Picture a European blues festival in the 1990s where a man in his late 60s marches out in a glowing neon wig and pounds the piano like a teenager with something to prove. That was Robert Purcell Ferguson, better known as H-Bomb Ferguson, born May 9, 1929 in Charleston County, South Carolina, the 11th of 12 children of a strict Baptist preacher. His father paid for piano lessons on the condition he play only sacred music, so young Robert waited until the congregation filed outside after Sunday services and snuck back to the church piano to practice forbidden blues rhythms.

This deep dive follows him from a teenage tour with Joe Liggins and the Honeydrippers to Harlem gigs as The Cobra Kid, his 1950 recordings for Derby Records, and the atomic-age nickname bestowed by manager and drummer Jack the Bear Parker. It covers his Savoy Records era alongside the Wynonie Harris shouting tradition, the regional hit Good Lovin, tours on the Chitlin Circuit with Ruth Brown, Clarence Gatemouth Brown, and comedian Redd Foxx, his 1957 move to Cincinnati to form H-Bomb Ferguson and His Mad Lads on Federal Records, his 1970s retirement, and his wig-fueled European comeback that produced the 1989 LP Bad Times Blues and his first full studio album, Wiggin Out, in 1993 for Earwig Music.

• How post-war economics shrank big bands into loud, fast jump blues combos
• Why the H-Bomb nickname was earned by the sheer physical force of a blues shouter competing with horns and drums
• What touring with Redd Foxx taught Ferguson about working a room with jokes and stage banter
• How leading from the piano bench changed his sound on tracks like Mary Little Mary and Midnight Ramblin Tonight
• The European blues revival that gave forgotten American pioneers a second act, and the compilation Big City Blues 1951 to 54 plus the documentary The Life and Times of H-Bomb Ferguson