SOUND PROJECTIONS
AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE
EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU
WINTER, 2016
VOLUME TWO NUMBER TWO
NINA SIMONE
AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE
EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU
WINTER, 2016
VOLUME TWO NUMBER TWO
Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:
NAT KING COLE
January 2-8
ETTA JAMES
January 9-15
JACKIE MCLEAN
January 16-22
TERRI LYNE CARRINGTON
January 23-29
NANCY WILSON
January 30-February 5
BOB MARLEY
February 6-12
LOUIS ARMSTRONG
February 13-19
HORACE SILVER
February 20-26
SHIRLEY HORN
February 27-March 4
T-BONE WALKER
March 5-11
HOWLIN’ WOLF
March 12-18
DIANNE REEVES
March 19-25
T-Bone Walker
(1910-1975)
Artist Biography by Bill Dahl
Modern electric blues guitar can be traced directly back to this Texas-born pioneer, who began amplifying his sumptuous lead lines for public consumption circa 1940 and thus initiated a revolution so total that its tremors are still being felt today.
Few major postwar blues guitarists come to mind that don't owe T-Bone Walker an unpayable debt of gratitude. B.B. King has long cited him as a primary influence, marveling at Walker's penchant for holding the body of his guitar outward while he played it. Gatemouth Brown, Pee Wee Crayton, Goree Carter, Pete Mayes, and a wealth of other prominent Texas-bred axemen came stylistically right out of Walker during the late '40s and early '50s. Walker's nephew, guitarist R.S. Rankin, went so far as to bill himself as T-Bone Walker, Jr. for a 1962 single on Dot, "Midnight Bells Are Ringing" (with his uncle's complete blessing, of course; the two had worked up a father-and-son-type act long before that).
Aaron Thibeault Walker was a product of the primordial Dallas blues scene. His stepfather, Marco Washington, stroked the bass fiddle with the Dallas String Band, and T-Bone followed his stepdad's example by learning the rudiments of every stringed instrument he could lay his talented hands on. One notable visitor to the band's jam sessions was the legendary Blind Lemon Jefferson. During the early '20s, Walker led the sightless guitarist from bar to bar as the older man played for tips.
In 1929, Walker made his recording debut with a single 78 for Columbia, "Wichita Falls Blues"/"Trinity River Blues," billed as Oak Cliff T-Bone. Pianist Douglas Fernell was his musical partner for the disc. Walker was exposed to some pretty outstanding guitar talent during his formative years; besides Jefferson, Charlie Christian -- who would totally transform the role of the guitar in jazz with his electrified riffs much as Walker would with blues, was one of his playing partners circa 1933.
T-Bone Walker split the Southwest for Los Angeles during the mid-'30s, earning his keep with saxophonist Big Jim Wynn's band with his feet rather than his hands as a dancer. Popular bandleader Les Hite hired Walker as his vocalist in 1939. Walker sang "T-Bone Blues"with the Hite aggregation for Varsity Records in 1940, but didn't play guitar on the outing. It was about then, though, that his fascination with electrifying his axe bore fruit; he played L.A. clubs with his daring new toy after assembling his own combo, engaging in acrobatic stage moves -- splits, playing behind his back -- to further enliven his show.
Capitol Records was a fledgling Hollywood concern in 1942, when Walker signed on and cut "Mean Old World" and "I Got a Break Baby" with boogie master Freddie Slack hammering the 88s. This was the first sign of the T-Bone Walker that blues guitar aficionados know and love, his fluid, elegant riffs and mellow, burnished vocals setting a standard that all future blues guitarists would measure themselves by.
Chicago's Rhumboogie Club served as Walker's home away from home during a good portion of the war years. He even cut a few sides for the joint's house label in 1945 under the direction of pianist Marl Young. But after a solitary session that same year for Old Swingmaster that soon made its way on to another newly established logo, Mercury, Walker signed with L.A.-based Black & White Records in 1946 and proceeded to amass a stunning legacy.
