Dec. 20, 2023

Little Walter retrospective

Episode 100 is a retrospective on the greatest ever blues harmonica player, Marion Walter Jacobs, aka Little Walter.
Little Walter was born in 1930, probably, and started playing harmonica age 8. He was busking on the streets of New Orleans by age 12, spent some time in Helena, before heading north to Chicago to make his indelible mark on blues and the harmonica. Little Walter teamed up with Muddy Waters and Jimmy Rogers and cut some classic blues recordings before he went out under his own name after he was launched into superstardom with his instrumental Juke, in 1952. He was riding high in the charts and touring for the next few years, including another number one with My Babe, while still also recording with Muddy Waters.
The arrival of rhythm and blues started to replace the blues as the popular music of the day, which saw Little Walter start to go down slow, but he still made some great recordings and completed two tours of Europe.
He was then taken far too young, at the age of 37, as a result of an injury sustained in a street fight. But he left behind numerous masterpieces in the blues harmonica genre, that have influenced pretty much every player since.

Links:
The Little Walter Foundation:
https://littlewalterfoundation.org/

Billy Boy Arnold interview:
https://www.harmonicahappyhour.com/billy-boy-arnold-interview/

Kim Field website:
https://www.kimfield.com/

Bob Corritore Little Walter photo tribute page:
https://bobcorritore.com/photos/little-walter-photo-tribute/

Videos:
Lonnie Glosson and Wayne Raney:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfXb7OEjVzU

Ora Nelle Blues, first recording:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-E7z56E0DwI

Playing Walter's Jump with Hound Dog Taylor in 1967:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8GWEvIkzGE

Trailer of Blue Midnight Little Walter biography:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtZDbiCEfnM

She’s 19 Years Old bootleg recording with Sam Lay from 1967:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9-pYoSCcHc

Little Walter’s induction into Rock ’n Roll Hall of Fame:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyYk_PlnnUo

Podcast website:
https://www.harmonicahappyhour.com

Donations:
If you want to make a voluntary donation to help support the running costs of the podcast then please use this link (or visit the podcast website link above):
https://paypal.me/harmonicahappyhour?locale.x=en_GB

or sign-up to a monthly subscription to the podcast:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/995536/support

Spotify Playlist:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5QC6RF2VTfs4iPuasJBqwT?si=M-j3IkiISeefhR7ybm9qIQ

Podcast sponsors:
This podcast is sponsored by SEYDEL harmonicas - visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seydel1847.com or on Facebook or Instagram

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02:00 - Scott Dirks, Kim Field and Dennis Gruenling join me to discuss the great Little Walter

02:20 - Scott is co-author of the book: ‘Blues With A Feeling: The Little Walter Story’. An essential read for any harmonica fan!

02:48 - Scott got involved in writing the book after he met a harmonica player in Chicago who had been working on a book about Little Walter for ten years, and had done lots of research

03:47 - Found that Little Walter was buried in an unmarked grave, and Scott was involved in putting a marker on his grave in 1991

04:09 - Tony Glover heard about the grave and contacted Scott. Tony was well known from being in the band called Koerner, Ray and Glover

04:33 - Tony Glover wrote the first blues harmonica instructional book: ‘Blues Harp’

04:42 - Tony contacted Scott about the idea of putting together the book on Little Walter, as Tony was in process of putting together a discography on Little Walter

05:11 - Tony started writing a book with Ward Gaines on Little Walter, and Scott joined and started putting the book together in earnest in 1995, until 2001, without knowing if it would be published

06:13 - Tony Glover helped get the book published

07:15 - Scott used his connections in Chicago to do the research on Little Walter from some of the people who knew and worked with him

08:49 - Other information that was available on Little Walter

09:40 - Kim Field is a musician and writer, having written two books: ‘Harmonicas, Harps and Heavy Breathers’ and ‘The Blues Dream of Billy Boy Arnold’

10:13 - Kim first took up harmonica when he saw a James Cotton show

10:49 - Got the idea for the Billy Boy Arnold book after described his time meeting John Lee Williamson, with Billy Boy having tremendous recall of the events of the past

12:13 - Billy Boy had a great interest in the harmonica players around him, especially Little Walter

12:36 - Dennis Gruenling is the third guest, being the last person to record a tribute album to Little Walter

13:22 - Scott wrote the liner notes for the Dennis tribute album to Little Walter

13:43 - Much of the research material for this podcast is based on Scott’s Little Walter book

13:50 - Little Walter was born in 1930, in Marksville, Louisiana, although the year of his birth is somewhat disputed, with Tony Glover’s wife having done some good research into the topic

14:47 - He didn’t have a birth certificate

16:21 - Knowing his age allows us to date the various milestones in his life

16:33 - He started playing harmonica age 8

16:40 - May have started playing on the Regimental Band harmonica, the cheaper version of the Marine Band

16:54 - His sister said he wanted to be a saxophone player, but the harmonica was chosen as it was cheaper

17:08 - Lonnie Glosson was probably the first harmonica player he heard. Lonnie was a big star and appeared a lot on the radio, playing country music on harmonica

17:47 - Kim provides some more info on Lonnie Glosson and Wayne Raney, who played together on national radio and sold over 5 million of their harmonicas

18:44 - Honeyboy Edwards said that Little Walter had a Cajun style of playing when he was young, showing that he definitely had different influences from blues early on

20:11 - Sister had a photo of Little Walter leaving to go to New Orleans for the first time, age 12, where he spent a lot of time busking

20:57 - He used to stand outside clubs in New Orleans and play along with the songs he could hearing being inside the clubs

21:13 - John Lee Williamson (Sonny Boy Williamson I) was a big influence on Little Walter’s blues playing and Little Walter imitated his style early on

22:53 - John Lee Williamson was the first to use the harmonica as a lead instrument, and he was a huge star

23:23 - Billy Boy Arnold was a John Lee Williamson fanatic, heard Little Walter compliment John Lee Williamson (the only player he might have ever complimented!)

24:46 - Little Walter went to Helena, Arkansas, Rice Miller (Sonny Boy Williamson II) was based, although feeling is he didn’t learn much from his style

26:18 - Little Walter filled-in for Rice Miller on his radio show sometimes

27:19 - Met Walter Horton, who was 13 years older than him

27:32 - Played with Honeyboy Edwards in the south before making his momentous move to Chicago, where he started playing on Maxwell Street

27:49 - Advertisement in the Chicago Defender of his first gig there, in 1946, at the Purple Cat Lounge

28:42 - Story where John Lee Williamson told Little Walter he played too fast

29:13 - Jimmy Roger’s suggested Little Walter’s time wasn’t great, but the panel refute this

31:27 - First recording made in 1947, Ora Nelle Blues, made in a backroom studio on Maxwell Street

32:13 - Floyd Jones claimed he made the first recording with Little Walter, with Walter playing guitar, although this recording isn’t available

32:45 - Little Walter played some guitar, and recorded on several tracks playing guitar

34:19 - Billy Boy Arnold said he only saw Little Walter play guitar on the bandstand once

34:36 - He would change instruments with Louis Myers in his band, to play guitar with Myers playing harmonica, to take on harmonica challengers

35:26 - In the first recordings he made, he sang on I Just Keep Loving Her

36:00 - Little Walter syncopated his rhythms and improvised from the beginning, something which John Lee Williamson didn’t do

37:05 - Little Walter didn’t play stock licks, as a lot of his contemporaries did, and he quickly broke away from playing like Sonny Boy I to always push himself to play something different

38:27 - The influence of saxophone players on his sound

40:04 - Little Walter really wanted to swing and he became frustrated playing the slow blues style of Muddy Waters

