Bar Memoriam, Volume 10: Etta's Lounge
Etta’s Lounge
5120 Scott
“Open ‘til it closes, seven days a week,” and long a mainstay of Houston’s now-finally really dying blues scene, Etta’s was kind of the training wheels juke-joint. From the 1970s on, this was the first place white people who loved the blues and sought more authenticity than was to be had at the white-run clubs on the West Side would come to.
For decades, Etta’s on Sunday night was home to the Texas Upsetters – a fantastic combo led by volcanic sax-man Grady Gaines, the guy who blew tenor in Little Richard’s band back in the pint-sized Rock and Roll Hall of Famer’s “Good Golly Miss Molly” prime.
Gaines surrendered the jam a few years back, but it continues as more of an open-mike affair today, and it still attracts the same mix of blue-collar African-Americans and curious students from the University of Houston, right up Scott Street. Etta’s doesn’t look like much from the outside, just as a blues bar shouldn’t, and once inside, you’ll find a pool table, a bar, and a jukebox in the main room. Killer ‘cue and catfish sandwiches emerge from a kitchen at your command, and the live music is in the back room. As with most blues bars in the Wards, bring your own liquor to mix with set-ups or drink cheap domestics and don’t complain about them not having some jive-ass Weissbier on draught.