Long John Hunter is a local blues/rock legend in El Paso. For most of his career that began in the late 50s, Hunter was a fixture in the El Paso and Juarez music scene where he is known as the reigning blues king.
John Thurman Hunter Jr. was born in Ringgold, Louisiana and was raised on a farm in Magnolia, Arkansas. By his early 20s he was working in a box factory in Beaumont, Texas where he bought his first guitar after attending a BB King concert and adopted his stage name Long John Hunter in 1953. He was so blown away by King’s performance and crowd reaction that he decided to pick up the guitar. His first single on the Duke record label came out in 1955 called “She Used to Be My Woman” with the b-side “Crazy Girl”.
In 1957 Hunter relocated to El Paso, Texas looking for employment. The very night he stayed in El Paso, he crossed over to Juarez, Mexico and got a gig at the Lobby Club where he found employment playing there for the next 13 years! He worked there 7 nights a week with his band that consisted of former Mexican bartenders. According to Alligator Records website (Hunters current label from Chicago), the band played every night to a mixture of soldiers, tourist, frat boys, hookers, cowboys and playboys all fueled by alcohol, fights and one night stands. His residency at the Lobby Club was legendary. His wild and crazy performances had him playing his guitar with one hand and swinging from the rafters with the other. It was during that time he released his most popular track “El Paso Rock” with the b-side “Midnight Stroll” on the infamous but small Yucca label in 1961.
His early style has a wild rockabilly up-tempo party blues feel with notable influences by blues legend BB King and rock and roll god Chuck Berry. El Paso Rock is mainly an instrumental rock rager with the occasional yelps of “El Paso Rock!” by Hunter. Its raw low-fi recording is very similar to other releases on the Yucca label. The song was famously covered by Juarez band Los Seventeens, but their Spanish version was called the “Juarez Twist”and for a long time was a mystery as who wrote the song originally, until Fusion’s interview with Meny Valtierra (of Los Seventeens) cleared things up. It was originally a Hunter song. The song is a hot and raunchy rave-up of rockabilly blast.
The b-side “Midnight Stroll” is a slower blues track but has all the raunchy heavy blues riffing of Hunter with so much style, it doesn’t even matter that he misses some of the notes he hits on his guitar. The guitar slaying of Hunter on this track it reminds me of a rawer Chuck Berry playing a Fats Domino track with its smooth horn section as the backdrop. It is a low down dirty song with Hunter talking about how his midnight stroll isn’t going to cure his lonely soul; definitely a solid track to compliment this record.
Although he later ventured out of El Paso and became more famous after his departure, his El Paso releases remain his best and most popular. Modern label Norton Records has reissued most of his old recordings from his days on the Yucca label and has given reemergence to his early rugged blues/rock beginnings. You can still hear stories from the older folk in town and comes up in conversation with local record collectors, and you might catch a show when he is in town- last time I heard he makes an appearance at the Kings X on the West side of El Paso from time to time. His importance has been acknowledged, and is now surprisingly more popular outside of El Paso, but the legend of Long John Hunter begins here.