40:39 - Muddy Waters was a generation older then Little Walter but Walter wanted to play faster

41:12 - Little Walter preferred to play to a dance crowd

41:43 - Started playing with Muddy Waters in 1948

42:43 - The Chicago blues sound and the part the trio with Muddy Waters played in evolution of that

43:38 - Real Chicago sound came later when Muddy started recording with drums and piano

44:06 - Took some time for Leonard Chess to allow Little Walter to record with Muddy, but he eventually did, and it was a hit

44:25 - First song recorded with Muddy at Chess was You’re Gonna Need My Help

45:59 - I Can’t Be Satisfied was a huge hit with Muddy playing just with bass player Big Crawford, hence Chess were reluctant to change the winning formula

47:18 - Walter also made recordings with Jimmy Rogers at Chess, although the band was the same personnel

47:39 - His first amplified harmonica recorded at Chess was Country Boy with Muddy Waters

48:14 - Frustrations at not always being able to record with his amp at Chess

49:05 - Little Walter’s amplified sound was down to the way that he play through the equipment, not the equipment itself

50:10 - Most players were using amps in Chicago at this time but Walter heard a way he could advance his sound using an amp, like Charlie Christian did on guitar

52:02 - While on tour they overheard another band trying to work out what instrument Walter was playing on Juke as it played on the juke box

53:00 - Juke was released in 1952 and was a huge hit and launched Walter’s solo career

53:40 - Snooky Pryor probably recorded amplified harmonica in the studio before Walter did

54:38 - The released version of Juke was the first cut made in the studio for Checker records

54:59 - Juke was played live with Muddy before Walter recorded it

55:09 - A story as to why Walter left Muddy’s band was because someone gave him a dime instead of the quarter they gave to Muddy

55:48 - Walter’s rise to stardom

55:58 - How much would white audiences hear blues music in the early 1950s

56:53 - Released numerous singles with Chess, which were double-sided, with one side vocal and one side instrumental

57:24 - Juke was the biggest hit Chess had with a record and made them financially stable

58:05 - Sad Hours was in the charts at the same time as Juke

58:22 - Every single he released between 1952-1955 charted, and outsold Muddy Waters during this time

58:39 - Juke was recorded using Muddy’s band

59:28 - Some of the hits Walter had during the first half of the 1950s

59:37 - Continued to record with Muddy in the studio, even though he had left that band for live performances, and the song Baby Please Don’t Go

01:00:53 - First recording on chromatic and in 3rd position was That’s It, and his influence as a blues chromatic player

01:02:48 - Kim doesn’t think Walter took any inspiration from the non-blues chromatic players who came before him

01:03:17 - Jerry Murad’s Peg O’ My Heart was recorded in the same studio used by Chess

01:04:24 - Walter probably was the first to start using 3rd position on the diatonic too, or at least developed its use

01:05:53 - Rhythm Willie was another harmonica player who imitated horn players, but didn’t have the same presence of sound as Walter

01:07:29 - John Lee Williamson was also influenced by horn players in his later recordings

01:08:25 - Little Walter’s band was much louder than horn ensembles at the time

01:09:12 - The string of great tracks he recorded through the first part of the 1950s

01:10:20 - One of reasons Walter was so successful on the charts is that he was touring all the time

01:10:56 - Juke really helped bring a younger audience to the blues, including females

01:11:38 - Great photo of Little Walter surrounded by women in a record store

01:12:15 - Walter was a pretty boy who the women certainly liked

01:12:32 - Bob Corritore website has a great photo tribute page to Walter, as well as many other blues artists

01:12:56 - Second number one single, in 1955: My Babe, which was based on the gospel song My Train

01:14:16 - Ray Charles played saxophone with Walter on one of his tours, as well as playing piano as a support act for Walter

01:14:50 - In 1958 Walter was shot in the leg and also broke his leg separately, which contributed to a downward spiral for him from this time, also from R&B starting to become more popular than blues

01:15:43 - Walter’s band was starting to lose it’s regular members, and his music output dipped somewhat, although there was always some interesting aspects to his music

01:16:45 - All the Chess acts suffered a decline at this time due to the rise of R&B, but enjoyed the blues boom later in the 1960s, which Walter missed following his death

01:18:16 - Walter still released some classic recordings during this time, with Key To The Highway his last top ten hit

01:18:35 - Crawling King Snake was the only song he recorded on a tremolo harmonica

01:19:21 - Walter did a tour of the UK in 1964, which wasn’t too successful, partly due to the quality of the backing bands

01:20:21 - Walter probably suffered by being ahead of his time somewhat, his ideas too modern for the day

01:21:33 - Billy Boy Arnold saw Walter play whole sets just on harmonica

01:22:09 - The difference of Walter on record and playing live in clubs was significant. He improvised much more freely when playing live

01:22:45 - Such a crying shame we don’t have live recordings of Walter in his heyday

01:23:18 - Earliest live recording of Walter is from 1964, in the UK

01:23:44 - The next live recording was from 1967: Walter’s Jump, an acoustic recording which is favourably received

01:25:51 - Scott actually named this live recording as Walter’s Jump, as it was untitled

01:26:44 - Last session as a leader at Chess was in 1966

01:27:01 - Great album where you can hear lots of studio outtakes and alternate takes of songs: ‘Little Walter: The Complete Chess Masters (1950-1967)’. This won a Grammy for Best Historical Re-issue

01:27:45 - Scott co-produced this album, and says there was a lot more material in the studio that wasn’t used, including an instrumental version of One Of The Mornings

01:29:19 - Did another UK tour in 1967

01:29:25 - Live bootleg recording of Walter playing with Sam Lay in 1967, where his playing is strong

01:31:01 - It is rumoured that Muddy was going to hire Walter back into his band in 1968, just before his death

01:31:15 - Little Walter on February 15, 1968, after being involved in a street fight, twenty years after John Lee Williamson died in very similar circumstances

01:31:59 - He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame, and then later the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008 (for a sideman category!)

01:32:58 - Dennis thought the sideman category was ok as it recognised how Walter revolutionised the role of the harmonica

01:33:57 - The panels favourite two Little Walter songs, Louisiana Blues & Mellow Down Easy for Neil

01:34:34 - Kim chooses Blue Midnight and Back Track

01:35:16 - Back Track was recorded after Walter had been insisting he could record a song in the studio using his amp

01:36:27 - Scott chooses Roller Coaster and That’s It

01:37:35 - Dennis chooses Sad Hours and Fast Boogie (Scott had already chosen Roller Coaster!)

01:39:06 - Eight songs were chosen but there were many more we could selected

01:39:20 - Walter wrote the book on how to play back-up harp with Muddy and Jimmy Rogers, and then to go on and have such a successful solo career

01:40:02 - Walter used a Marine Band diatonic and a 16 hole chromatic, either or both of the Hohner 280 or the Super 64

01:40:41 - Experimented a little with harmonicas, using Kock and a tremolo

01:41:29 - Didn’t use a harmonica customiser, although the harps were made, and tuned differently back then

01:41:45 - Embouchre: mainly tongue blocking with some puckering and possibly U bend

01:43:19 - John Lee Williamson tongue blocked

01:43:38 - The harmonica was built to be tongue blocked (to play chords), with Paul Butterfield being a major reason puckering rose to prominence

01:44:45 - Most of the classic players used both tongue blocking and puckering

01:45:05 - For live performances Walter usually used the PA systems available, which had inputs for crystal mics

01:46:30 - JT30s and Green Bullets were used for vocals back then, which has resulted in modern players using them by this happy accident

01:47:23 - The JT30 also has a wide face to accommodate the harmonica

01:47:40 - The PA systems used in the 1950s were tube driven

01:48:24 - What Walter used to record in the studio: his recorded tracks with amps used in the studio all sound different, so he probably used different amps

01:49:38 - Small Masco PA system is a strong possibility

01:50:54 - Dennis saw that Snooky Pryor and James Cotton really appreciated using some of the classic amps that Dennis owned

01:52:18 - There isn’t one Chicago blues tone, there were many different ones

01:52:43 - Augmentation of Walter’s sound in the studio (by adding reverb, delay slapback, etc)

WEBVTT

00:00:00.609 --> 00:00:07.195
Episode 100 is a retrospective on the greatest ever blues harmonica player, Marion Walter Jacobs, a.k.a.

