Jim Kweskin. Recorded covers have been performed by many artists including The Blues Band, Paul Jones, Jim Croce, The Weavers, The Brothers Four, Paul Clayton, Richie Havens, Eric Clapton, The Flatlanders, Paul McCartney, Hot Tuna, Janis Joplin, John Lennon, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Mungo Jerry, Glenn Yarbrough, George Ellias, Phoebe Snow, The Wave Pictures, The Halifax III and Eva Cassidy. A "one-man band" rendition of the song featuring a kazoo solo was recorded by Fuller himself in a 1962 concert. This has been included in a Smithsonian Folkways compilation, Friends of Old Time Music.

Topic Records issued the original Jesse Fuller version on a 10-inch vinyl LP called Working on the Railroad in 1959 and included it as track six of the first CD of the Topic Records 70 year anniversary boxed set Three Score and Ten.

San Francisco Bay

San Francisco Bay is a shallow estuary that drains water from approximately 40% of California. Water from the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, and from the Sierra Nevada mountains, passes through the Bay to the Pacific Ocean. Specifically, both rivers flow into Suisun Bay, which flows through the Carquinez Strait to meet with the Napa River at the entrance to San Pablo Bay, which connects at its south end to San Francisco Bay. However, the entire group of interconnected bays is often called the San Francisco Bay.

San Francisco Bay is in the U.S. state of California, surrounded by a contiguous region known as the San Francisco Bay Area (often simply "the Bay Area"), dominated by the large cities San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose. The waterway entrance to San Francisco Bay from the Pacific Ocean is called the Golden Gate. Across the strait spans the Golden Gate Bridge. The bay was designated a Ramsar Wetland of International Importance on February 2, 2013.

Size

The bay covers somewhere between 400 and 1,600 square miles (1,040 to 4,160 square kilometers), depending on which sub-bays (such as San Pablo Bay), estuaries, wetlands, and so on are included in the measurement. The main part of the Bay measures 3 to 12 miles (5 to 20 km) wide east-to-west and somewhere between 48 miles (77 km)¹ and 60 miles (97 km)² north-to-south. It is the largest Pacific estuary in the Americas.