FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1997. All Rights Reserved.
Damn right, he's got the blues legends
Guitarist assembles all-star lineup for stellar new albumJoe Louis Walker
Saturday, November 22
King Edward HotelTo call the lineup of guests on Joe Louis Walker's latest disc for Verve Records - Great Guitars - a dream team of blues musicians is an understatement: Otis Rush, Buddy Guy, Bonnie Raitt, Clarence Gatemouth Brown, The Tower of Power Horns, Ike Turner... you need more? Okay, how 'bout Taj Mahal, Scotty Moore, Robert Lockwood Jr. and Matt "Guitar" Murphy? And if that ain't enough, the album was produced by Booker T and the MG's member and songwriter Steve Cropper.
The result will have axe aficionados, fans of all areas of blues, and music historians salivating.
Walker, an accomplished San Francisco area guitarist already has a handful of critically-acclaimed albums under his belt and background in every blues-based style from gospel to rock. He recorded Great Guitars' 11 songs at a number of locations around the States to accommodate the schedules of the numerous players.
According to the bluesman, the recording process was an educational one not just because of the varying skill levels of the players, but also due to the varied personalities that were involved and the lives they had led.
"Everybody was an experience and had something that was different from the other person," Walker explains from his California home. "Everybody had amazing stories and their own definite way of doing it.
"You end up talking, and people get to know you better and you get to know them better. You just have a whole lot of shared experiences and it makes you both more comfortable."
And while you'd think that with all of those personalities there might be more than one ego clash or temper tantrum to tell of, Walker denies that their were any conflicts. Besides one musician - who he declined to name - asking to be paid more than the others, the recording went surprisingly smoothly. In fact, blues rock megastar Bonnie Raitt even offered to do the album for free.
As Walker explains, that has as much to do with the music as it does with the musicians themselves.
"With blues, because of the kind of music it is, the kind of people you're around, no matter how good you are, there's always somebody better in their own way. There is no Charlie Parker to speak of...," he says.
"I don't think anybody's that great where they can't listen to someone else and say, 'Wow, wish I could do that!'"
Perhaps the most comfortable collaboration for Walker came when he hooked up with the infamous Ike Turner to co-write and record the track "First Degree" in LA. The two hit it off (no pun intended) immediately and cut the track, which also features some superb brass work by Tower of Power Horns, quickly and in one take.
Ike, who Walker says has been clean for several years, also had the best - or, at least, the best repeatable - old time blues tales to tell.
"When he was 16," relates Walker, "he was sneaking out of his mom's window going to play with Robert Nighthawk. One of the first times he was going to get paid they said, 'Robert's at the end of the bar.' So he goes to Robert and says, 'Well, I'd like to get my money.' And Robert says, 'All the money's been drunk up.'
"And later on he's playing with (Howlin') Wolf, not too far after that. He goes down to the end of the bar and Wolf says, 'All the money's been drunk up.' And Ike says, 'Look, I don't drink,' and Wolf says, 'Well, you better start.'"
Asked if he has any of his own good blues stories to relate, Walker, who got spent a great deal of time in the Haight-Ashbury district in the late '60s and early '70s, chuckles, "Yeah, but most of them are sort of X-rated."
Back To Main Contents
Back To This Issue Table of Contents