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Little Walter.

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In this extended episode, I'm joined by a panel of experts in Scott Dirks, Kim Field and Dennis Grunling.

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Little Walter was born in 1930, probably, and started playing harmonica at age 8.

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He was busking on the streets of New Orleans by age 12, spent some time in Helena before heading north to Chicago to make his indelible mark on blues and the harmonica.

00:00:29.922 --> 00:00:41.271
Little Walter teamed up with Muddy Waters and Jimmy Rogers and cut some classic blues recordings before he went out under his own name after he was launched into superstardom with his instrumental Duke in 1952.

00:00:41.892 --> 00:00:50.700
He was riding high in the charts and touring for the next few years including another number one with My Babe while still also recording with Muddy Waters.

00:00:51.320 --> 00:01:02.310
The arrival of rhythm and blues started to replace the blues as the popular music of the day which saw Little Walter start to go down slow but he still made some great recordings and completed two tours of Europe.

00:01:03.353 --> 00:01:16.191
He was then taken far too young at the age of 37 as a result of an injury sustained in a street fight but he left behind numerous masterpieces in the blues harmonica genre that have influenced pretty much every player since.

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Well, I just keep loving.

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I don't know the reason or why.

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Hello Scott

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Dirks, Kim Field and Dennis Groening and welcome to the 100th podcast.

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Hello! Hello, great to be here.

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Welcome all and thanks so much for joining today.

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We're going to talk about the great Little Walter today.

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So we got you three panel of experts to do that.

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So I'll just go through your credentials for why you've joined.

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So first start with you, Scott.

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So Scott Dirks, you are a co-author of the Blues of the Feeling Little Walter story along with Tony Glover and Ward Gaines.

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So tell us about how you got this book together and going.

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My involvement with the book started...

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Really, in 1991, I've been a little Walter fan since I first heard a Muddy Waters record, which would be probably in the late 70s.

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Around 1991, I met a harmonica player named Ilmat Rasson.

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He was a guy who lived on the south side of Chicago.

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He grew up in the neighborhood where Jimmy Rogers had lived, and he knew some of the people who had known Jimmy Rogers and through him, little Walter.

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And he was a huge Little Walter fan and a harmonica player himself.

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By the way, I should mention that when I met him around 1990, he had been working on a book about Little Walter for about 10 years.

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So he had interviewed a bunch of people and he had done a bunch of research already.

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And I thought that he was going to do this, you know, he was going to end up being the author of the Little Walter book.

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Unfortunately, he was never able to get all of his research together into any kind of usable form.

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He died a couple of years ago, and unfortunately, all of his research kind of disappeared after that.

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But anyway, in the course of his research, he'd found that Little Walter was buried in an unmarked grave.

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So, Eamott had discovered that Little Walter was buried in an unmarked grave, so we decided that we would do something about that.

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So, we put a marker on Little Walter's grave in 1991, and we sent out some press releases to let Little Walter fans know about it.

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And through that, Tony Glover contacted me.

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Tony was kind of famous.

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He had been in a group called Kerner, Ray, and Glover back in the early 60s that made several albums.

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Tony wrote what, as far as I know, was the first album.

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blues harmonic instructional book that was called Blues Harp in 1965.

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So Tony contacted me when he found out that we're doing this book.

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He says, oh, wow, I'm in the middle of making a little Walter discography.

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He wanted to just catalog everything little Walter had ever recorded.

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So we started talking about that.

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By the way, Tony lived in St.

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Paul, Minnesota, which is a couple hours by plane from here.

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So we had never spoken in person, but via email, we sort of started putting our heads together about little Walter history and so on.

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He eventually started writing a book with another guy, Ward Gaines, who he had been in touch with separately.

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Once we'd made contact, Tony and I had made contact, he asked me if I'd be interested in being involved in the book.

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And I was a little bit reluctant because I'm not really a writer.

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I didn't have any experience You know, as a professional writer or anything like that, although I'd written a few things for blues magazines and so on.

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But eventually, you know, they persuaded me to get involved.

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So Ward, Tony and I, around, I guess, 1995 or so, decided to get serious about writing this book.

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So at that point, we all just started gathering information, doing interviews, you know, talking to people and really trying to put it all together.

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We worked for from about 1995 till about 2000.

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on this book.

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Really, as a labor of love, we didn't know if we'd ever get a publisher.

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We were prepared, actually, just to publish it online, just put it up as a website or something.

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But Tony, because he'd been a published author already through his Blues Harp book, and I think he did a couple of other Blues Harmonica instructional books after that one, he had some connections in the publishing biz, and he eventually...

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got us in touch with Peter Goralnik, who's a pretty well-known music writer in the US.

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And he knew Peter Goralnik, and Peter Goralnik suggested that we submit samples of our proposed book to a couple of publishers, and we got an offer right away to publish it.

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So then we got really serious about like, you know, this is real now, we have to make it into a book.

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Yeah, and it's a fantastic book.

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I read it some years ago, and I just read it just before this podcast interview to brush up, and I love every second of it, apart from the sort of sad bit at the end, which we'll get to.

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But fantastic research and all the people and the information you got of him.

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It's incredible.

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I mean, how did you get all that together?

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Well, thank you, first of all.

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Part of my...

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motivation is that Ward is on the East Coast.

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I think he's in Maryland, and Tony is in St.

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Paul, Minnesota.

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Neither of those guys really had any experience or connections in Chicago.

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Because I'd been a Little Walter fan and a harmonica player for a while by that time, I had just sought out some of the guys who had played with Little Walter, just really for my own curiosity.

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I sought out guys like Lewis and David Myers, the two brothers who'd been in Little Walter's first band that he had after he made his first recordings for Chess or Checker.

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I had been asking all these questions just for my own curiosity.

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What did Little Walter do in the studio?

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What kind of equipment did he use?

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What kind of a guy was he?

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And just stuff like that.

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So I had this sort of one degree away from him connection that my other two co-authors didn't have.

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So once I had a reason to I got really serious about just nailing these guys down, recording some interviews, recording some firsthand recollections and stuff.

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And that's where a lot of it came from.

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The guys in Chicago who had known Little Walter, and then there were a few people who, well, I should say either Ward or Tony had some connection with, and they were able to ask.

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I believe that it was Ward who, maybe it was Tony, I can't remember now, but one of those guys knew Charlie Musselwhite, and Charlie had had some experiences with Little Walter when he was in Chicago.

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And of course, there was a lot of stuff that was already out there.

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There was a really great interview with Lewis Myers in Blues Unlimited magazine that that supplied lots of good info.

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So there was a fair amount of published stuff out there that we were able to draw from.

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And then we just filled in the rest by really buckling down and trying to find the people who knew the answers to these questions.

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And over time, I'd become kind of friendly with guys like, like I said, the Myers brothers, Jimmy Lee Robinson, a few other people who had played in Walter's band.

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So I was really able to grill them over time to kind of dig a little bit deeper and get the story.

00:09:27.461 --> 00:09:35.388
And I think, you know, just the combination of our research and then the research that had already been done, you know, that ended up being the book.