The immortal "Call It Stormy Monday (But Tuesday Is Just as Bad)" was the product of a 1947 Black & White date with Teddy Buckner on trumpet and invaluable pianist Lloyd Glenn in the backing quintet. Many of Walker's best sides were smoky after-hours blues, though an occasional up-tempo entry -- "T-Bone Jumps Again," a storming instrumental from the same date, for example -- illustrated his nimble dexterity at faster speeds.
Walker recorded prolifically for Black & White until the close of 1947, waxing classics like the often-covered "T-Bone Shuffle" and "West Side Baby," though many of the sides came out on Capitol after the demise of Black & White. In 1950, Walker turned up on Imperial. His first date for the L.A. indie elicited the after-hours gem "Glamour Girl" and perhaps the penultimate jumping instrumental in his repertoire, "Strollin' With Bones" (Snake Sims' drum kit cracks like a whip behind Walker's impeccable licks).
Walker's 1950-54 Imperial stint was studded with more classics: "The Hustle Is On," "Cold Cold Feeling," "Blue Mood," "Vida Lee" (named for his wife), "Party Girl," and, from a 1952 New Orleans jaunt, "Railroad Station Blues," which was produced by Dave Bartholomew. Atlantic was T-Bone Walker's next stop in 1955; his first date for them was an unlikely but successful collaboration with a crew of Chicago mainstays (harpist Junior Wells, guitarist Jimmy Rogers, and bassist Ransom Knowling among them). Rogers found the experience especially useful; he later adapted Walker's "Why Not" as his own Chess hit "Walking by Myself." With a slightly more sympathetic L.A. band in staunch support, Walker cut two follow-up sessions for Atlantic in 1956-57. The latter date produced some amazing instrumentals ("Two Bones and a Pick," "Blues Rock," "Shufflin' the Blues") that saw him dueling it out with his nephew, jazzman Barney Kessel (Walker emerged victorious in every case).
Unfortunately, the remainder of Walker's discography isn't of the same sterling quality for the most part. As it had with so many of his peers from the postwar R&B era, rock's rise had made Walker's classy style an anachronism (at least during much of the 1960s). He journeyed overseas on the first American Folk Blues Festival in 1962, starring on the Lippmann & Rau-promoted bill across Europe with Memphis Slim, Willie Dixon, and a host of other American luminaries. A 1964 45 for Modern and an obscure LP on Brunswick preceded a pair of BluesWay albums in 1967-68 that restored this seminal pioneer to American record shelves.
European tours often beckoned. A 1968 visit to Paris resulted in one of his best latter-day albums, I Want a Little Girl, for Black & Blue (and later issued stateside on Delmark). With expatriate tenor saxophonist Hal "Cornbread" Singer and Chicago drummer S.P. Leary picking up Walker's jazz-tinged style brilliantly, the guitarist glided through a stellar set list.
Good Feelin'
Good Feelin', a 1970 release on Polydor, won a Grammy for the guitarist, though it doesn't rank with his best efforts. A five-song appearance on a 1973 set for Reprise, Very Rare, was also a disappointment. Persistent stomach woes and a 1974 stroke slowed Walker's career to a crawl, and he died in 1975.
No amount of written accolades can fully convey the monumental importance of what T-Bone Walker gave to the blues. He was the idiom's first true lead guitarist, and undeniably one of its very best.
Artist Biography by Bill Dahl
Modern electric blues guitar can be traced directly back to this Texas-born pioneer, who began amplifying his sumptuous lead lines for public consumption circa 1940 and thus initiated a revolution so total that its tremors are still being felt today.
Few major postwar blues guitarists come to mind that don't owe T-Bone Walker an unpayable debt of gratitude. B.B. King has long cited him as a primary influence, marveling at Walker's penchant for holding the body of his guitar outward while he played it. Gatemouth Brown, Pee Wee Crayton, Goree Carter, Pete Mayes, and a wealth of other prominent Texas-bred axemen came stylistically right out of Walker during the late '40s and early '50s. Walker's nephew, guitarist R.S. Rankin, went so far as to bill himself as T-Bone Walker, Jr. for a 1962 single on Dot, "Midnight Bells Are Ringing" (with his uncle's complete blessing, of course; the two had worked up a father-and-son-type act long before that).
