His Fresno blues jams were groundbreaking. Legendary pianist gets in Hall of Fame

David Alexander Elam is one of the more conflicted characters in the history of Fresno’s blues scene.

He was a well regarded piano player, singer and songwriter, both under his given name and later as Omar Shariff —or Omar the Magnificent to audiences.

Born in Shreveport, Louisiana in 1938, he was considered one of the last players with a direct line to the boogie-woogie style of the 1930 and ’40s and was an integral part of the blues scene that took hold in the Bay Area in the late 1960s and ‘70s. Over the years, he performed alongside any number of blues legends (Buddy Guy, T-Bone Walker, Muddy Waters, Big Mama Thornton, Jimmy Weatherspoon and Albert King) and at iconic venues like Eli’s Mile High Club and the Fillmore West.

By the time Shariff arrived in Fresno in the 1980s, he had two albums under his name (or names) and “was a big gun in the West Coast blues scene,” says Jeff Hallock, a harmonic player who received a musical education (and professional opportunity) playing alongside Shariff at Monday night jam sessions the piano player hosted for nearly a decade.

“It was just spectacular.”

Omar the Magnificent

Last week, the Valley Music Hall of Fame announced Shariff as one of five inductees to its 2025 class.

It was a courageous choice, says Hallock, who nominated the musician for the honor.

A thing to know about Shariff: “He was not always a good person.”

He was bad with women and developed some irrational grudges, Hallock says. In darker days, he said and did things to people who didn’t deserve it. Some of those things were genuinely vile, in Hallock’s estimation.

At the jam nights, he was merciless to performers he thought disrespectful of the music or other the musicians. But there was a magic in his playing and in the education he passed along, Hallock says.

“He taught us all how to run a jam session. And it turns out to be a really hard thing to do.”

Those sessions drew talented players and created among them a community.

Hallock had just started playing harmonic in the 1980s and came into the jams as a kind of an outsider. He met and joined his first band from those nights; musicians he plays with to this day.

And there were also other opportunities to be had. Shariff kept some connections in the blues scene and was known to pull jam session players for his backing band during opening sets when guys like Albert King came through town. “He brought us into close contact with these guys,” Hallock says.

Those jams night also made an iconic venue out of Zapp’s Park, a dive-bar on Blackstone Avenue named for the amusement park that existed on the spot in the early 1900s. (Side note: The 13-acre park had a lake, a Ferris wheel and roller coaster. While the bar known as Zapp’s is now closed, New China Cafe restaurant took its spot. Passersby can look for the giant take-out box on the roof.)

Those Monday night jams continued for years, into the 1990s, even after Shariff left Fresno for Sacramento and then Texas, where he died in 2012 at the age of 72. According to lore, Fresno bluesman John Clifton and his brother Bill started their iconic MoFo Party Band just to play at Zapp’s Park.

2025 Valley Hall of Fame Inductees

The Valley Hall of Fame holds its official induction ceremony in September. The full list of 2025 honorees includes:

Bill “Electric” Church, who came to Fresno in the 1980s at least, in part, because of Van Halen. Church had a more-than successful run playing bass for Van Morrison on the albums “Tupelo Honey” and “Saint Dominic Preview,” before joining the rock band Montrose, alongside a 24-year-old Sammy Hagar. Church was the preferred bass man (both live and in the studio) for the run of Hagar’s solo career until 1985, when the singer joined Van Halen. Church semi-retired to Fresno to be closer to his parents. His son, Trevor, carries on the musical legacy with his metal band Haunt.

Jo Stafford was born in Coalinga in 1917 and started her career at age 12 singing as a trio with her older sisters. In the late 1930s, she was discovered by Tommy Dorsey as a lead singer for his vocal band, The Pied Pipers. Stafford was one of most popular singers of the era, recording more than 800 songs and making numerous appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show. In 1954, she hosted her own short-lived variety show. Its premier episode had a guest spot from Ronald Reagan, according to IMDB.

Pat Wolk remembers sitting on the edge of the stage watching Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie as a child and has been into folk music ever since. In Fresno, she became the go-to concert promoter for the Fresno Folklore Society, which she joined in 1999. She has her own backyard garden venue (the Wolk Garden), where she’s hosted intimate performances from folk music luminaries like Laurie Lewis, John McCutcheon, U. Utah Philips and Holly Near

Augustin Lira, who at 19 years old became a voice for the early Chicano movement with “El Teatro Campesino,” which he co-founded during the Delano grape strike in 1965. The group wrote songs and plays that they would perform on picket lines and at rallies, eventually touring across the U.S. His music was featured in a Smithsonian Folkways release called “Rolas de Aztlan: Songs of the Chicano Movement” in 2005. Two years later, he received a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Past inductees include Grammy Award winner Audra McDonald

This is the fifth class of inductees to the Valley Music Hall of Fame, which started in the late 2010s as a way to honor the vast (though often unnoticed, under-appreciated and sometimes surprising) talent that has come out of the area.

Honorees are chosen by the Hall of Fame’s board from public nominations evaluated based on the connection to the Valley plus “community service, recording status, professional points of interest and public visibility.”

The first class was inducted in 2021 in an online ceremony that aired on CMAC.TV.

Prior inductees into the Valley Music Hall of Fame are:

• Class of 2021: Russel S. Howland, Dr. James. H. Winter, Dick Contino, Audra McDonald and Dave Stogner
• Class of 2022: Gene Bluestein, Ray Camacho, The Fresno Musical Club, Allen and Faye Harkins, and Richard Hagopian
• Class of 2023: Benjamin Boone, Kenny Hall, Redbone, Dr. Juan Serrano and Ann Leonardo Thaxter
• Class of 2024: Evo Bluestein, John Chookasian, John Clifton, Anna Hamre and Marisa Orduño.

Last year, a special Legacy Award was given to Tower District nightclub The Wild Blue.

This story was originally published June 24, 2025 at 1:18 PM.