00:09:36.068 --> 00:09:36.750
So thanks, Scott.

00:09:36.769 --> 00:09:39.371
We'll bring in our second guest now, Kim Field.

00:09:39.471 --> 00:09:44.135
So Kim, you're a musician, obviously a harmonica player, and also a writer yourself.

00:09:44.196 --> 00:10:12.443
You've written another fantastic book on harmonica, which I've read, which is the Harmonica's Harps and Heavy Breavers, which covers lots of different players and including Little Walter you've got a section on and some great some comments from Jimmy Rogers and others and you've also recently co-written the Blues Dream of Billy Boy Arnold and that was released in the last year or so wasn't it and of course Billy Boy you know sort of knew Little Walter right he was around at the same time so you've got that connection there too.

00:10:12.865 --> 00:10:23.889
Yeah that's right I was a 17 year old trumpet player when I caught a James Cotton show in 1968 and I went out and bought a sea marine band the next day.

00:10:24.033 --> 00:10:28.692
So I've been banging away at that thing ever since.

00:10:29.594 --> 00:10:33.376
I wrote that book on the history of the harmonica, harmonica's harps and heavy breathers.

00:10:33.397 --> 00:10:47.548
I was really interested in putting myself out there as a writer as well as a musician, and I needed a topic that I could stick with through the lifetime of creating a book, and obviously the harmonica was that topic.

00:10:48.090 --> 00:10:51.653
I met Billy Boy Arnold at a Mark Hummel show.

00:10:52.133 --> 00:10:59.441
He described his early meetings as a a 12-year-old with John Lee's Sonny Boy Williamson, which was quite remarkable.

00:10:59.900 --> 00:11:06.227
And that put the idea in my head of, here's this guy who's basically lived the entire history of Chicago blues.

00:11:06.268 --> 00:11:15.238
He was born, Billy Boy was born in Chicago in 35, had already been on the scene for about 10 years before Muddy Waters, you know, really hit it big.

00:11:15.317 --> 00:11:24.366
So he also was in contact with the early generation of Chicago blues players like Big Bill Brunzi and John Lee Williamson and people like that.

00:11:24.888 --> 00:11:26.109
And he was a harmonica player.

00:11:36.379 --> 00:11:46.331
But more to the point, he was a very intelligent, Billy Boy's a very intelligent person who has total recall of events from like 70 years ago.

00:11:46.370 --> 00:11:47.672
It's just remarkable.

00:11:47.792 --> 00:12:04.490
So I talked him up at a Mark Hummel show about coming out to Chicago to visit him and I I did that, and Dick Sherman set up a lunch with Billy Boy, and somehow I convinced Billy Boy to let me help him tell his story.

00:12:04.509 --> 00:12:28.902
And in a big way, it's the story of Chicago Blues Harmonica, including Little Walter, too, because I've never met anyone who is more passionate about Blues Harmonica than Billy Boy, and so he took a very keen interest in everybody on the scene, most especially Little Walter, whom he considered to be top player at the time.

00:12:29.764 --> 00:12:35.136
It was very interesting to learn more about Little Walter in the course of doing that book with Billy Boy.

00:12:36.001 --> 00:12:38.823
So, and then our third guest today is Dennis Gruenling.

00:12:38.864 --> 00:12:40.326
You might remember him.

00:12:40.365 --> 00:12:42.967
He was on the last podcast, Long Time No Speak, Dennis.

00:12:43.408 --> 00:12:44.288
Yeah, good to be here.

00:12:44.369 --> 00:12:44.889
Thanks, man.

00:12:45.350 --> 00:12:49.913
So, you are the man we understand to do the last tribute album to Little Walter.

00:12:49.953 --> 00:12:51.294
Have you heard any of this since?

00:12:51.975 --> 00:13:09.234
I haven't, and you know, and I mentioned it in the last podcast that I was so, I'm still, when I think about it, I'm just baffled that there was really no official recorded tribute album to Little Walter since, you know, the year that he It just kind of boggled my mind.

00:13:09.615 --> 00:13:13.883
So it just seemed like, how has anybody else not done this since George Smith?

00:13:13.903 --> 00:13:16.668
I mean, I'm really proud of that project.

00:13:16.748 --> 00:13:21.956
It obviously was a labor of love and a passion project for me, but just glad I was able to do that.

00:13:22.466 --> 00:13:24.309
I'm glad I was able to write the liner notes.

00:13:24.330 --> 00:13:25.373
Yes, thank you, Scott.

00:13:26.215 --> 00:13:27.076
You're very welcome.

00:13:27.197 --> 00:13:28.539
I was glad to be able to buy it.

00:13:30.445 --> 00:13:31.567
Thank you even more, Kim.

00:13:31.586 --> 00:13:35.296
I was glad to listen to it and play along.

00:13:35.475 --> 00:13:35.977
Thanks, man.

00:13:36.514 --> 00:13:53.369
great so enough about us let's talk about the the subject of today let's talk about uh little walter himself so um again scott i won't apologize too much from drawing quite heavily from the book that you co-authored for the life of little walter so so he was born um in 1930 probably

00:13:53.668 --> 00:13:54.249
probably uh

00:13:55.070 --> 00:14:05.639
on may the first in marksville uh louisiana so um that's quite close to new orleans so yeah so yeah any any mentions around he's uh the year of his birth

00:14:06.100 --> 00:14:07.201
well you Yeah, a little bit.

00:14:07.321 --> 00:14:13.110
When we were working on the book, Tony Glover, his partner, was really into genealogy.

00:14:13.650 --> 00:14:16.855
And she was able to dig pretty deeply.

00:14:16.916 --> 00:14:22.825
And the first chapter of the book is a lot of her research about little Walter's birth.

00:14:22.904 --> 00:14:34.302
And one of the things that she found was that there were records that showed that little Walter's father was in prison nine months later.

00:14:34.466 --> 00:14:37.791
before the date that's accepted as his birth.

00:14:38.010 --> 00:14:46.384
So that suggests that he might have been born at a different time than is indicated in most biographies.

00:14:46.924 --> 00:14:48.988
In fact, there was no birth certificate.

00:14:49.028 --> 00:14:50.610
He never had a birth certificate.

00:14:51.072 --> 00:15:00.932
When he traveled overseas, he had to go to a church to get what I guess, is accepted as a certificate of birth, but it was 30-some years after his birth.

00:15:01.172 --> 00:15:03.695
But in order to get a passport, he needed this document.

00:15:03.735 --> 00:15:11.344
But over the course of researching the book, I think we found five different birth years that were documented.

00:15:11.384 --> 00:15:19.513
And I decided that the best thing to do is just leave it at the most commonly accepted one.

00:15:19.572 --> 00:15:26.740
But I think it's Possible, maybe even likely, that he was a little bit older than his 1930 birth date would suggest.

00:15:27.361 --> 00:15:32.129
There's another document in the book where he signed his birth, what, in 1923, was it?

00:15:32.150 --> 00:15:34.173
So that's a date that he wrote, wasn't it?

00:15:34.193 --> 00:15:34.293
Right.

00:15:34.615 --> 00:15:36.818
And there were several others, too.

00:15:37.038 --> 00:15:38.722
Yeah, 1925, 1926.

00:15:40.738 --> 00:16:17.110
728 there were a bunch of different documents unfortunately since there was nothing that was really contemporary you know contemporaneous with his birth like a newspaper announcement or a you know an entry in a bible or something like that that would have specifically dated his birth it's sort of unknown but i i strongly suspect that he was a little at least a little bit older and you know frankly he looked a little bit older at the time of his death he you know if you accept his 1930 birth year he would be 38 years old, or 37 years old I should say, he looked like he might be at least 5 or 10 years older.

