Hank Becker, a longtime fixture of the Mobile-area blues scene known for decades of work with his band The Boogie Chillin’, remains hospitalized in intensive care this week battling pneumonia in both lungs and a staph infection, according to a family member.
“He’s still in the ICU,” the family member said in a statement shared this week. “He has chronic lung failure and has been hospitalized with pneumonia in both lungs, and now he’s developed a staph infection. Right now, it’s pretty much a waiting game.”
Becker has performed around the Mobile Bay area for years, building a following with The Boogie Chillin’ and releasing multiple recordings, including a reissue of the band’s “Chillin at Play” that came out in late 2009. Friends and fans have been checking in on his condition as word of the hospitalization spread through the local music community.
A Health Battle Dating Back to 2002
Becker’s current hospitalization echoes a health crisis he first described publicly from 2002, when he was diagnosed with emphysema following a bout of pneumonia. In a first-person account posted to his website, Becker recalled the onset of that earlier illness.
“I was jammin’ on, as I had done all my life: playing eight days a week, making CDs and working with my band, The Boogie Chillin’,” Becker wrote. “Then, all of a sudden in 2002, the wheels fell off my cart. I was having some trouble breathing. I woke up in the hospital after being on a ventilator for a couple of weeks. It looked like curtains for Hank Becker. The doctors told me I had emphysema and complications due to pneumonia.”
Becker wrote that he used the time in the hospital to keep writing music, and that the experience left him with a renewed outlook. “With God’s grace and a bit of good luck, I’ll continue to get stronger,” he wrote. “During my many stays in the hospital, I wrote a lot of new songs. Lately, it seems, I’ve gained a new respect for life and an appreciation for the real things: family, true friends and one’s own contribution to making this world a better place.”
No further details on Becker’s prognosis have been released. His family described the situation as a waiting game as doctors continue treating the pneumonia and infection.