Cajun Folk Art Prints
by Rudy Young
Artist, Writer, Musician
P.O. Box 2523, Hawthorne, Fl 32640

Music Page

This is the artwork for our new
Lightnin' Harpo CD

The album is called, The Lightnin' Harpo Band, Home Blues.

Contains eleven songs, including My Houndog Howls At Midnight, Purple Bud along with Kim Ricks doing It's My Own Fault and Lil' Red Rooster. This is a monster album.

"Doin it in the mud with a two-bit hooker in an
alley behind a burned down liquor store Blues."

(Print of this art available on GALLERY page)

Upcoming gigs:

MILLET & FLAX
with SOYBEAN
on bass
Playing the Blue Crab Festival in Palatka, Fl on Sunday, May 25th at 1:00
I have been writing and playing music since I was fourteen, over the years touring from Key West to New Orleans playing the Blues under the name, Lightnin' Harpo. An album representing my first twenty years of recording, Rudy Young, Boogie & Ballads, (19 songs) is available for $10.00 at CDBABY.COM At the site you can listen to samplings.
http://cdbaby.com/cd/youngrudy

The song WILLIE was written about four days I spent in the Putnam County Jail back in the seventies.Willie was my cellmate, in his sixties, an alcoholic who got drunk and shot his wife on Christmas Eve. The second verse is about a man man doing time for a holdup he and his buddies pulled off, but the store manager could only remember bandit with one arm. The last verse is about the screams that went on all night. This was a county jail; first-time offenders on their way to Raiford. The song was first recorded in my bedroom on a Tascam four-track recorder. I liked the lead so when I recorded it later I built the song around it. Willy is one of the songs to be sampled on the CD BABY site.

I also used Willie and the one-armed bandit as Lonesome's cellmates in my novel, JOOK, a comedy about a young man who leaves home in the mid-forties and hitchhikes across southern Mississippi searching for his elusive girlfriend, Bursitis, while playing his blues in the bars and jooks along the way. Follow our hero from his first ride in a stolen truck, through his months on a chain gang, to finding his legacy on the stage at the Shackshanny Jook., Check it out on my JOOK link with Sample Chapter. For limited time, if you like the sample chapters of my novel, Jook, and want to read the whole book, I'll send you a digital version for free. .

Lightnin’ Harpo was playing the Banana Boat in Gainesville back in the mid-eighties. It was a Food Aid concert and we were on at eight o-clock. At five-till-eight Kristin, our bass player, got stuck in traffic and was late, so I started looking around for someone who could sit in till she got there. I saw the incredible Joe Loper on the floor and asked him if he would play bass? He had played with us before and already knew the songs. "Sure" he said, and we were set. About ten seconds into the first song I could hear Harve (our guitar player) telling the new bass player, “E! The song’s in E!” And then, “That’s a B, etc.” Anyway, it wasn’t Joe, but somebody who looked something like him and who knew NOTHING about playing a bass guitar. You know the saying, "Break a Leg," you don't stop for anything. So we finished the song, Kristin arrived, and we were saved.

Back in high school I was playing lead guitar with a band in Palatka, about fifty miles south of Jacksonville, when between songs a man from the audience comes up and clamped his fingers around my fret board. "Are you playing in Jacksonville?" he asks. I though, hey, great, this guy wants to hire us for a gig in the big city. "No, Sir," I replied. To which he told me, "Then why don't you TURN IT DOWN!"

Some things you never forget.

Lightnin' Harpo Band Poster
PRESS HERE

PHOTO'S of our reunion gig
From where did Rudy derive all this musical talent? This family portrait pretty much explains it all.

Great albums looking for ears
CD BABY

Around 1990, Larry Thompson, Kristin Ford and I formed a trio called Rude Awakening and played for about a year locally. For our gigs, Krsitin (playing bass) would sometimes dress up. One gig she'd be a baseball player, the next she'd dress up like a gypsy; it was just something she did. One particular night at Richenbachers she came dressed as a prostitute, split up the leg dress, stiletto heels, fishnet stockings, the works. Before we started playing, there were two men at the bar who thought she really WAS a prostitute, and, being moralists, were openly rude to her, complaining about the "types" they let in the place. Larry and I knew nothing of this till later, but something very strange happened. When Kristin stepped on stage and picked up her bass, and these men saw that she was part of the band, Kristin overheard one say to the other, "I guess you can't judge a book by looking at the cover."
And then, and I swear this is true; I, who hadn't heard any of this, step to the mike and break into our first song of the night, You Can't Judge A Book By Lookin At The Cover, recorded by Bo Diddly.

The Rude Awakening Band

Rudy, Larry and Kristin at Richenbacker's back in the eighties.