Aaron Thibeault Walker was a product of the primordial Dallas blues scene. His stepfather, Marco Washington, stroked the bass fiddle with the Dallas String Band, and T-Bone followed his stepdad's example by learning the rudiments of every stringed instrument he could lay his talented hands on. One notable visitor to the band's jam sessions was the legendary Blind Lemon Jefferson. During the early '20s, Walker led the sightless guitarist from bar to bar as the older man played for tips.
In 1929, Walker made his recording debut with a single 78 for Columbia, "Wichita Falls Blues"/"Trinity River Blues," billed as Oak Cliff T-Bone. Pianist Douglas Fernell was his musical partner for the disc. Walker was exposed to some pretty outstanding guitar talent during his formative years; besides Jefferson, Charlie Christian -- who would totally transform the role of the guitar in jazz with his electrified riffs much as Walker would with blues, was one of his playing partners circa 1933.
T-Bone Walker split the Southwest for Los Angeles during the mid-'30s, earning his keep with saxophonist Big Jim Wynn's band with his feet rather than his hands as a dancer. Popular bandleader Les Hite hired Walker as his vocalist in 1939. Walker sang "T-Bone Blues"with the Hite aggregation for Varsity Records in 1940, but didn't play guitar on the outing. It was about then, though, that his fascination with electrifying his axe bore fruit; he played L.A. clubs with his daring new toy after assembling his own combo, engaging in acrobatic stage moves -- splits, playing behind his back -- to further enliven his show.
Capitol Records was a fledgling Hollywood concern in 1942, when Walker signed on and cut "Mean Old World" and "I Got a Break Baby" with boogie master Freddie Slack hammering the 88s. This was the first sign of the T-Bone Walker that blues guitar aficionados know and love, his fluid, elegant riffs and mellow, burnished vocals setting a standard that all future blues guitarists would measure themselves by.
Chicago's Rhumboogie Club served as Walker's home away from home during a good portion of the war years. He even cut a few sides for the joint's house label in 1945 under the direction of pianist Marl Young. But after a solitary session that same year for Old Swingmaster that soon made its way on to another newly established logo, Mercury, Walker signed with L.A.-based Black & White Records in 1946 and proceeded to amass a stunning legacy.
The immortal "Call It Stormy Monday (But Tuesday Is Just as Bad)" was the product of a 1947 Black & White date with Teddy Buckner on trumpet and invaluable pianist Lloyd Glenn in the backing quintet. Many of Walker's best sides were smoky after-hours blues, though an occasional up-tempo entry -- "T-Bone Jumps Again," a storming instrumental from the same date, for example -- illustrated his nimble dexterity at faster speeds.
Walker recorded prolifically for Black & White until the close of 1947, waxing classics like the often-covered "T-Bone Shuffle" and "West Side Baby," though many of the sides came out on Capitol after the demise of Black & White. In 1950, Walker turned up on Imperial. His first date for the L.A. indie elicited the after-hours gem "Glamour Girl" and perhaps the penultimate jumping instrumental in his repertoire, "Strollin' With Bones" (Snake Sims' drum kit cracks like a whip behind Walker's impeccable licks).
Walker's 1950-54 Imperial stint was studded with more classics: "The Hustle Is On," "Cold Cold Feeling," "Blue Mood," "Vida Lee" (named for his wife), "Party Girl," and, from a 1952 New Orleans jaunt, "Railroad Station Blues," which was produced by Dave Bartholomew. Atlantic was T-Bone Walker's next stop in 1955; his first date for them was an unlikely but successful collaboration with a crew of Chicago mainstays (harpist Junior Wells, guitarist Jimmy Rogers, and bassist Ransom Knowling among them). Rogers found the experience especially useful; he later adapted Walker's "Why Not" as his own Chess hit "Walking by Myself." With a slightly more sympathetic L.A. band in staunch support, Walker cut two follow-up sessions for Atlantic in 1956-57. The latter date produced some amazing instrumentals ("Two Bones and a Pick," "Blues Rock," "Shufflin' the Blues") that saw him dueling it out with his nephew, jazzman Barney Kessel (Walker emerged victorious in every case).
