Remembering Macon music legend Bo Ponder

The last time I spoke to Bo Ponder face-to-face for any length of time was a couple of years ago on his front stoop.

Unfortunately, that will be the last.

Ponder, 77, died Saturday of natural causes and people across Macon are feeling it.

As a kid, a soulful Ponder wowed audiences in Macon’s Tybee/Greenwood Bottom neighborhoods at dances, The Roxy Theatre and the occasional juke joint. At The Douglass Theatre, he won silver dollars as talent show prize money. At 16, his audience grew when he replaced Otis Redding as vocalist in Johnny Jenkins’ Pinetoppers band, taking over during the practice Redding resigned to head out for the big time.

“My uncle played bass for Jenkins and I followed him around to juke joints and other places,” Ponder told me once for a piece for Macon Magazine. “The night Otis left he handed the mic to Oscar Mack and Oscar Mack handed it to me.”

Karla Redding-Andrews, Otis Redding’s daughter and vice president/executive director of the Otis Redding Foundation, told me Ponder always admired her father. You can hear it in his voice and when he belted out “Try a Little Tenderness.”

Years after, Ponder’s band played Redding’s hits as part of a memorial event in Madison, Wisconsin, near where Redding died in a plane crash.

But Ponder was his own man with his own soulful rhythm and blues voice. In 2010, his birthday (Aug. 29) was officially declared Bo Ponder Day in Macon with a special show that’s carried on. Ponder earned the admiration of those in the know around Macon’s music scene and those who heard him even in his last few months. He recently still performed at places like Grant’s Lounge, the Cherry Blossom Festival, the annual Skydog Festival and plenty of parties, weddings and such.

Just in March, Ponder performed at Susannah Maddux’s 40th birthday celebration. She’s owner-publisher of Macon Magazine and knows the town’s music.

“It was such an education for so many who maybe had heard his name but never experienced his music,” she said. “There was an energy and soul in Bo that many had never felt, a soul he carried from his generation through many generations with his songs and stories. He carried the stage and the space and blew everyone away.”

There is no lack of accolades for Ponder.

“Bo was a Macon treasure for sure,” said Jessica Walden, the president and CEO of the Greater Macon Chamber of Commerce who has rich Walden-family musical roots in Macon through her father, Alan Walden, and uncle, Phil Walden of Capricorn Records and other endeavors. “He participated and played a part in that era’s music, though he didn’t break through with big mainstream success as some did. But he was a consummate performer and professional. Anyone will tell you that. He always put on an incredible, mesmerizing show. There was never a bad Bo Ponder show.”

Walden also said Ponder was generous with advice for young musicians, something invaluable to Macon’s rising musical community.

Along with her husband, Jamie Weatherford, Walden founded Rock Candy Tours with its music history tours around town. They’re both Grade-A Macon music history buffs.

“Bo certainly has his place in our history and wider place in music in general,” Weatherford said. “We’ve lost some of Macon’s music authenticity when we lost Bo. He had that authenticity and a musical authority about him. Macon continues to grow musically, and Bo loved that, but we have to respect our past and that’s not hard with someone like him who was talented and warm and friendly. He was the same kindhearted soul on and off stage.”

Lisa Love knows Macon music inside and out. She was involved with the Georgia Music Hall of Fame and now, among other things, does the 11 a.m.-1 p.m. “Grits Ain’t Groceries Show” on 100.9-FM The Creek. It’s a largely Georgia-centric show filled with new and vintage blues, soul and country songs with dashes of music history.

“Bo Ponder carried the torch for soul music in Macon his entire life,” she said. “He was a humble man, a natural talent who knew how to connect with an audience.”

Love further made that point with a story showing his ability to stretch the meaning of heart and soul beyond musical terms.

“His band was booked for a luncheon concert at the Georgia Music Hall of Fame on Sept. 11, 2001, that tragic day,” she said. “We were in shock and had no idea just what we should do in response but Bo and I talked and decided we would go forward so the community would have a place to gather and, from there, we’d just see what happened. People did gather and it was so solemn with everyone feeling the day’s shock and pain. Bo led his band on stage and played Marvin Gaye’s poignant “What’s Goin’ On” with amazing dignity and grace. It was exactly the right sentiment at the right time and Bo Ponder helped everyone make it through that awful day.”

Aside from constant performing, Ponder’s first recording was a song called “Dr. Strangelove” in 1969. Producer Eugene Davis brought Ponder to his Detroit studio to make it. He released it regionally on his Crow label but gave it to Phil Walden to release on the Capricorn label and be distributed more widely through Atlantic Records. Ponder’s last single was “Midnight Lady,” released just before the COVID pandemic, which prevented a supporting tour.

Though growing up in Macon and remaining here, he never performed with fellow Macon native Little Richard Penniman until 1996 at the opening of the Georgia Music Hall of Fame. 

Ponder was blind due to Glaucoma for nearly the last half-dozen years of his life ,and though he said it was a day-to-day hindrance, it never hampered his music. “I don’t sing with my eyes, now do I?” he told me.

Asked about a highlight of his long, 60-plus year career, he couldn’t answer, saying every bit had been a highlight and that he was thankful for all of it and everything he’s had. 

“I’ve been blessed to be out there with top musicians like Jackie Wilson and Tyrone Davis and then there are all the people right here in Macon,” he said. “I was happy to be singing and every moment was a highlight.”

He did say opening for Little Richard was a treat, though.

Johnny “Mo” Mollica, local artist and producer of the annual All Blues Music and Arts Revival, has been booking Ponder in the area recently years and said he was caught off guard by Ponder’s death. 

“Good gigs were lining up,” he said. “And man, Ponder was such a beautiful human being. He just got the job done. He was unique in so many ways, even at his age.”

Talking to Macon bluesman Robert Lee Coleman a while back, Ponder came up. Ponder and Coleman are contemporaries both being of the same generation with Coleman playing guitar and touring with some of the very best of the day.

“I’ve been playing with Bo, we’ve both been playing, for a long time,” he said. “He’s an amazing singer and sings anything he wants to sing. Bo Ponder has been one of the best there ever has been around Macon.”

Contact writer Michael W. Pannell at mwpannell@gmail.com and follow him on Instagram @michael_w_pannell.