Ten Tucson musicians were inducted into the Tucson Musicians Museum Hall of Fame last month, including the Bad News Blues band, the late Titan Valley Warheads guitarist Earl Edmonson and the two guys who started Tucson’s first record label.
The 10 were inducted during ceremonies held at Hotel Congress on Nov. 19. Inductee Joe Scibilia and his blues band The Coolers, Tirmo Suave and the Bad News Blues performed during the ceremony, which also honored the late Dennis “Papa Ranger” Francis, who ran Twelve Tribes Reggae Shop for more than 30 years before his death in 2022, and Gaslight Theatre founder Tony Terry.
The inductees join more than 170 other musicians whose careers have been celebrated by the Tucson Musicians Museum since the first inductions 16 years ago.
The 2023 inductees are:
Earl Edmonson, second from right, was a member of The Titan Valley Warheads for more than 30 years.
Bluegrass guitarist Earl Edmonson, who won the Telluride Bluegrass Festival fingerpicking contest in 1991 — the same year he joined the Tucson bluegrass band Titan Valley Warheads. For 30 years, Edmonson was a regular fixture on Tucson stages, including the Tucson Folk Festival; he was a founding member of the festival, which held its inaugural event in 1986. It is now one of the longest-running, free folk music festivals in the country. Edmonson died on April 30 at the age of 69.
Nogales, Arizona-raised Travis Edmonson was the definition of troubadour in a career that spanned the 1950s to early 1980s. His friends and colleagues said the folk singer, whose music was deeply inspired by growing up on the border, “lived hard and fast by rules he made and broke ...He cursed like Lenny Bruce, sang like an angel and loved the ladies like Don Juan,” according to his 2009 Arizona Daily Star obituary; he was 76 years old. Edmonson, half of the dynamic 1950s-’60s folk duo Bud & Travis, infused Mexican folk songs and melodies in his music.
There wasn’t a reggae scene when Jamaican native Dennis “Papa Ranger” Francis moved to Tucson in the late 1980s and opened Twelve Tribes Reggae Shop in 1989. He offered reggae albums and merchandise and promoted the reggae culture and music to his new hometown and he brought in reggae artists for shows that quickly caught on with Tucson fans. Papa Ranger ran the shop until the day he died; two of his 18 sons, Jahmar and Jahron, set up a bed in Francis’s central Tucson shop, where he died on Aug. 22, 2022, surrounded by his mementos and a lifetime of reggae memories. He was 66.
Bad News Blues Band was among the 2023 inductees into the Tucson Musicians Museum Hall of Fame.
Mike “Johnny Guitar” Blommer formed the Bad News Blues Band in 1992. They started out in local dive bars and landed on international stages, including opening for legendary blues artists. The band, inducted into the Arizona Blues Hall of Fame, has released eight albums and had radio airplay worldwide, including having its original song “Texas” tapped as the theme song for the NASCAR Texas Cup Series race.
Sunnyside High grad Louie C. Ramirez launched his Tejano band Ritmo Suave with his brothers Santiago and Carlos Ramirez and buddy Manny Guerrero, with whom he’d been part of Group Vida. The band brought country, pop and old-school R&B into the fold, focusing on expert musicianship and a distinctive musical voice. For 37 years, Ritmo Suave played weddings and quinceañeras, birthday parties and anniversaries and rocking New Year’s Eve dances, hosting a rotating cast of musicians over the years.
Bluesman Joe Scibilia has been a fixture on Tucson stages since the early 1980s with bands including Riff Raff, Flathead 6, Rocket J and Woody and the G-Men before forming the King Bees. That band won the inaugural Southern Arizona Blues Challenge in 2006, following up the next year with a trip to Memphis to compete in the International Blues Challenge. A New Jersey native who landed in Tucson in 1980, Scibilia also was a founding member of the Coolers and, over the past couple years, has played as sideman for the Amosphere, Paul Green and Midnight Blue and other Tucson bands.
Harvey Moltz started Rainbow Guitars in an 800-square-foot building on Grant Road in 1975. Today, the showroom and repair shop take up 15,000 square feet at 2550 N. Campbell Ave., where Moltz and his staff have earned kudos and national awards over the past 48 years, including from the National Association of Music Merchants, which named the shop the Best Music Store and Best Guitar Shop. Rainbow also has been a go-to for local musicians when it comes to repairs and buying new gear.
Gaslight Theatre hosts Monday night concerts, including this one with the George Howard Band in July 2020 that was held outside.
Monday nights were always off nights for the cast and crew of Gaslight Theatre‘s series of over-the-top musical melodramas, so founder/owner Tony Terry decided to turn the midtown theater into a concert hall. That was 25 years ago and the number of local bands and musicians that have graced that stage is likely numbering in the hundreds. Terry’s idea was to expose younger generations to live music in a family-friendly setting. Among Gaslight audience favorites are Armen Dertadian and Mickey Greco Trio and Arizona Blues Hall of Famer Lisa Otey. In early 2016, Terry opened Gaslight Music Hall at 13005 N. Oracle Road in Oro Valley, where The Tributaries, The Manhattan Dolls, Mr. Boogie Woogie and the Sons of the Pioneers have performed nearly yearly.
Catalina High School buddies Burt Schneider and Ray Lindstrom founded Zoom Records in 1959 when they were seniors. A month later, they recorded their first record from Jack Wallace and the Hi Tones. It cost them $35 and in a 2015 documentary, they recalled their journey in what could have been Southern Arizona’s first-ever record label.
Guitar maker Bob Mick got his first order from veteran Tucson musician Barney Narcho in 1981, five years after the Benton, Illinois, native moved to Tucson. Since then, he’s built instruments for prominent Tucson musicians, including Brian Bromberg, Ed Friedland, Mike Blommer, Howard Wooten, Brian Dean and Amo Chip Dabney and Robert Thanes.
