-While driving around New Orleans yesterday, I heard the news about Eddie on WWOZ. Wow, that hurts. Eddie was a great man and great musician. He influenced me greatly and it was an honor and privilege to know him.Below is the obituary by Keith Spera of the New Orleans Times Picayune:

Singer, pianist, producer Eddie Bo
Saturday, March 21, 2009
By Keith Spera
Eddie Bo, a potent, eclectic New Orleans pianist, singer, songwriter
and producer who inspired a dance craze with his 1962 hit "Check Mr.
Popeye" and later directed fans to "Check Your Bucket," died Wednesday
of a heart attack. He was 79.
A prolific artist, Mr.Bo adroitly distilled a rousing excitable
synthesis of rock 'n' roll, rhythm and blues, jazz and funk
Born Edwin Joseph Bocage, Mr. Bo grew up in Algiers and the 9th Ward.
He was heavily influenced by the piano style of Professor Longhair; he
also gravitated to the jazz phrasing of George Shearing, Oscar
Peterson and Art Tatum.
After graduating from Booker T.Washington High School, he served in
the Army.Upon his return to New Orleans, he studied arranging and
composing at the Grunewald School of Music, a training ground for
scores of professional musicians.
He fronted various bands and wrote and released singles for the Ace,
Ric, Apollo and Chess labels. In addition to "Check Mr.Popeye," his
hits included 1969's "Hook and Sling," which reached No.13 on
Billboard's R&B chart.
Other artists fared well with his songs. Little Richard adapted Mr.
Bo's "I'm Wise" as "Slippin' and Slidin." Etta James scored a 1959 hit
with his "Dearest Darling." He is credited with writing Oliver
Morgan's signature "Who Shot the La La." In 1975, Mr.Bo semiretired
from music and left New Orleans after the failure of both his marriage
and a North Rampart Street club, El Grande, in which he had invested
heavily.
Neither his retirement nor exile were permanent.By 1989 he was back
in New Orleans following seven years in Miami, where he studied at the
Yahweh Institute.The institute, he said, "teaches men that we should
seek love and distribute love, and seek to be moral." It was around
that time that Mr. Bo started wearing a turban-like diadem on his head.
By the early 1990s, he was touring Japan and Europe, appearing on
albums with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and George Porter Jr., and
holding down an evening solo piano gig at Margaritaville.A German
label issued his funk album "Shoot From the Root" in 1996.In 1998, he
released "Nine Yards of Funk" on his own label.
He also busied himself with nonmusical pursuits.He briefly operated a
club, the Check Your Bucket Café, and ran a health food store with his
sisters.
In 1999, an electrical fire destroyed the Tulane Avenue building that
housed the store. Mr. Bo also lived in the building.The fire claimed
his two keyboards, along with master tapes of unreleased and
previously released recordings, musical charts he had painstakingly
written over the years, and a collection of his own classic 45s.
Scores of musicians volunteered to perform at a benefit concert after
the fire."It gives me a deep, deep feeling of not really knowing how
people care, until you have to experience something like this," he said