{"id":364312,"date":"2026-06-17T15:18:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T15:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/364312\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T15:18:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T15:18:12","slug":"at-elis-in-oakland-98-year-olds-and-young-blues-fans-keep-the-mojo-workin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/364312\/","title":{"rendered":"At Eli\u2019s in Oakland, 98-Year-Olds and Young Blues Fans Keep the Mojo Workin\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

By now, the audience at Eli\u2019s Mile High Club in Oakland<\/a> knows what to expect from Nat Bolden.<\/p>\n

Bolden will sing from on stage, his face alight with glee, whatever jeweled belt buckle or sequined fedora he may be sporting sparkling under the lights, his tenor croon still smooth at age 98. Meanwhile, his duet partner, Sharon Davis, will sing from a chair on the floor below, no longer up to climbing the stairs to the stage but still plenty able to get the audience, many of whom are some 60 years her junior, swaying with her smoky wail.<\/p>\n

Eli\u2019s has a long and august tradition of the blues<\/a>; Bolden has been singing there for more than 30 years. A poster for one of his 1995 shows still hangs on the wall, beside bills advertising the likes of genre luminaries Etta James, James Brown and B.B. King. Although these days the bar is mostly a punk and metal joint, when owner Matthew Patane took over in 2014, he was determined to honor its blues history.<\/p>\n

\"\"Nat Bolden, 98, performs during the 10 Year Celebration of Blue Monday at Eli\u2019s Mile High Club in Oakland on June 1, 2026.<\/p>\n

At the prompting of artist and longtime regular Margie Turner, Patane started \u201cBlue Mondays,\u201d spotlighting local talent. The now-beloved weekly institution, which turns ten this month, draws an intensely intergenerational and diverse crowd \u2014 sporting cowboy hats, canes, lip rings or locs \u2014 that goes wild without fail when Bolden and Davis perform. Yoshi\u2019s may offer a little more polish, but no club provides the city\u2019s oldest performers an enthusiastic audience, or teaches a new generation the magic of the blues, quite like Eli\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re keeping the blues alive,\u201d Bolden says, \u201cand the blues is keeping me alive.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\u2018The stains are in the same place\u2019\n<\/p>\n

The blues came to Oakland from the Deep South during World War II, along with the wave of Black workers who came to work in the city\u2019s shipyards \u2014 including Bolden. After a few years as a welder, he bought a blues club called the Til Two, rebelling against the ad hoc segregation of 1950s California that he had hoped to leave behind in Arkansas. \u201cI didn\u2019t care what color you was, you came in,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

His fellow Eli\u2019s regular, 91-year-old Clarence Sims, also came to the area seeking an escape from Jim Crow. \u201cThe white fountain, the black fountain, we couldn\u2019t go into the restaurants,\u201d Sims remembers. Growing up in Louisiana, Sims had listened to records on his grandmother\u2019s gramophone, idolizing a performer named Guitar Slim.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis suit was green, his hat was green, the women was screaming, and I thought, \u2018That\u2019s what I want to do,\u2019\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Clarence Sims, better known as Filmore Slim, poses in a backstage room at Eli\u2019s Mile High Club during the 10th anniversary celebration of Blue Monday in Oakland on June 1, 2026.<\/p>\n

Sims, better known as Fillmore Slim, moved to San Francisco and became one of the city\u2019s most visible pimps, participating in what he calls the \u201cfast life.\u201d After five years in prison, he ended up in a halfway house near Eli\u2019s and sat in on his first jam session.<\/p>\n

Local blues enthusiast Eli Thornton had bought the former-dairy-turned-watering-hole not long before and turned it into a music venue. Soon, Sims was performing there regularly; he eventually recorded his first album in the upstairs green room, with musicians tucked into the tiny kitchen and sitting on the toilet.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone there was dressed sharp, partying, and it was always packed,\u201d remembers West Coast Blues Society executive director Ronnie Stewart, who started his own career at Eli\u2019s. Even now, \u201cit ain\u2019t changed much. The stains are in the same place.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"People gather outside Eli\u2019s Mile High Club during the 10th anniversary celebration of Blue Monday in Oakland on June 1, 2026.<\/p>\n