Unfortunately, the remainder of Walker's discography isn't of the same sterling quality for the most part. As it had with so many of his peers from the postwar R&B era, rock's rise had made Walker's classy style an anachronism (at least during much of the 1960s). He journeyed overseas on the first American Folk Blues Festival in 1962, starring on the Lippmann & Rau-promoted bill across Europe with Memphis Slim, Willie Dixon, and a host of other American luminaries. A 1964 45 for Modern and an obscure LP on Brunswick preceded a pair of BluesWay albums in 1967-68 that restored this seminal pioneer to American record shelves.
European tours often beckoned. A 1968 visit to Paris resulted in one of his best latter-day albums, I Want a Little Girl, for Black & Blue (and later issued stateside on Delmark). With expatriate tenor saxophonist Hal "Cornbread" Singer and Chicago drummer S.P. Leary picking up Walker's jazz-tinged style brilliantly, the guitarist glided through a stellar set list.
Good Feelin'
Good Feelin', a 1970 release on Polydor, won a Grammy for the guitarist, though it doesn't rank with his best efforts. A five-song appearance on a 1973 set for Reprise, Very Rare, was also a disappointment. Persistent stomach woes and a 1974 stroke slowed Walker's career to a crawl, and he died in 1975.
No amount of written accolades can fully convey the monumental importance of what T-Bone Walker gave to the blues. He was the idiom's first true lead guitarist, and undeniably one of its very best.
https://rockhall.com/inductees/t-bone-walker/bio/
T-Bone Walker
Biography
Inductee: Aaron Thibeaux Walker aka T-Bone Walker (vocals, guitar; born May 28, 1910, died March 16, 1975)
It was T-Bone Walker, B.B. King once said, who “really started me to want to play the blues. I can still hear T-Bone in my mind today, from that first record I heard, ‘Stormy Monday.’ He was the first electric guitar player I heard on record. He made me so that I knew I just had to go out and get an electric guitar.”
T-Bone Walker was born Aaron Thibeaux Walker to musical parents on May 28, 1910, in Linden, Texas. When he was two, his family moved to Dallas. Through his church choir and his street-singing stepfather, Marco Washington, he became interested in music. He got his nickname T-Bone at an early age. His mother called him T-Bow, a shortening of his middle name Thibeaux, and it soon became T-Bone. By the time he was 10, T-Bone was accompanying his stepfather at drive-in soft-drink stands. Around the same time, he became the “lead boy” for Blind Lemon Jefferson, who was the most popular and influential country bluesman of the Twenties. From 1920 to 1923, Walker would lead Jefferson down Texas streets.
While still in his teens, Walker, who was self-taught on guitar, banjo and ukulele, toured with a medicine show and with blues singer Ida Cox. In 1929, he began recording acoustic country blues under the name Oak Cliff T-Bone. In 1934, he moved to Los Angeles. He said he began playing amplified guitar shortly thereafter. If that is true, then he was one of the first major guitarists to go electric. And, indeed, he pioneered the electric guitar sound that helped create the blues and thus influence all popular music that followed.
In 1939, Walker joined Les Hite’s Cotton Club Orchestra. It was a rough-and-tumble big band whose alumni included Dizzy Gillespie and Lionel Hampton. With the Hite band, Walker perfected his flowing, hornlike guitar licks and his mellow blues vocals. Over the next decade, he worked with both small groups and big bands, on the West Coast and on tours through the Midwest and all the way to New York.