00:16:18.251 --> 00:16:20.234
Yeah, well there's reasons for that, wasn't there?

00:16:20.955 --> 00:16:30.565
I mean, I guess it's important because when he started playing his first recording, when he started recording with Chess Etc, how old he was is quite interesting, but we'll get on to that.

00:16:30.625 --> 00:16:36.532
But I think what's documented is he started playing harmonica at the age of 8.

00:16:36.951 --> 00:16:37.773
Somewhere in there, yeah.

00:16:38.394 --> 00:16:45.001
And so obviously young, and I believe he was playing the regimental band harp rather than the marine band initially.

00:16:45.022 --> 00:16:47.785
That was a kind of cheaper version of the marine band at the time, was it?

00:16:47.905 --> 00:16:49.288
You know, I honestly don't know.

00:16:49.307 --> 00:16:50.288
I don't know.

00:16:50.308 --> 00:16:53.374
I can't remember, actually, if we documented that in the book.

00:16:53.833 --> 00:16:59.201
The one thing I do remember is that his sister Lillian said that he wanted to be a saxophone player.

00:16:59.649 --> 00:17:04.574
But the family could not afford a saxophone, so that's why he ended up with a harmonica.

00:17:04.753 --> 00:17:07.457
The Mississippi saxophone, as they sometimes call it.

00:17:08.298 --> 00:17:12.520
And the first harmonica player he probably heard was Lonnie Glosson.

00:17:12.560 --> 00:17:20.167
He was a kind of white hillbilly player who was on the radio, yes, who was kind of hearing this kind of hillbilly harmonica to begin with.

00:17:20.587 --> 00:17:28.375
Yeah, and you know, I don't know how much of that got completely absorbed into his own style, but Lonnie Glosson was everywhere at that time.

00:17:28.394 --> 00:17:46.334
He had his own brand harmonicas and I think they advertised you could buy him on the on his radio broadcasts and Kim might know more about this than I do but but he was a very famous maybe the most famous harmonica player outside of the realm of like you know classical music Larry Adler and people like that

00:17:46.673 --> 00:17:59.949
yeah Lonnie and Wayne Rainey were two of the like really early prominent country western harmonica players they both played in fact they both played together on some of the Delmore Brothers right records.

00:18:00.648 --> 00:18:01.911
They were very popular

00:18:02.251 --> 00:18:10.082
at the time.

00:18:14.888 --> 00:18:24.622
But then Lonnie and Wayne, they signed up with one of those Texas border radio stations, 50,000 watt stations just across the border.

00:18:25.021 --> 00:18:31.806
So they were on like, I think they were on 300 different stations around the United States at their peak.

00:18:32.266 --> 00:18:36.372
So they, they sold like 5 million harmonicas over the airwaves.

00:18:36.432 --> 00:18:41.077
And they, they, you just, you couldn't not run into Lonnie Glosson in those days.

00:18:41.137 --> 00:18:43.319
So it's not surprising that little Walter did too.

00:18:43.800 --> 00:18:49.488
You know, honey boy Edwards also said little Walter, as you mentioned, Neil is from Louisiana.

00:18:49.528 --> 00:18:56.376
He went to new Orleans and played there very, very early on when he was before he ever came North.

00:18:56.717 --> 00:19:02.317
And he, Honey Boy Edwards said that his harmonica playing had what he called a Cajun-ly sound.

00:19:02.377 --> 00:19:06.951
And by that, I think he meant at that time it had sort of an accordion sound.

00:19:07.012 --> 00:19:10.765
And that might be just the way he used chords or whatever.

00:19:11.298 --> 00:19:17.242
He was influenced by stuff other than blues, I think, at the very beginning.

00:19:18.564 --> 00:19:25.470
That's a part of Walter's story that I guess we'll never really know, but I think it's a really fascinating one.

00:19:25.770 --> 00:19:37.661
He had so many formative experiences in Louisiana before he went to Chicago or even became West Helena in the blues scene there.

00:19:38.201 --> 00:19:52.700
It's really fascinating to consider what it must have been like for a very hip young guy like Walter to spend time in New Orleans when he was really just forming his style and the influence that that must have had on him.

00:19:53.141 --> 00:19:59.970
And then, you know, per your earlier comments, Scott, that he even at the, you know, as a boy, he wanted to be a saxophone player.

00:20:00.009 --> 00:20:08.362
I mean, that's kind of the hallmark legacy of little Walter is putting a horn-like kind of concept behind the harmonica.

00:20:09.182 --> 00:20:09.784
Exactly.

00:20:10.003 --> 00:20:10.224
Yep.

00:20:10.785 --> 00:20:10.885
Yep.

00:20:11.362 --> 00:20:23.003
By the way, speaking of New Orleans, Walter's older sister Lillian told me that she used to have a photograph of little Walter when he was leaving home for the first time.

00:20:23.044 --> 00:20:26.932
She said he was 12 years old and he was hitchhiking to New Orleans.

00:20:26.971 --> 00:20:32.883
And she said she had a picture of him standing on the side of the road with his thumb out, hitchhiking to New Orleans.

00:20:33.123 --> 00:20:38.223
And she said she'd I did not know whatever happened to that picture, but that's a picture I would have liked to have seen.

00:20:38.263 --> 00:20:45.537
I did hear, again, through his sister Lillian, that he played a lot on the streets there.

00:20:45.576 --> 00:20:52.729
There was someone who he stayed with who was sort of a distant relative who he stayed with in New Orleans, this woman named Waver Humphreys.

00:20:53.250 --> 00:20:53.730
Yeah.

00:21:13.089 --> 00:21:22.586
So his first influence, I think very well documented, the person he really tried to imitate was the first Sonny Boy, John Lee Williamson, and that was a huge draw.

00:21:22.605 --> 00:21:30.038
So Dennis, you tell us something about John Lee Williamson's style, and maybe let Walter copy that of his early days.

00:21:30.619 --> 00:21:31.721
Well, anybody

00:21:32.221 --> 00:21:57.449
who has studied blues harmonica, in particular Chicago blues harmonica, can very easily tell that early on, on Walter's early recordings, was pretty much mimicking John Lee's style.

00:21:57.469 --> 00:22:01.535
And, you know, John Lee at that time was a superstar in the blues world anyway.

00:22:02.155 --> 00:22:05.826
But you could easily tell that he looked up to his style.

00:22:05.846 --> 00:22:07.093
I mean, I don't know.

00:22:07.133 --> 00:22:13.201
I'm not as much of a researcher slash historian as Scott and Kim.

00:22:13.890 --> 00:22:22.525
But you can tell just from a harmonica player's perspective that he really listened to and studied John Lee Williamson.

00:22:22.704 --> 00:22:51.920
And after the first year or two of a couple of years, I would say, I guess, of listening to his first recordings, first couple of years of recordings, you can really hear him kind of start to grow a bit with his what Sonny Boy One was doing, and he clearly kind of based a good portion of his style off of that.

00:22:52.701 --> 00:23:04.023
So as you say, Sonny Boy was a massive star, then he was everywhere on the radio, but he was also the sort of first one to really sort of use the harmonica as a lead instrument, yeah, and that was a, you know, he was really pushing it in that blues genre then.

00:23:04.244 --> 00:23:05.406
Sure, of course, yeah.

00:23:05.527 --> 00:23:09.054
I mean, he was, he's the granddaddy of them all, really.

00:23:17.442 --> 00:23:19.884
so Kim anything to add on Sonny Boy 1?

