"If it wasn't for folks like him, blues wouldn't be what it is today. He was doing it first," said Lance Boyd, guitarist for Ferguson's group, the Medicine Men.
Ferguson sang and played piano in a flamboyant style, wearing colorful wigs; he was said to own dozens.
"I want the audience to go crazy and enjoy themselves," he told The Washington Post in 1988. "Heck, if they don't, I will anyway."
His early works were featured in the recent reissue "H-Bomb Ferguson: Big City Blues, 1951-54."
It includes the hit "Good Lovin"' and "Rock H-Bomb Rock," both from 1952. "Rock H-Bomb Rock" also was included last year in the elaborate box set called "Atomic Platters: Cold War Music From the Golden Age of Homeland Security." According to the Web site of Conelrad, the record label, the lyrics go: "I said rock, rock and rock, rock baby rock. ... Tell me, do you feel that rockin' bomb? Oh yeah, let's rock."
It wasn't until 1955 that rock 'n' roll became a mainstream sensation, when Bill Haley and the Comets' version of "Rock Around the Clock" became a hit.
Cincinnati had observed H-Bomb Ferguson Day on Oct. 17, and a documentary directed by John Parker, "Blues Legend: The Life and Times of H-Bomb Ferguson," debuted that day.
Ferguson had quit music in the 1970s but resumed performing in the mid-1980s.
"He wanted to be remembered as a performer who gave it his all every time," said his wife, Christine Ferguson. "His voice was just so magnetic - a very deep voice with a mix of gravel in it."
A native of Charleston, S.C., the 11th of 12 children, Ferguson said his interest in the blues dated back to his childhood.
His father, a Baptist pastor, paid for piano lessons "and wanted me to do religious stuff," he told the Post in 1988. "But after church was over, while the people was all standing outside talking, me and my friends would run back inside and I'd play the blues on the piano."
Survivors include his wife and son, Robbie, and three children from a previous marriage.
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His extroverted antics and multi-colored fright wig might invite the instant dismissal of Cincinnati-based singer Robert "H-Bomb" Ferguson as some sort of comic lightweight. In reality, he's one of the last survivors of the jump blues era whose once-slavish Wynonie Harris imitations have mellowed into a highly distinctive vocal delivery of his own.
Ferguson's dad, a reverend, paid for piano lessons for his son, demanding he stick to sacred melodies on the 88s. Fat chance -- by age 19, Bobby Ferguson was on the road with Joe Liggins & the Honeydrippers. When they hit New York, Ferguson branched off on his own. Comedian Nipsey Russell, then emcee at Harlem's Baby Grand Club, got the singer a gig at the nightspot. Back then, Ferguson was billed as "The Cobra Kid."
Singles for Derby, Atlas, and Prestige preceded a 1951-52 hookup with Savoy Records that produced some of Ferguson's best waxings. Most of them were obvious Harris knockoffs, but eminently swinging ones with top-flight backing (blasting saxists Purvis Henson and Count Hastings were aboard the dates). Drummer Jack "The Bear" Parker, who played on the Savoy dates, allegedly bestowed the singer with his explosive monicker. Other accounts credit Savoy producer Lee Magid with coining H-Bomb's handle; either way, his dynamite vocals fulfilled the billing.
Ferguson eventually made Cincinnati his home, recording for Finch, Big Bang, ARC, and the far more prestigious Federal in 1960. H-Bomb terminated his touring schedule in the early '70s. When he returned from premature retirement, his unique wig-wearing shtick (inspired by Rick James's coiffure) was in full bloom. Backed by his fine young band, the Medicine Men, Ferguson waxed his long-overdue debut album, Wiggin' Out, for Chicago's Earwig logo in 1993. It showed him to be as wild as ever (witness the gloriously sleazy "Meatloaf"), a talented pianist to boot, and more his own man than ever before. ~ Bill Dahl, All Music Guide
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