Remembering Al Haug

By Ed Felien

Al Haug died Saturday, Feb 2., from prostate and esophageal cancers. He was one of those kind and gentle souls who keep a community together.

Jay Peterson, a local musician now living in Maine, wrote: “I met Al when he was managing, and I use that term with a degree of caution, The Coffeehouse Extempore, in the mid 1970s. He helped guide that fondly remembered West Bank institution during its infancy, and departed for another West Bank landmark next-door, The New Riverside Cafe, a few years later. He’ll be remembered as one who walked the walk, a true believer in the Collective. He was nobody’s boss, and made no distinction between standing at a sink full of dishes and playing music.

He was a worker, and he helped get things done. Whether it was dishing out veggies and rice or cobbling together a battered old sound system for the evening music at the ‘Riv,’ he did his work quietly and frequently without thanks. His spirit of keeping alive forgotten traditions and being the patron of lost causes extended wholeheartedly during his years as a programmer at KFAI. He served up music that might have otherwise gone unheralded and unheard, rescuing musical treasures from yard sales and dusty attics long before the days to come, when instant file sharing made this task much easier. He was fond of poking fun of himself as he put the needle down on ‘another scratchy old ’78,’ and offered up insightful commentary about the old Charlie Poole or Emmett Miller tune he was playing at the time, and won over many a listener who perhaps was unaware that any of this stuff existed. These days, when a 30-something plays an old Gus Cannon tune at the Battle of The Jug Bands, it may very well be because Al introduced it into the musical landscape of the Minneapolis music scene when the performer was still in diapers. Al was a scruffy original, and in many ways one of the last of his kind. He will be missed as a vital part of the West Bank community that has all but disappeared. Fair winds to you, Al. No doubt there is a jug band session in progress right now in the afterlife, and you’re right in there.”

Al got a great sendoff. He was the star in absentia of the 31st Annual Battle of the Jug Bands the next weekend, and the winner of the prized Holliwood Waffle Iron already had the greatest prize on stage with them. His former band, The Howlin’ Goats, had Al’s jug center stage with them. They led the crowd in a rousing chorus of “Al-elujah.”