shows up a few minutes late for an appointment in West Oakland — and, of course, a friend immediately lets him hear about it.
“Terrible” Tom Bowden“What are you talking about?” Bowden counters. “I’ve been here since ’38 — 1938.”
And during that time, Bowden, 86, has become nothing short of a legend in the area: a immensely talented bluesman who draws comparisons to Otis Redding and has traveled in the same company as Aretha Franklin, B.B. King and many other iconic performers; an old-school tough guy who duked it out with a heavyweight champion and lived to tell about it; and a rough-and-tumble, larger-than-life character whose story includes stints in prison, drug addiction and, eventually, salvation.
And it’s highly likely that he’s the only person on the planet who can claim to have worked as a minister, a pimp and a bodyguard for one of the greatest stars in music history.
“I was Stevie Wonder’s bodyguard for a minute,” Bowden says.
