St. Louis lost a piece of living music history with the passing of “Big” George Brock on Friday, April 10, a month before his 88th birthday.
Brock, a singer and blues harp player, has been a staple of the scene longer than some grandparents have been alive. He made his way to St. Louis from Mississippi just as the Great Migration began to crest.
In the 70 years he called St. Louis home, Brock played a critical role in keeping the rich legacy of the blues alive – and maintaining the integrity of the strong connection between blues music and the city.
He was born into a family of sharecroppers in Grenada, Mississippi on May 16, 1932. Brock’s life reads like the lyrics of a blues classic.
“They [plantation owners] would come out and measure your food out and it had to last the whole month,” Brock said during “Music Moved the Movement: Civil Rights and the Blues,” a televised program. “And you had to make it last. If you didn’t, you had to go out and hustle for yourself, because you didn’t get nothing else.”
Brock said plantation owners monitored every aspect of life for the families who toiled the land.
“The hard part about it is when they (white people who oversaw the plantations) accused you of being out of order,” Brock said, pausing with emotion before telling the story of how a family member was lynched because he refused the advances of a white woman.
“She said you might as well, because if you don’t, I’ll say you did and get you killed anyway,” Brock said.
She kept her word.
His entire family was forced to gaze upon the body as it was dragged behind a black truck.
“They told us, ‘This is what happens when you try to mess with a white woman,” Brock said. “It was terrible bad. I’m only telling you what I know and what I saw.”
One day Brock was sitting in school and “the boss man” came and pulled him out. He took Brock home to his parents.
“The boss told my daddy I was too big to be sitting up in somebody’s schoolhouse,” Brock said. “He said I needed to be out working in the fields.”
That moment marked the end of his formal education. Brock was 8 years old.
It was around this time that Brock’s father taught him to play the harmonica. He kept at it.
His mother used to hold Saturday night fish fries. For fifty cents you could get a glass of water and a fish sandwich.
During these fish fries, a teenaged Brock would entertain in the back yard. A young man from a neighboring plantation joined him in playing for the fish fry guests. That man’s name was Muddy Waters.
The pair played a few fish fries and house parties together around Clarksdale and Mattson.
Growing up in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, Brock saw the most definitive blues men back when they were fish in the limitless pond of talent that the region had to offer.
“The blues grew out of the ground like grass,” Brock said.
He saw B.B. playing for tips in front of a small grocery store. He caught plenty of Howlin’ Wolf’s weekly gives in nearby Walls, Mississippi. And Sonny Boy Williamson played for a captive audience at Brock’s aunt’s home.
After hitting the road with Wolf, Brock arrived in St. Louis in 1950. He started his own band, Big George and the Houserockers, which for a time, included future blues legend Albert King.
At the same time, Brock was also an aspiring boxer. He gave up boxing to pursue music full time.
“The music don’t hit back,” Brock said. “But the people in the ring do.”
By 1952, Brock had opened Club Caravan, a popular nightspot and concert venue that hosted his own band and acts such as Wolf, Waters, Ike and Tina Turner and Jimmy Reed.
A personal tragedy forced him to close the original Club Caravan in 1970 – his first wife was struck and killed by a stray bullet. He reopened Club Caravan at a new location and remained there through the late 1980s.
Brock was nearly 75 when his career as a singer, blues harpist and band leader resurged. He signed with Cat Head Delta Blues & Folk Art, where he released “Club Caravan,” an album named in tribute of his beloved former club, in 2005. The record earned him a “Best Comeback Album” nomination from the Blues Music Awards. “Round Two” came in 2006 and in honor of his 75th birthday, Brock released “Live at 75.”
Dressed to the nines in his signature bold and flashy suits – with shoes shined to the point where one could nearly see their reflection – Brock spent the next dozen years performing throughout the region, from Big Muddy Blues Festival to Better Family Life’s PeaceFest. While sitting in a van with an amp and a mic, he even sang his way down the parade route of the 2018 Annie Malone May Day Parade.
A beloved elder statesman of the St. Louis music scene, Brock was an example of the agelessness and timelessness of St. Louis blues.
He is survived by his wife, Evelyn Riddick and is said to be the father of 42 children.
