OAKLAND - One night in 1978, passion and jealousy erupted at Eli's Mile High Club in West Oakland.

The owner's mistress, a blues singer, walked in and shot her man, Eli Thornton, dead while he was tending bar in the Depression-era building.

So the tale goes about Eli's, one of the city's last blues joints, which closed its doors May 1 — again.

Although the club is probably destined to reopen, blues probably won't be high on the menu, if it is featured at all.

Eli's has been many things to many people since Thornton opened the club in 1974. To survive in recent years, Eli's has had more makeovers than Oprah Winfrey — going from blues to indie rock and back to blues again.

But blues was the soul of Eli's and of the city, ever since songwriter and producer Bob Geddins put West Coast blues on the map with Oakland as the bull's-eye.

In those days there were plenty of hard times to sing about and plenty of clubs to do it in. Most had enough room for a few tables, a bar, a parquet dance floor and about two dozen people.

Eli's was one of the larger venues, and drew a very mixed crowd. It was sort of classy.

Things went downhill in 1992, after the death of Troyce Key, the bluesman who took over a few years after Thornton was killed.

Blues just wasn't drawing crowds anymore and the city was in a sorry state. Eli's hung in there but the club was on the auction block again and again and again — seven times between 2000

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and 2005, when Sam Marshall shelled out $50,000 for the place and decided to turn it back into a blues citadel.

Marshall never dreamed he would one day run the club he visited as a young cat coming up in the East Bay in the 1970s and 80s.

Well, he didn't for long. When the building's owners, real estate developers Mike McDonald and Ron Kriss, asked Marshall to pay full rent again after several years of discounts, he decided enough was enough.

Accounts of the situation differ (I'll get back to that in a minute). What's clear: The rent started out at $3,500 but the landlords lowered it to $1,750 at Marshall's request because business was tough.

The location — 3629 Martin Luther King Jr. Way — is residential and "people just don't come," Marshall said. And the patrons who did pack in to celebrate the return of the club's blues roots were older and didn't buy many drinks, he added.

As any bar owner will tell you, the money is in the drinks. So, Marshall scaled back the hours and opened the stage up to all bands with a following. He also introduced weekly karaoke night, Sunday blues jam sessions and a second Saturdays lesbian night. "Burning Bush" night was the main money-maker that kept the club going, according to Marshall.

He was beginning to see the light at the end of the business tunnel after nearly three years. Still, the profits — tops was $9,000 — were soaked up by the rent, utilities and taxes.

Marshall said he didn't get into the business to make money -- a good thing, he added, because he lost $122,000, not to mention a lot of sleep.

Marshall said running Eli's plus working a full-time job and playing in a band eventually took its toll on him.

The same goes for his bartender, Laura Jans, a bank employee by day and favorite of the club's patrons by night.

Mike McDonald, who bought Eli's in 2002 and tried running it for several years, said he and Kriss couldn't subsidize the rent any longer. That is why they approached Marshall about paying more or finding someone who could run the business full time and afford the costs.

Marshall saw the request as a rent hike, which McDonald disputed, saying Marshall opted out in a hurry because he was burned out. Oh, boy.

Both men, however, agree that Eli's will open again.

"It's just a matter of when," McDonald said, adding that several parties are "dying to take over."

Marshall said the offers so far are too low. The plans included an exotic restaurant and live punk music venue. McDonald said the offers were just openers and that other plans included a high-end lounge or just keeping the club the way it is.

"Eli's could be open tomorrow," McDonald said. "It seems to want to survive. How can you deny it?"

With all the bad blood being pumped into the situation, maybe the words from a Jimmy McCracklin song are appropriate: "Baby, tell me why you done treat me this way."

That's all for now, ladies and gentlemen. But if you have a cool shindig, e-mail me at awoodall@bayareanewsgroup.com or visit the Night Owl blog www.ibabuzz.com/nightowl for more events and oddities.