Guitar glories

Joe Louis Walker's six-string sabbath

by Bill Kisliuk

"I guess if your name is John, you weren't meant to participate on this record," says bluesman Joe Louis Walker.

Indeed, John Lee Hooker and Johnny Winter couldn't contribute to Walker's latest, Great Guitars (Verve), because of contractual restrictions and schedule problems. And funk forefather Johnny "Guitar" Watson passed on before he could add those signature riffs forged in the Houston club circuit.

But distinguished guitarists named Gatemouth, Ike, Buddy, and Bonnie did play a role in Walker's long-nurtured dream to lead a diverse blues-guitar congregation. The result is a unique collaboration with 12 notable guitarists. It is also the strongest record in years from Walker, the 47-year-old California guitarist and singer who emerged from obscurity a decade ago to carve a niche as a singular contemporary bluesman.

Walker's brittle guitar work is fiery and distinctive, as are his gospel-flavored vocals. Years of gigging experience plus recent credits as a producer helped prepare him for work on this new CD, which covers traditional electric-blues sounds like "High Blood Pressure," with durable Mississippi Delta original Robert Jr. Lockwood, and accessible, soulful shuffles like "Low Down Dirty Blues," with Bonnie Raitt.

"I didn't write songs so much for me as I wrote for the guests," says Walker, who also utilized the Memphis and Johnny Nocturne Horns, as well as his regular backing band, the Bosstalkers, for the sessions. "I tried to have material that was flattering to the musicians who were performing on it."

Despite the wide array of guests -- from left-handed Chicago killer Otis Rush to the folksy roustabout named Taj Mahal -- Great Guitars is smoother and more groovin' than any Walker outing in years. Part of the credit goes to co-producer and guitar guest Steve Cropper, the Memphis session legend whose rhythm work (with Booker T. and the MG's, Albert King, Sam and Dave, etc.) has been a huge influence on pop music for 30 years.

"With Crop you have someone who has a history in this music," says Walker. "He knows where you are coming from, and basically knows where you are trying to get to. If we're trying to get an Albert King feeling or a Chicago feeling, Cropper ain't got to listen to the old records to know what you're talking about. He'll tell you stuff you can't articulate yourself."

A San Francisco native, Walker can trace his own musical path back nearly as far as Cropper's, to the musical circus of the city's late 1960s. Country bluesman Lightnin' Hopkins and Chicago originals like Otis Rush and James Cotton were opening before hippie audiences catching the Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead, and Walker played in bands that opened for the bluesmen at smaller clubs. At the same time, some Chicago bluesmen were bolting the snowbelt for the warmer climes. The late guitarist Michael Bloomfield (Walker's Haight-Ashbury roommate, friend, and mentor), Charlie Musselwhite, and Luther Tucker led the charge to the Bay Area.

Although Walker benefitted from the alchemy of the times, he also suffered from its excesses. After his apprenticeship in SF blues bands and an unhappy journey to Canada, he cleaned up and joined a gospel group known as the Spiritual Corinthians. He stayed for 10 years, recording one LP. His first secular solo disc was the 1985 Hightone Records release Cold Is the Night, on which his high-pitched vocal intonations and crackling, busy guitar work immediately stood out. Since that time, he has continually refined his ambitious blend of blues and gospel feeling with sophisticated song structures and arrangements to create his own distinctive sound.

On Great Guitars, Walker reaps the fruit of longstanding links with Raitt, Rush, and California jump-blues magician Little Charlie Baty. Also on board for one cut apiece are six-string heavies Buddy Guy, Matt "Guitar" Murphy, legendary Texas rattlesnake Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Ike Turner, and even Scotty Moore, the guitarist on Elvis Presley's watershed Sun recordings.

"One big reason for this is to show that American music is all about cross-pollination." And what's happening now with blues guitar, he observes, is that a lot of players "are re-creating the older styles because they never got a chance to hear those [original] guys. There's nothing wrong with that. But for the blues to be viable, it has to be brought into the future."