LIVE
Waterfront Blues Festival
Portland OR
2013-07-04
In many ways, Walker’s story is unusual. Born in San Francisco, he was part of the Bay area blues scene in his early teens and by the time he was 16 had soaked up the sounds of artists like T-Bone Walker, Amos Milburn and boogie-woogie pioneers Meade Lux Lewis and Pete Johnson. As he grew up, he found himself on stage with “tutors” like John Lee Hooker, Thelonius Monk, the Soul Stirrers, Steve Miller and Jimi Hendrix. And by the time he was 19 he had built a close friendship they were roommates for many years with Mike Bloomfield, legendary late guitarist for the Paul Butterfield Band.
Bloomfield’s tragic early death persuaded the young Walker to change his life. He enrolled at San Francisco State University, earning music and English degrees and performing regularly with a gospel group, The Spiritual Corinthians. In 1985, he came back to the blues, fronting a new band he called The Bosstalkers, and made the first of five albums for the HighTone label, before signing to PolyGram’s Verve/Gitanes label, for whom he recorded another six albums.
The concerts from this festival are always great stuff!
1 comment:
Thanks for this one.
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