"Philadelphia" Jerry Ricks 1940-2007
by Craig Sonnenfeld, published in Sing Out! The Folk Magazine, Spring 2008

The world of American traditional and acoustic blues music lost a master of these genres with the passing of "Philadelphia" Jerry Ricks on December 10th, 2007, in Zagreb, Croatia. Mr. Ricks succumbed after an illness of several months following surgeries for the removal of a non-malignant brain tumor and subsequent infections. He was a virtuoso guitarist and a singer who learned his craft from just about every rural blues musician who graced a stage or recorded during the folk music boom of the mid 1960s. He possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of country blues songs and finger-picking guitar stylings..

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on May 22, 1940, Jerry played the trumpet as a child, but later switched to the guitar after listening to local street musicians. He worked as a dishwasher and then a booking-agent and host at Philly's Second Fret Coffeehouse during the late-1950s and early-'60s. Many legends of the folk scene appeared at the Second Fret, and Jerry learned from and played with the best of them, including Lonnie Johnson, Mississippi John Hurt, Skip James, Brownie McGhee and Rev. Gary Davis.

Jerry was known as one of the top guitar teachers in the greater Philadelphia area during the mid- to late-1960s. He taught countless students in his center-city apartment (including this writer), and his home was often a meeting place for musicians appearing in the area. He passed on his knowledge of country blues songs to a generation hungry to get in touch with the American roots music that they had been listening to on reissued recordings.

Between 1970 and 1990, Jerry lived in Europe and was well-known there for his radio and television appearances, recordings and performances at jazz and blues festivals. He returned to the United States in the early 1990s, and lived with his wife Nancy Klein in Mississippi, Philadelphia and on the New Jersey shore. He recorded two fine compact discs of acoustic blues for Rooster Records, Deep in the Well (1997) and Many Miles of Blues (2000). Both recordings were nominated for several W. C. Handy awards.

Jerry returned to the life of an itinerant blues musician in the late 1990s. At a 1998 performance that I had the pleasure of attending at the House of Blues in Cambridge, it seemed as though he had morphed musically into a well-blended mixture of all of the blues idols he had known and played with during the 1960s. He would give a rendition of John Hurt's "Avalon" followed by Furry Lewis's "I Will Turn Your Money Green," and then go on to speak about and perform the music of Robert Johnson, Georgia Tom, Big Bill Broonzy and other greats.

During the last few years, Jerry returned to live in Europe where he toured Russia, Austria, Turkey and Hungary, and Croatia. A benefit concert took place at the Commodore Barry Club in Philadelphia in October 2007 to raise money for his medical expenses. David Bromberg, Shemekia Copeland and many others performed. Unfortunately, he passed away six weeks later.

On a personal note, Jerry Ricks was like a big-brother and mentor to me, as well as my guitar teacher during the late 1960s. I was a confused teen at the time, and Jerry would encourage me to try to get along with my parents and to stay in school. I would often see people like Doc Watson or Jesse Fuller sitting in his living room. Jerry and I would walk around Rittenhouse Square in Philly after a guitar lesson on Saturdays and discuss music and politics.

Jerry wrote me many e-mails from Europe in recent years which I have printed out and preserved in a scrap-book. I'll always be indebted to him for his generosity and his musical influence. I know that he touched the lives of many others in the same manner.

CS - 2008