He first recorded as T-Bone Walker in 1942, and the following year he had his biggest hit, “Call It Stormy Monday,” which as “Stormy Monday Blues” or just “Stormy Monday” has become one of the most frequently covered blues songs. Walker recorded for Black & White Records, the label that released “Stormy Monday,” until 1947. He recorded other classics for the label, including “T-Bone Shuffle” and “West Side Lady.”
In 1950, Walker signed with Imperial Records, where he remained until 1954. At Imperial, he cut “The Hustle Is On,” “Cold Cold Feeling,” “Blue Moon,” “Vida Lee” and “Party Girl.” He then moved on to Atlantic Records. He recorded sessions in 1955, 1956 and 1959, and they were finally released in 1960 on the album T-Bone Blues.
Walker’s career began to slow down during the Sixties. He made an appearance at the American Folk Blues Festival in 1962, performing with Memphis Slim and Willie Dixon, among others. In 1968, he released the album I Want a Little Girl. And, in 1971, he won the Grammy Award for Best Ethic or Traditional Folk Recording for the album Good Feelin’.
In 1973, Walker climaxed his recording career with the double album Very Rare. It was produced by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, and they assembled an all-star cast of jazz veterans and young studio pros to honor the great bluesman.
The following year, Walker became inactive after he was hospitalized with bronchial pneumonia. He died from the disease on March 16, 1975.
T-Bone Walker’s single-string solos influenced blues players like B.B. King and such rockers as Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan. As Pete Welding wrote: “T-Bone Walker is the fundamental source of the modern urban style of playing and singing the blues. The blues was different before he came onto the scene, and it hasn’t been the same since.”
http://www.biography.com/people/t-bone-walker-9522187
T-Bone Walker
Biography
Inductee: Aaron Thibeaux Walker aka T-Bone Walker (vocals, guitar; born May 28, 1910, died March 16, 1975)
It was T-Bone Walker, B.B. King once said, who “really started me to want to play the blues. I can still hear T-Bone in my mind today, from that first record I heard, ‘Stormy Monday.’ He was the first electric guitar player I heard on record. He made me so that I knew I just had to go out and get an electric guitar.”
T-Bone Walker was born Aaron Thibeaux Walker to musical parents on May 28, 1910, in Linden, Texas. When he was two, his family moved to Dallas. Through his church choir and his street-singing stepfather, Marco Washington, he became interested in music. He got his nickname T-Bone at an early age. His mother called him T-Bow, a shortening of his middle name Thibeaux, and it soon became T-Bone. By the time he was 10, T-Bone was accompanying his stepfather at drive-in soft-drink stands. Around the same time, he became the “lead boy” for Blind Lemon Jefferson, who was the most popular and influential country bluesman of the Twenties. From 1920 to 1923, Walker would lead Jefferson down Texas streets.
While still in his teens, Walker, who was self-taught on guitar, banjo and ukulele, toured with a medicine show and with blues singer Ida Cox. In 1929, he began recording acoustic country blues under the name Oak Cliff T-Bone. In 1934, he moved to Los Angeles. He said he began playing amplified guitar shortly thereafter. If that is true, then he was one of the first major guitarists to go electric. And, indeed, he pioneered the electric guitar sound that helped create the blues and thus influence all popular music that followed.
In 1939, Walker joined Les Hite’s Cotton Club Orchestra. It was a rough-and-tumble big band whose alumni included Dizzy Gillespie and Lionel Hampton. With the Hite band, Walker perfected his flowing, hornlike guitar licks and his mellow blues vocals. Over the next decade, he worked with both small groups and big bands, on the West Coast and on tours through the Midwest and all the way to New York.
He first recorded as T-Bone Walker in 1942, and the following year he had his biggest hit, “Call It Stormy Monday,” which as “Stormy Monday Blues” or just “Stormy Monday” has become one of the most frequently covered blues songs. Walker recorded for Black & White Records, the label that released “Stormy Monday,” until 1947. He recorded other classics for the label, including “T-Bone Shuffle” and “West Side Lady.”
