Courthouse Blues: Oakland Jury Official Croons Torch Songs by Night

OAKLAND — Zakiya Hooker loves to wear stiletto heels. At 55, she’s not too shy to admit that she likes "hoochy" clothes, too. But that’s all for the stage, from where she peforms her bluesy ballads in nightclubs throughout the East Bay.

At work in the Alameda County Superior Court on Fallon Street, she is Zakiya Hooker-Bell, the jury department’s court manager who runs a "well-oiled machine," according to employees.

"Real musicians have day jobs," Hooker-Bell said during a Friday morning interview in her office, pointing to a bumper sticker on her mini-fridge that says just that.

"Real musicians have day jobs," Hooker-Bell said during a Friday morning interview in her office, pointing to a bumper sticker on her mini-fridge that says just that.

She’s wearing a beige sweater jacket over a conservative yellow shirt and tortoise-shell glasses dangle from her neck. Behind her cluttered desk hangs a framed promotional poster for her album Another Generation of Blues along with a color photograph of her father, the late blues master John Lee Hooker.

Hooker-Bell seems surprised that fans are surprised to find out that she has a "regular day job." She takes her fame in stride, noting that all the material success is "very fleeting."

"I make enough in music that I don’t have to be here, but I like what I do," she said with a shrug.

A longtime Oakland resident, Hooker-Bell began working at the superior court 18 years ago. She only started singing professionaly when she was 42, with encouragement and guidance from her second husband, musician Ollan Christopher.

Hooker-Bell said people often misjudge jury duty, that it’s not the dull waste of time it’s often made out to be. She’s met people who fall in love while serving and later marry, and most of the time, people leave with lifelong friendships, she said.

She’s also heard all the excuses people use to avoid a court summons. She recounts the story of one man who called to say that the person on the summons, himself, was dead.

"Just when you think you’ve heard it all, somebody else comes along," she said laughing at the memory. "People are so wild."

When she first arrived at the courthouse, Hooker-Bell, who had been thinking of changing her name for many years, borrowed a book on African names from retired Judge Henry Ramsey. She dropped her given name Vera Lee for Zakiya, which means intelligent in Kiswahili.

"A name has to fit you, you have to belong to it," she said. "I hear a ring with Zakiya, it’s a musical thing to me."

Her meeting with Ramsey, like most other events in her life, she attributes to fate. She smiles easily and often, showing off a row of braces on her upper teeth.

Aside from singing, she also loves science fiction, hardly containing her glee over the upcoming Star Trek film release.

"People don’t realize I’m a dork," she said, laughing again.

She’s used to answering questions about growing up with a famous father, so much so that her answers sound rehearsed.

"I didn’t look at my father as famous," she said. "I looked at it as if music was his job."

Losing her father in June, she said, was a "cakewalk" compared to the loss of her son, who died in 1991 after a car accident. She has two other grown sons, whom she calls everyday.

Jim Tallion, a jury services support assistant who attends most of her shows, said she is a "different person" on stage, adding that "she sings from the soul."

"In my 22 years working, she’s probably one of the best supervisors I’ve had," he said.

Hooker-Bell said contrary to what most of her friends think, she’s not always happy. Music, however, gives her back the energy that allows her to do a "good job" at work and she takes simple pleasure just from singing, she said.

"I look at every day as a blessing," she said. "I wake up in the morning, and that’s reason enough to smile.