Bob Hite

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Bob "The Bear" Hite (1974)

Bob "The Bear" Hite (born February 26, 1943 in Torrance , Los Angeles , California as Robert Ernest Hite , † April 5, 1981 in Venice , Los Angeles, California) was an American singer and founding member of Canned Heat .

biography

Bob Hite (left) with Canned Heat (1979)

Bob Hite was born into a musical family. His mother was a singer and his father played in a band in Pennsylvania . At the age of nine, he began collecting every record from jukeboxes that he could get. Because of this passion for collecting, he later opened his own record shop and published the collector's journal Rhythm & Blues Collector . In 1973 his collection reached over 70,000 records. He is said to have often bought all copies of a record in record stores and destroyed all but one copy in order to increase the value of his collection. After his death in 1981 the collection was broken up, but he had already had to sell large parts of it due to financial problems. Fito de la Parra and Walter De Paduwa own a large part of his collection today . In 2007, in cooperation with Fito, he published some recordings from the collection on the sampler Rarities from the Bob Hite Vaults .

As part of the folk - revival early 1960 he discovered the blues singer Driftin 'Slim again and helped him mid-60s a comeback .

In 1965 he founded the band Canned Heat with Alan Wilson , whom he had met through John Fahey , and Henry Vestine . Hite came up with the name because one of his 1928 records by Tommy Johnson contained a blues song of the same name. At Canned Heat he took over the vocals and occasionally the harmonica . Later, after Wilson's death, he occasionally played his old Gibson Les Paul in performances.

With Canned Heat Hite celebrated his greatest successes and appeared with them at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 and at the Woodstock Festival in 1969 .

In addition to his role as a musician, Hite (co-) produced albums by Canned Heat and other artists. Through his passion for collecting, he met Albert Collins in 1969 and helped him to upgrade his career. Collins then dedicated the single Love Can Be Found Anywhere to him , the name of which comes from the song Fried Hockey Boogie written by Hite .

In 1968 Hite co-produced the album Slim's Got His Thing Going On by Sunnyland Slim , on which he also played a musical role alongside Alan Wilson. As a fee he received a piano, which can be heard on the song Turpentine Moan on the album Boogie With Canned Heat .

In 1970 he produced the album Hooker 'n Heat with Skip Taylor , which Canned Heat recorded with their great idol John Lee Hooker .

He also worked and produced with musicians such as Little Richard , Clarence Gatemouth Brown , Memphis Slim and Ronnie Barron .

After the death of his colleague and band founder Alan Wilson , the group's success deteriorated rapidly and Hite fell into more and more hard drugs.

death

On April 5, 1981, Canned Heat played at the Palomino Club in Los Angeles with Henry Vestine, among others, a very good gig according to their drummer Fito de la Parra, which at that time was not a matter of course for the band, as they often changed due to enormous drug problems Occupations experienced many failures. In the break between the two sets, a couple of junkies offered hit heroin , which he immediately inhaled like cocaine . Completely removed from the heroin, Hite was unable to sing the second set. To get him back on his feet, a couple of roadies in the band gave him some cocaine, but that knocked him out completely and the band had to continue playing without him. She didn’t care about him, because she saw something like that with him more often. During the second set, friends took him home where he had a heart attack. When the ambulance finally arrived after a long wait, the singer was able to be reanimated again, but the overweight Hite died a few minutes later.

 His last recording was Hell's just on Down the Line for the Kings of the Boogie album , which was completed without him. In his memory, the former Canned Heat bassist Tony de la Barreda released an album, recorded in 1980 but unreleased at Hite's express request, entitled In Memory of Bob "The Bear" Hite - Don't forget to Boogie . - So far he had ended every concert with the words “Don't forget to boogie!”.

Trivia

  • There are two statements about the origin of his nickname:
    • PJ Proby nicknamed him "The Bear" during a performance because of his tall, massive body and long hair and beard.
    • While shooting the television series Playboy After Dark by Hugh Hefner , Lindsay Wagner , who was sitting on Hite's lap, was asked by Hefner what animal Hite would look like. She also compared him to a bear.
  • Variety magazine described Hite in the December 1967 issue as "one of the rare species floating around (and that he does) who shows the promise of being singled out in this new crop of bands as a top performer."
  • Hite ended every concert with the sentence: "Don't forget to boogie!"

Discography

With canned heat

With other musicians

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Canned Head Homepage ( Memento of the original from November 20, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.cannedheatmusic.com
  2. ↑ Stephen Rowland on the record collector Bob Hite

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Hite, Bob
ALTERNATIVE NAMES The Bear (nickname); Hite, Robert Ernest (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American singer and founding member of Canned Heat
DATE OF BIRTH February 26, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Torrance , Los Angeles , California
DATE OF DEATH April 5th 1981
Place of death Venice , Los Angeles, California