In 1950, Walker signed with Imperial Records, where he remained until 1954. At Imperial, he cut “The Hustle Is On,” “Cold Cold Feeling,” “Blue Moon,” “Vida Lee” and “Party Girl.” He then moved on to Atlantic Records. He recorded sessions in 1955, 1956 and 1959, and they were finally released in 1960 on the album T-Bone Blues.
Walker’s career began to slow down during the Sixties. He made an appearance at the American Folk Blues Festival in 1962, performing with Memphis Slim and Willie Dixon, among others. In 1968, he released the album I Want a Little Girl. And, in 1971, he won the Grammy Award for Best Ethic or Traditional Folk Recording for the album Good Feelin’.
In 1973, Walker climaxed his recording career with the double album Very Rare. It was produced by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, and they assembled an all-star cast of jazz veterans and young studio pros to honor the great bluesman.
The following year, Walker became inactive after he was hospitalized with bronchial pneumonia. He died from the disease on March 16, 1975.
T-Bone Walker’s single-string solos influenced blues players like B.B. King and such rockers as Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan. As Pete Welding wrote: “T-Bone Walker is the fundamental source of the modern urban style of playing and singing the blues. The blues was different before he came onto the scene, and it hasn’t been the same since.”
http://www.biography.com/people/t-bone-walker-9522187
T-Bone Walker
Guitarist, Songwriter, Singer (1910–1975)Quick Facts
Blues
guitarist and singer-songwriter T-Bone Walker is best known for his hit
song "Stormy Monday" and has been called the Charlie Parker of Blues
guitar.
Synopsis
T-Bone Walker was born on May 28, 1910, in Linden, Texas. He recorded "Trinity River Blues" and "Witchita Falls Blues" in 1929, then played with a 16-piece band until 1934. In 1939, he became a guitarist and singer-songwriter for Les Hite's Cotton Club Orchestra. In the 1940s, he went solo and made "Stormy Monday." After touring in the 1950s and 1960s, he died on March 16, 1975, at the age of 64, in Los Angeles, California.T-Bone Walker and the language of electric blues
Posted by mcorcoran on May 22, 2014
At first Jimmie Vaughan seems a little overwhelmed by the question, as if he’s an Olympic swimmer who’s just been asked to describe the role of water in his sport.
“How significant was T–Bone Walker to the evolution of the blues?” he repeats the question. “Well,” he says after a long pause, raising his index finger. “You look back at everyone who’s ever stood in front of a band playing the guitar and it all traces back to one man. T-Bone Walker was the first person to ever play blues on an electric guitar: How significant is that?”
But Vaughan knows Walker’s contributions go deeper than having access to new technology. Leaving it at that is like lauding a brilliant author for being the first to write a book using a word processor.
“T-Bone created a whole new language for the guitar,” says Vaughan, whose concise leads and impeccable sense of swing and rhythm show that his guitar speaks T-Bone fluently. He reaches for his 1951 Gibson hollow-body electric on the couch in his manager’s office on South Lamar; axe in hands he seems more comfortable talking about Walker, whose work in the 1940s was as major a musical influence as Texas has produced. Vaughan starts playing riffs you’ve heard on records by the Rolling Stones, Chuck Berry, Eric Clapton and Vaughan’s former Fabulous Thunderbirds and the conversation comes alive.
“You’ve heard this one a hundred times before,” he says, playing the driving intro to “The Crawl,” a T-Bird mainstay. “That’s a T-Bone lick. Here’s another,” he says, strumming the harmonic chords that open Walker’s most enduring composition, “Call It Stormy Monday.” Vaughan then hits a note and sustains it with a finger wiggle a la B.B. King, performs a jazz-billy run like the ones Scotty Moore used to play with Elvis Presley, executes the bent-note double stops identified with Chuck Berry, then apes the choppy rhythms of nascent funk guitarist Jimmy Nolen of James Brown’s band. These licks all started with Walker, who was born in Linden and raised in Dallas. The electric guitar has been the defining instrument of the past 50 years and T-Bone Walker was the first guitar hero.
