Joe Louis Walker
Issue #218 LIVING BLUES #218 • APRIL 2012 Vol. 43, #2 ® © JOE LOUIS WA JOE LOUIS L KER - LEE GATES - KER - LEE GATES WALKER K IRK F L ETCHER - R LEE GATES OSCOE C HENIER - PAU KIRK L RISHE FLETCHER LL - 2012 B L UES FESTIVA ROSCOE L GUIDE CHENIER $6.95 US $6.95 CAN www.livingblues.com 2012 Festival Guide Inside! Joseph A. Rosen Rhythm andBluesCruise,Rhythm October 2007. onthe Legendary Joe LouisWalker In 1985, after a decade of playing and singing nothing but gospel music with a quartet called the Spiritual Corinthians, 35-year-old Joe Louis Walker decided to get back to the blues. The San Francisco–born singer-guitarist had begun playing blues when he was 14, at first with a band of relatives and then with blues-singing pimp Fillmore Slim before becoming a fixture at the Matrix, the city’s preeminent rock club during the psychedelic Summer of Love, backing such visiting artists as Earl Hooker and Magic Sam. Michael Bloomfield became a close friend and mentor. The two musicians lived together for a period, and the famous guitarist even produced a Walker demo for Buddah Records, though nothing came of it. Then, in 1975, Walker walked away from the blues completely in order to escape the fast life and the drugs and alcohol associated with it that he saw negatively affecting Bloomfield and other musician friends. Walker knew nothing about the blues business when he started doing blues gigs again around the Bay Area with a band he’d put together, as a member of Oakland blues singer-guitarist Haskell “Cool Papa” Sadler’s band, and (for a tour of Europe) with the ad hoc Mississippi Delta Blues Band.
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