00:23:20.263 --> 00:23:51.332
Yeah well it was interesting you know there is Billy Boy Arnold was a John Lee Williamson fanatic by the time he was about 10 or 11 years old he had a paper route and he spent all his extra money on John Lee Williamson records then he tracked John Lee Williamson down and met him visited John Lee at his apartment on two different occasions and even got some harmonica tips and so there's no bigger fan or idolizer of John Lee Williamson than Billy Boy Arnold.

00:23:51.612 --> 00:24:08.990
Billy Boy told me in the course of the interviews for the book that the first time he met Walter, well, the second time he met Walter, first time he met him on the street, second time he went into a club to see Walter play, and he walked by the bandstand and Louis Myers muttered to little Walter, there's one of those so-called harp players who just went by.

00:24:09.030 --> 00:24:14.497
So little Walter had Billy Boy come up and sit in on the set to check him out.

00:24:14.656 --> 00:24:22.846
And then they sat at a table and chatted afterwards And Billy Boy said that Walter told him that Sonny Boy was the absolute best.

00:24:23.027 --> 00:24:24.848
John Lee Williamson was the guy.

00:24:24.868 --> 00:24:32.018
I think Billy Boy also mentioned that that was probably the only time he ever heard Walter speak admiringly of another harp player.

00:24:32.357 --> 00:24:36.542
I think he was interviewed by Val Wilmer during one of his trips to England.

00:24:36.903 --> 00:24:43.811
And when asked about his favorite harmonica players or who influenced him, he only mentioned John Lee Williamson.

00:24:43.872 --> 00:24:45.074
He didn't mention anyone else.

00:24:45.473 --> 00:24:51.843
So we mentioned that he went on to Helena in Arkansas, and that's where he saw Sonny Boy 2.

00:24:51.923 --> 00:24:57.111
So Rice Miller, who had his King Biscuit Time radio show, so he was big around then.

00:24:57.131 --> 00:25:15.440
¶¶ Did he start then hanging around with Sonny Boy 2 and sort of listening to him, picking up from him?

00:25:16.201 --> 00:25:18.305
It's hard to say.

00:25:18.325 --> 00:25:28.122
I mean, he did spend some time around him, but of the harmonica players who were out there, I hear less of Sonny Boy 2 and Little Walter.

00:25:28.513 --> 00:25:30.279
than sometimes he gets credit for.

00:25:30.299 --> 00:25:34.071
I don't hear a whole lot of Sonny Boy 2 in Little Walter's style.

00:25:34.113 --> 00:25:43.270
I think Walter was in some way reacting to the older style that I think he thought that Sonny Boy 2 was playing.

00:25:43.330 --> 00:25:46.294
I think Little Walter was like, yeah, yeah, that's old stuff.

00:25:46.334 --> 00:25:48.015
I'm going to do the new stuff, you know?

00:25:48.055 --> 00:25:49.256
Yeah, so I don't know.

00:25:49.316 --> 00:25:50.778
I mean, there's a little bit.

00:25:50.837 --> 00:26:13.383
I've speculated at times that, you know, and we're kind of fast-forwarding here a little bit, but towards the late 50s, Little Walter started making some recordings without the amplified harp, and I think it's possible that that might have been a reaction to Sonny Boy, because some of that stuff does have a little bit of a Sonny Boy feel to it, but not Not a lot, in my opinion.

00:26:13.665 --> 00:26:17.832
Yeah, no, I agree you don't hear his style in Little Waltz's playing, for sure.

00:26:17.912 --> 00:26:23.138
But I mean, I think it does say in the book that he did sort of kind of fill in for him on his radio show when he wasn't available.

00:26:23.179 --> 00:26:25.882
So I think he was definitely hanging around with Reisman a little.

00:26:25.981 --> 00:26:27.904
Yeah, yeah, he was part of that scene, for sure.

00:26:27.984 --> 00:26:28.224
Yeah.

00:26:28.726 --> 00:26:34.574
I think, you know, there's all this apocryphal talk about who influenced who and who took lessons from who.

00:26:35.095 --> 00:26:37.917
And I think Dennis and Scott are on the right track.

00:26:37.958 --> 00:26:40.221
The proof is in the recordings.

00:26:40.961 --> 00:26:42.064
And Scott is right.

00:26:42.124 --> 00:26:43.204
I really don't hear...

00:26:43.713 --> 00:26:51.300
Rice Miller influences in Walter's playing anywhere near the extent you do John Lee Williamson and so forth.

00:26:51.421 --> 00:26:59.647
I think it might have been the other way around in terms of who was influencing whom, but I just don't hear that in Walter's playing.

00:26:59.948 --> 00:27:07.474
It's possible that Sonny Boy influenced him more in how to hobo and get a free meal, that kind of thing.

00:27:07.694 --> 00:27:08.915
Well, and how to be a professional.

00:27:08.935 --> 00:27:15.681
I mean, Sonny Boy gigged all over the area, and he had a daily radio Sure.

00:27:17.538 --> 00:27:46.222
yeah yeah and then finally just just name dropping home monica so he sort of did meet big walter as well walter horton he was sort of 13 years old so all these three guys were older than little walter so i guess they were you know they were people he was certainly listening to and uh you know i had some contact with then he started moving around you mentioned honey boy edwards earlier on i think kim and uh he was moving around playing with him before then uh he sort of made his big move north to to move to chicago and then started playing on maxwell street and that's when uh things started taking off for him

00:27:46.563 --> 00:27:49.006
yes that is definitely Definitely when things started taking off.

00:27:49.246 --> 00:27:57.634
I found an ad in the Chicago Defender from 1946 that advertises Little Walter as the Wonder Harmonica King.

00:27:57.654 --> 00:28:03.881
That's the first advertisement that I've been able to find for anything that Little Walter did.

00:28:03.922 --> 00:28:09.406
It's not that important, except that it confirms that he was in Chicago that early in 1946.

00:28:09.867 --> 00:28:17.455
I think there's some speculation that he had come up in 47 or 48, but he was definitely gigging in Chicago in 1946.

00:28:17.455 --> 00:28:27.107
The place that he did this gig, it was called the Purple Cat Lounge, and it was on the west side, and Little Walter took over the gig there.

00:28:27.127 --> 00:28:34.438
He had a regular weekly thing there, and he took over for John Lee Williamson, who had moved on from there.

00:28:34.857 --> 00:28:37.240
In the book, there's a story, I believe it was...

00:28:37.857 --> 00:28:40.262
told by Johnny Williams, maybe.

00:28:40.343 --> 00:28:42.708
He was a guitar player in Chicago.

00:28:42.748 --> 00:28:49.902
But anyway, he said that little Walter went to the Purple Cat when Sonny Boy was playing there and persuaded them to let him sit in.

00:28:49.942 --> 00:28:55.814
And that afterwards, Sonny Boy told Walter, you play too fast.

00:28:58.049 --> 00:29:11.252
Billy Boy Arnold, when he was telling me about that conversation he had at the table in the club with Walter for the first time, he also mentioned that Walter told him that John Lee had told him that same thing, that he played too fast.

00:29:12.130 --> 00:29:12.450
Yeah,

00:29:13.030 --> 00:29:16.675
there's certainly talk in the book about him, you know, his time not being good.

00:29:16.715 --> 00:29:18.218
Obviously, he's young at this stage, right?

00:29:18.238 --> 00:29:22.423
But it's interesting to see the great little Walter, you know, probably didn't have great time when he was younger.

00:29:22.463 --> 00:29:23.664
So there's hope for us all yet.

00:29:24.205 --> 00:29:31.214
If I can jump in on that for one second, you know, because I'm the guy who wrote the book, I usually am the guy who's the big defender of little Walter.

00:29:31.355 --> 00:29:33.258
I don't think everything he did is perfect.

00:29:33.458 --> 00:29:35.181
I think he did some, you know what I mean?