“You know how everyone was blown away when they first heard Jimi Hendrix?” Vaughan asks. “Well, imagine what it must’ve been like to hear T-Bone for the first time, when those riffs were brand new.” Hendrix had contemporaries who were doing amazing things — Clapton, Jeff Beck, Link Wray, Buddy Guy — but before T-Bone there was no such thing as electric blues. He was the template for so many great guitarists who would follow. In Texas, a Mecca of electric blues guitarists, you had Austin’s Pee Wee Crayton, Orange’s Gatemouth Brown, Beaumont’s Johnny Winter. Dallas gave us Freddie King and the Vaughan brothers, Jimmie and Stevie Ray, and Houston could boast Albert Collins, Johnny “Guitar” Watson, Johnny Copeland and Billy Gibbons, all carrying T-Bone’s torch.
Tuesday’s just as bad
Like Louis Armstrong, perhaps his only rival in terms of American musical innovation, Walker was a born entertainer who delivered flash with feeling. A former vaudeville dancer who shared stages with Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, among others, Walker had the nimble feet to match his hands. A razor-sharp dresser and silky smooth vocalist, he epitomized the slick uptown sophisticate. He held his guitar like a baby, perpendicular to his body, and caressed the strings on slower numbers. But his blond, hollow-bodied Gibson would suddenly transform into an acrobatic instrument, as T-Bone played it behind his head while he did splits.
Unfortunately, there’s almost no film footage of Walker in his post-war prime. But witnesses have described an insatiable showman who bridged Cab Calloway’s wild-eyed swing with Chuck Berry’s propulsive strolls and Hendrix’s histrionics. T-Bone did almost everything Jimi did later — from exploiting feedback to playing with his teeth — but stopped at setting his guitar on fire. (An inveterate gambler, T-Bone didn’t want to blow his stake on replacements.)
A true case of being ahead of his time, or at least too early for adequate documentation, T-Bone remains a woefully overlooked figure in the history of popular music. Such Chicago bluesmen as Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf are bigger icons. And B.B. King has made a healthy living from the bag of tricks he learned from Walker’s early recordings. Meanwhile, the Martin Scorsese-produced six-part documentary on “The Blues” made only passing mention of the genre’s most important guitarist.
“It’s impossible to spend an hour in a blues club and not hear a dozen T-Bone inventions,” says Vaughan. “And half the players have no idea who they’re copying.”
The way Vaughan found out about Walker in the early ’60s was the way he found out about all his heroes, by tracing backward. “I heard ‘Hideaway’ on the radio and bought a Freddie King record. And on the back of the record it said that he was influenced by T-Bone Walker, so I went out and got a T-Bone record.”
Jimmie Vaughan.
One evening in the mid-’60s, Vaughan met his idol at the Empire Ballroom on Hall Street in Dallas. “He wasn’t even on the bill. It was B.B. King, Freddie King and Little Milton, but T-Bone had showed up to sit in on organ,” Vaughan recalls, with a giddiness that seems to never have subsided. “He was there at the back door with his two little granddaughters and my jaw dropped. He was dressed to the nines, as always, and I said, ‘Man, you’re T-Bone Walker!’ I love your records.’ ” The legend made the kid’s day, talking to him for about 10 minutes.
Vaughan would see T-Bone several times over the years, until the great pioneer suffered a stroke on New Year’s Eve 1974 and died of bronchial pneumonia three months later. “He could hit a note like this,” Vaughan says, striking the bottom string, “and sustain it, and the women would fly out of their seats. He was the first guy who could do that.”
And thus, a million would-be guitar heroes were hatched.
