Consider Lee Atwater, politico. Atwater was also a musician. He briefly played backup guitar for Percy Sledge during the 1960s and frequently played with bluesmen such as B.B. King. Atwater recorded an album with King and others on Curb Records in 1990 entitled Red Hot & Blue. He once sat in with Paul Shaffer and his band on Late Night with David Letterman.
As a teenager in Columbia, South Carolina, Atwater played guitar in a rock band, The Upsetters Revue. His special love was R&B music. Even at the height of his political power he would often play concerts in clubs and church basements, solo or with B.B. King, in the Washington, D.C. area. He released an album called Red, Hot And Blue on Curb Records, featuring Carla Thomas, Isaac Hayes, Sam Moore, Chuck Jackson, and B.B. King, who got co-billing with Atwater. Robert Hilburn wrote about the album in the April 5, 1990 issue of the Los Angeles Times: "The most entertaining thing about this ensemble salute to spicy Memphis-style '50s and '60s R&B is the way it lets you surprise your friends. Play a selection such as 'Knock on Wood' or 'Bad Boy' for someone without identifying the singer, then watch their eyes bulge when you reveal that it's the national chairman of the Republican Party…Lee Atwater."
The new PBS Frontline edition titled boogie man: the Lee Atwater Story paints him as a guy like Robert Johnson, a man who sold his soul to the devil. And if it is to be believed, I would say that he lived the blues too.
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