00:29:35.201 --> 00:29:38.585
I'm not going to defend everything he ever did, but I'm going to defend that.

00:29:39.006 --> 00:29:50.048
I don't hear anything on any of his recordings that from the first to the last that would indicate his timing was any worse than Muddy Waters or Jimmy Rogers or Howlin' Wolf or Sonny Boy.

00:29:50.630 --> 00:29:54.781
I think that came from Jimmy Rogers himself.

00:29:55.009 --> 00:30:00.575
Jimmy Rogers is the only person that I've seen say that little Walter had bad time.

00:30:01.355 --> 00:30:05.618
Don't know why, but as Kim just said, listen to the records.

00:30:06.299 --> 00:30:10.804
His timing is solid, or as solid as anyone else was at that time.

00:30:11.064 --> 00:30:16.008
I think the time he started recording with Moody and Jimmy, I think he definitely sorted his time out by then.

00:30:16.067 --> 00:30:17.890
I was thinking maybe when he was younger, but yeah.

00:30:18.009 --> 00:30:24.976
Yeah, and that's sort of a hallmark of guys who play solo too, who don't have an accompanist with them.

00:30:24.976 --> 00:30:26.897
they follow their own time.

00:30:27.358 --> 00:30:30.020
They do the John Lee Hooker thing or Lightnin' Hopkins.

00:30:30.382 --> 00:30:32.564
They change when they feel it's time to change.

00:30:33.144 --> 00:30:39.310
But once you start playing with people, and I think once Little Walter started playing with people, he probably sorted that out pretty quickly.

00:30:39.832 --> 00:30:42.335
You can hear it, I think, on his earliest recordings, too.

00:30:42.535 --> 00:30:50.222
He's playing fairly rhythmically on his earliest recordings, and his timing is pretty dang good.

00:30:50.804 --> 00:31:23.538
And when you also consider his influences, again, he's listening to pop music and he's listening to swing and Louis Jordan and all those horn players and so it's not like he's only coming out of the blues tradition right so it's funny how you know there's that one comment by Jimmy Rogers and it becomes sort of a gospel thing that's accepted you know as being completely true and I'm with Scott and Dennis on this one it's hard to imagine that that was a huge project for Walter in terms of perfecting his time so

00:31:24.239 --> 00:31:27.142
right well and I think it's evident on his first recording.

00:31:27.182 --> 00:31:34.088
So he made his first recording in 1947 in a record shop where there was a Maxwell Radio Record Co.

00:31:34.509 --> 00:31:39.473
So it's Oranel Blues, which he made with a guy called Otham Brown.

00:31:39.594 --> 00:31:41.435
So this is his very first recording.

00:31:41.455 --> 00:31:42.376
We've got that captured.

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.000
...

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.000
...

00:31:56.738 --> 00:31:57.038
Yes.

00:31:57.759 --> 00:32:04.666
And thankfully, you know, this is just like a literally like a little back room, a portable recording type situation.

00:32:04.707 --> 00:32:10.054
But they put out a few records and, you know, of the guys who were out playing on Maxwell Street at that time.

00:32:10.114 --> 00:32:11.434
And Little Walter was among them.

00:32:11.556 --> 00:32:12.517
So he got lucky.

00:32:12.576 --> 00:32:20.026
By the way, I should mention, too, that Floyd Jones, who was kind of a contemporary of Little Walter's and, you know, in Chicago on the Chicago scene.

00:32:20.385 --> 00:32:22.509
He was a guitar player and later a bass player.

00:32:22.528 --> 00:32:23.710
Floyd Jones played.

00:32:23.874 --> 00:32:29.176
claimed that he made the first recording that little Walter ever made.

00:32:29.217 --> 00:32:34.916
They went into one of those recording booths where you can make a a single recording for 50 cents.

00:32:34.977 --> 00:32:41.167
And he said Little Walter backed him on guitar on that recording before he did the Oranelle record.

00:32:41.268 --> 00:32:43.011
Wow, I'd buy that for 50 cents.

00:32:43.451 --> 00:32:45.615
Hell yeah.

00:32:45.635 --> 00:32:46.837
Well, you mentioned him playing guitar.

00:32:46.857 --> 00:32:48.000
That's an interesting thing.

00:32:48.101 --> 00:32:50.785
A lot of people probably know that he played a little bit of guitar.

00:32:50.805 --> 00:32:51.946
There was a few photos of him.

00:32:51.987 --> 00:32:54.090
But it sounds like he played quite a lot of guitar, didn't he?

00:32:54.111 --> 00:32:57.917
He actually recorded quite a lot of guitar.

00:33:06.913 --> 00:33:22.797
Yeah, I at one point decided to just dig into that and I compiled a little collection and I think there are 11 recordings, 11 recordings that I've been able to find where he's on guitar, several of them where he's backing himself.

00:33:23.137 --> 00:33:33.767
There's a record that came out on Delmar called The Blues World of Little Walter that features some of his things where he was recording and playing guitar and singing on record.

00:33:33.807 --> 00:33:41.953
And then he backed Muddy Waters, Jimmy Rogers, and a piano player named Eddie Ware, who was Jimmy Rogers' piano player.

00:33:42.255 --> 00:33:44.056
And his guitar playing was solid.

00:33:44.076 --> 00:33:50.682
I think it's kind of obvious if you're a guitar player, you're going, yeah, this is a guy who doesn't play guitar full time all the time.

00:33:51.201 --> 00:34:13.746
But for blues guitar playing, it's totally He was a really good guitar player, and someone who saw him play at the University of Chicago in the early 60s wrote a review that said that on stage he only played harmonica, but backstage he was playing guitar, and in this review they said someone is missing a huge opportunity by not recording him on guitar because he has a beautiful guitar style.

00:34:14.106 --> 00:34:18.510
Sadly, I don't think he ever made any more guitar recordings after the 50s.

00:34:18.972 --> 00:34:36.050
Yeah, Billy Boyd told me that, again, it was one of those first times he saw Walter in the the clubs Walter did play a little guitar on the bandstand but Billy Boy said that was the only time he ever saw Walter play on the bandstand and Billy Boy saw Walter hundreds of times so

00:34:36.070 --> 00:34:54.672
yeah and I should mention this this reminds me of the the famous story that both Walter and Lewis told this story so it's it's not a legend or a myth that Walter used to out on the road when he was playing with Lewis there were always guys who wanted to challenge him on harmonica I can play better than you, little Walter.

00:34:54.751 --> 00:34:57.157
So Walter would invite them up.

00:34:57.398 --> 00:35:03.972
Before inviting them up, he would switch and have Louis Myers blow harmonica, and Walter would play guitar while Louis...

00:35:04.641 --> 00:35:07.025
Cut the head of the other guy.

00:35:07.065 --> 00:35:10.331
That's an expression that means he put the other guy in his place.

00:35:10.972 --> 00:35:12.815
Lewis was a great harmonica player.

00:35:13.295 --> 00:35:24.512
Well, it goes to show, right, even if he had, you know, reasonably rudimentary guitar skills, that's important, you know, even as the greatest harmonica player that, you know, to have those other knowledge of other instruments.

00:35:24.813 --> 00:35:25.373
Yeah, yeah.

00:35:25.570 --> 00:35:34.300
Going back to that recording in 1947, so as I say, he recorded that Oranelle Blues, but then he also recorded I Just Keep Loving Her during that take in which he sings, right?

00:35:34.360 --> 00:35:43.552
Because I think, you know, there's association when he's playing with Muddy Waters that he didn't start singing until he went solo, but obviously he's singing right then, you know, on his first recording, yeah.

