Harold Yeagy Jr.

(Aug. 10, 1957-Nov. 19, 2020). Harold (Hal) Yeagy Jr. was born in Indianapolis, the son of Harold Raymond Yeagy Sr. and Lorean Yeagy, who bought the Slippery Noodle Inn in 1963. Yeagy Jr. attended Cathedral High School and Purdue University. He worked at Eli Lilly and Company on the janitorial staff but soon acquired an entry-level position working in the computer room. Upon his father’s death in 1985, he left Eli Lilly to operate the Slippery Noodle full-time.

Yeagy Jr. recast the one-room lunch counter with two employees to a multi-building, nationally known blues club with live music featured on two stages seven nights a week. He bolstered the venue’s reputation as a blues music spot by adopting the fictional Blues Brothers, Jake and Elwood Blues, from the eponymous film as unofficial mascots.

In the 1990s, Yeagy Jr. started his own music label, Slippery Noodle Sound, which issued two albums by blues vocalist-guitarist Gene Deer who had performed more than 1,000 shows at the Slippery Noodle since 1985. The music label also issued a studio recording by Indianapolis blues mandolin artist James (Yank) Rachell.

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