Thornton\u2019s girlfriend shot him inside his own bar in 1979, and eventually musician and regular Troyce Key took over. With the destruction of Seventh Street and blues clubs closing across the city, Key dubbed his bar the \u201cHome of the West Coast Blues.\u201d A 1985 article in the East Bay Express describes a typical night that could be any current Blues Monday, where \u201cyuppies from Berkeley stomp and sway alongside the older black regulars from West and East Oakland.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eli\u2019s was, the article declares, \u201cthe most successfully integrated blues club in America\u2019s most integrated city.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nA cross-generational blues seminar\n<\/p>\n

\u00a0When Patane started Blue Mondays, it was important to Turner that the night include an open jam. \u201cThere are a lot of good players out there, and they don\u2019t get the opportunity to let you know what they can do \u2014 so here they can,\u201d Bolden says. Rotating bands play feature sets, but there\u2019s always a sign-up portion open to all.<\/p>\n

Over time, the jam has accrued devoted regulars. First came the older generation: Bolden, Turner, and Sims; long-time Eli\u2019s patron, Ella Pennewell, who often dedicates a song to her late husband, Julien Vaught of the Flamingos; Earnestine Barze, or Lady E, who learned to sing blues at Eli\u2019s after the murder of her son.<\/p>\n

\"\"Sharon Davis sings from a chair at the edge of the stage during the 10 Year Celebration of Blue Monday at Eli\u2019s Mile High Club on June 1, 2026, in Oakland. Unable to perform on stage, Davis now sings from the audience level while Nat Bolden and other musicians perform behind her.<\/p>\n

Then, gradually, younger musicians joined in. Kameron Jones, 32, learned to play blues at Eli\u2019s on a saxophone gifted to him by a musician he met there. He calls Eli\u2019s a \u201cblues nursery,\u201d a rare opportunity to get on stage and learn by doing. Bolden, for example, gave Jones his first wireless mic so they could more easily perform together.<\/p>\n

Vocalist Muwazu Chisum-Misquitta, 23, has also found a supportive musical home among musicians several decades her senior. Sims in particular has taken to inviting Chisum-Misquitta up to sing backup vocals for him. \u201cI walk in, and it feels like home,\u201d she says. \u201cThere\u2019s so much to learn from everybody; everyone is so willing to share.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the older generation has found a receptive, enthusiastic audience and reassurance that the blues just might live on. Most Mondays by 9 p.m., Eli\u2019s is full \u2014 not just of old timers but also throngs of UC Berkeley students, attracted initially to the free night of music and then drawn in by the palpable warmth on stage.<\/p>\n

\u201cThem young kids love the blues, man,\u201d Sims says. \u201cI was really flabbergasted by them young kids playing the guitar and dancing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"A marquee listing upcoming Monday night blues performers hangs inside Eli\u2019s Mile High Club during the venue\u2019s Blue Monday 10th anniversary celebration in Oakland on June 1, 2026.<\/p>\n

In that way, Eli\u2019s blues night has become a source of communal care, providing encouragement and support for young musicians and dignity and camaraderie for older ones. In between those two groups is T Patrick Farmer, a \u201cseventies baby\u201d who serves as the unofficial hype man of Blue Mondays and a bridge between generations. He sees it as his job to facilitate intergenerational understanding through the language of music, encouraging the young crowd to dance harder and keep their energy up when an old-timer performs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m telling the crowd, \u2018Jump, jump,\u2019 and there\u2019s a connection there,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\"\"Owner and operator Matthew Patane, center, holds a community meeting at Eli\u2019s Mile High Club on Wednesday, March 5, 2025. <\/p>\n

Eli\u2019s took a hit during Covid lockdown and continues to struggle. Tangles with a neighbor and Oakland bureaucratic red tape made things worse, culminating in the city shutting down the bar\u2019s back patio last year. (Efforts to find a solution with the neighbor and city are ongoing.)<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a challenging time: a lot of small venues are in our situation \u2014 fighting to stay alive,\u201d Patane says. Meanwhile, every Monday is still reserved for the blues, music that is endlessly expressive and cathartic.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt tells a story, and people live that story every day,\u201d Bolden says of what makes the blues tradition worth fighting for. \u201cThey work hard, they have trouble at home, they love a person and don\u2019t have that love returned \u2014 all that is blues.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a cause worth the weekly drive to and from Stockton, he adds.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy legs can be hurting. But then they start up a beat up there, and they quit hurting, and I get up and dance.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By now, the audience at Eli\u2019s Mile High Club in Oakland knows what to expect from Nat Bolden.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":364313,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144],"class_list":["post-364312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}