00:35:44.132 --> 00:35:51.762
Yeah, I think he wanted to have his own career rather than backing someone else, but it just didn't really happen for him.

00:35:51.842 --> 00:35:58.702
Maybe it didn't happen because he was too closely connected aligned with John Lee Williamson, and maybe there's like, oh, we already have one of those.

00:35:58.722 --> 00:36:12.538
I had a conversation with Jerry Portnoy once about John Lee Williamson, and he was saying that he thought that all Chicago blues harmonica goes back to the later John Lee Williamson, the post-war John Lee Williamson.

00:36:13.820 --> 00:36:24.411
You can follow it all back there, and I kind of disagreed with that, because one of the things that Walter did that John Lee Williamson didn't do as much is syncopate his rhythms.

00:36:25.152 --> 00:36:27.456
John Lee Williamson specialized...

00:36:27.615 --> 00:36:29.257
I mean, listen to Little Walter's first recording.

00:36:29.277 --> 00:36:31.260
That's kind of the way John Lee Williamson played.

00:36:31.822 --> 00:36:32.922
But it was very rhythmic.

00:36:33.003 --> 00:36:35.806
It was very much, you sort of play the melody.

00:36:35.847 --> 00:36:39.753
He didn't really go off the sheet music so much.

00:36:40.253 --> 00:36:42.096
John Lee Williamson, I should say.

00:36:42.135 --> 00:36:43.257
Little Walter...

00:36:43.650 --> 00:37:02.485
almost immediately was like improvising stuff that john lee williamson just never did from his very first recordings he was playing things that that were sort of outside the john lee williamson thing and that's where the little walter style i think came from is the stuff where you know where he's like okay i'm gonna move on from john lee williamson now

00:37:02.927 --> 00:37:16.259
yeah and i think that's a good indication of why we all probably consider him to be the the greatest blues harmonica player right because particularly back then the guys kind of had the stock riffs right you could definitely tell Well, you

00:37:18.981 --> 00:37:39.664
know, they played kind of repeated riffs quite a lot, but he didn't do that, right?

00:37:43.568 --> 00:37:50.695
You know, the question that is always in the back of my mind whenever I think about Little, what drove him?

00:37:50.735 --> 00:37:51.536
What drove him?

00:37:51.577 --> 00:37:57.342
What was the guiding principle that made him just continually strive for something new?

00:37:57.402 --> 00:38:00.485
And I think it's that he just wanted to do something no one else was doing.

00:38:00.865 --> 00:38:03.429
I once heard a story, an anecdote.

00:38:03.829 --> 00:38:08.974
Little Willie Anderson was kind of a Little Walter disciple in the 50s and 60s.

00:38:09.356 --> 00:38:23.152
And I heard a story that Little Willie Anderson would go see Little Walter and little Walter would just try and mess with little Willie's mind, and he would play some crazy lick and then look right at Willie Anderson, who's standing in front of the stage and say...

00:38:23.554 --> 00:38:24.755
try and cop that

00:38:26.836 --> 00:38:52.099
so we mentioned that he probably you know he might want to be a saxophone player but couldn't afford to get a harmonica he clearly listened to a lot of jazz a lot of harmonica so you know Dennis right we talked on our last podcast about you know you know you're playing low tuned harmonicas to try and get that sort of baritone sax sound so I think he was definitely maybe the first person to try and imitate the saxophone and the harmonica Dennis what do you think about you know he's playing for the respect of that

00:38:52.298 --> 00:38:56.346
well yeah I I mean, I agree with everything Scott's saying about this.

00:38:56.666 --> 00:38:58.150
I also think there are other things at play.

00:38:58.210 --> 00:39:02.679
I mean, I'm sure he did want to do other things that other players weren't doing.

00:39:03.021 --> 00:39:04.885
He was also that guy.

00:39:04.905 --> 00:39:08.492
You know, I mean, he had that musical gift.

00:39:09.090 --> 00:39:12.173
to blend different things that he was drawn to.

00:39:12.213 --> 00:39:20.884
Of course, one of the big things being John Lee Williamson, but we also know he talked about and listened to a lot of jazz and R&B sax players.

00:39:21.525 --> 00:39:33.838
And what I hear when his style kind of got a little further away from just mimicking John Lee is he's incorporating probably everything else that he loved about music into his playing.

00:39:34.619 --> 00:39:36.101
So would it be the same?

00:39:36.737 --> 00:39:42.545
If John Lee wasn't around for him to first mimic and learn from, I would bet not so.

00:39:42.724 --> 00:39:43.686
Would it still be amazing?

00:39:43.746 --> 00:39:47.650
I'm probably sure it would be because that's just who Walter was musically.

00:39:47.690 --> 00:39:49.353
That's just part of him.

00:39:49.753 --> 00:39:55.260
But it certainly would have been different, I think, without him learning from the style of John Lee.

00:39:55.440 --> 00:40:03.030
So he definitely added something different, but he added to that foundation for sure that we can all hear that when we study what he did.

00:40:03.585 --> 00:40:05.568
I think Walter really wanted to swing.

00:40:05.608 --> 00:40:06.047
Yeah.

00:40:06.288 --> 00:40:15.195
Billy Boy mentioned that Walter had told folks that he, he kind of got frustrated playing with Muddy because, uh, and they kept playing that same old slow shit.

00:40:15.356 --> 00:40:15.976
Yeah.

00:40:15.996 --> 00:40:30.208
And, uh, he, and you can hear in like, uh, just keep loving her, you know, like even in the earliest recordings, Walter's playing really pops, it jumps, it swings, you know, he's got a really beautiful swing feel to, to his approach to music.

00:40:30.268 --> 00:40:35.775
And I think that's what he unleashed, you know, when, uh, He did juke and broke things wide open.

00:40:36.675 --> 00:40:36.755
Yeah.

00:40:36.775 --> 00:40:38.677
If I can jump in on that a little bit.

00:40:38.858 --> 00:40:41.681
Remember, too, that Walter was playing with Muddy.

00:40:42.041 --> 00:40:44.364
Muddy was a generation older than Walter.

00:40:44.405 --> 00:40:44.784
Right.

00:40:45.326 --> 00:40:52.954
And Dave Myers told me once that one of the reasons little Walter moved on from Muddy, even though it was a good gig, right?

00:40:52.994 --> 00:40:55.056
It's probably the best harmonica gig that ever existed.

00:40:55.257 --> 00:40:58.900
But one of the reasons he moved on is he said Muddy played too slow.

00:40:58.920 --> 00:40:59.581
Right.

00:40:59.746 --> 00:41:01.295
Muddy always played slow stuff.

00:41:01.355 --> 00:41:02.260
And, you know, that's true.

00:41:02.280 --> 00:41:03.547
That's part of Muddy's thing.

00:41:03.606 --> 00:41:05.135
That's part of what made Muddy great.

00:41:05.436 --> 00:41:07.246
But little Walter didn't want to play slow.

00:41:07.938 --> 00:41:09.980
He played fast, like John Lee Williamson said.

00:41:10.039 --> 00:41:11.420
He played fast, you know.

00:41:12.121 --> 00:41:28.735
Like Billy Boy mentioned to me that, you know, even like in terms of the different clubs that were available as venues to them, that Muddy preferred, I think it was the Zanzibar, where Billy Boy described that as a place where people came and sat and listened to the music.

00:41:29.536 --> 00:41:35.262
Whereas, you know, Walter played at Silvio's and other places, you know, where there's more of a dance crowd, you know.

00:41:35.302 --> 00:41:37.182
So there was even a difference in terms of...

00:41:37.903 --> 00:41:39.695
of some of the venues that they worked at.

00:41:40.097 --> 00:41:46.463

Little Walter retrospective

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