Jazz instincts, blues roots
Aaron Thibeaux Walker grew up around music. His mother, Movelia, picked the guitar and sang the blues, and his stepfather, Marco Washington, played a variety of stringed instruments. A regular guest at the family’s house was the country blues great Blind Lemon Jefferson, who enlisted an 8-year-old T-Bone as his “lead boy,” to guide him from juke joints to street corners in Deep Ellum. You can’t get an education like that at Juilliard.
“He had a jazz player’s instincts, but he was brought up in the blues,” says Vaughan.
T-Bone’s first instrument was the banjo, which he preferred to the guitar because it was louder. But he made more tip money as a dancer and left Dallas as a teen to tour the South with medicine shows. He also played banjo and guitar with the Cab Calloway orchestra for a week — the gig was first prize in a talent contest — which led to a record deal with Columbia in 1929. But T-Bone, sounding like a pale imitation of blues crooner Leroy Carr, hadn’t yet found his identity when he recorded “Trinity River Blues” and “Wichita Falls” as Oak Cliff T-Bone. The 78 didn’t make much noise outside of Dallas.
In the early ’30s, Walker had a street act with Charlie Christian, an ex-Dallasite living in Oklahoma City, who would be immortalized as jazz’s first great electric guitarist. Let that settle in: The two greatest guitar pioneers of the 20th century were a pair of Texans who played together for tips on street corners in Oklahoma City. The pair were probably introduced to the electric guitar by Eddie Durham, the San Marcos native who made the first known amplified guitar recording on 1935’s “Hittin’ the Bottle” with the Jimmy Lunceford orchestra.
Eddie Durham, the pride of San Marcos.
It wasn’t until July 1942, however, that Walker played electric guitar on a record. Hired as a rhythm player for a session by bandleader Freddie Slack, Walker was given two spotlight turns, on “Mean Old World” and “I Got a Break Baby.” When Walker’s crisply pronounced notes interspersed with trumpetlike slurs and whelps, the guitar dropped its secondary status and popular music changed forever.
Before Walker, the blues was a solo acoustic form. With amplification bringing the guitar up front, no longer to be drowned out by horns or drums, T-Bone laid the full-band framework that would rule R&B in the post-war decade and eventually spin off into the rock ‘n’ roll combo.
“He didn’t model himself after anybody else,” Vaughan says. “He was the model.”
The electric guitar had been invented in 1931, when George Beauchamp devised the so-called “frying pan” lap steel for Rickenbacker. The guitar featured an electromagnetic pickup in which a current passed through a coil of wire wrapped around a magnet, creating a field that amplified the steel strings’ vibrations. For the first few years after its introduction, amplified guitars were strictly the domain of Hawaiian steel guitarists, but that would change in 1936, when Gibson developed a hollow-bodied, Spanish-styled electric,
George Beauchamp holding a Rickenbacker guitar.
At first, the idea of an electric guitar was scoffed at by band leaders, who saw the invention as a novelty, unable to produce “authentic” sounds. The appeal to players, however, was that they could, at last, pick out melody lines that could be heard over a band. While in Benny Goodman’s band in the late ’30s, Christian shut up the detractors with his complete mastery of the ES150, which would come to be tagged “the Charlie Christian guitar.” (Sadly, Christian died from tuberculosis in 1942.)
1947-48 would prove to be Walker’s landmark period. After signing with the Black & White label, led by “music first” mogul Ralph Bass, Walker and his crack band recorded more than 50 titles in 18 months, ranging from the raucous “T-Bone Boogie” to the pop ballad “I’m Still In Love With You” to the slow blues classic “Call It Stormy Monday.”
Fifteen years later, a 12-year-old white kid, sitting in his bedroom in T-Bone’s old neighborhood, was trying to duplicate Walker’s solos, puzzling out how to make the riffs part of his own musical lexicon. “I’d try to get into his head when I listened to his records,” Jimmie Vaughan says. “I’d wonder, ‘How did he get from here,’ ” he says, strumming a series of repetitive chords, “to here,” a jazz-inflected arpeggio.
The riffs Walker invented have become cliches, pounded into the ground by players who think they’re copying Duke Robillard. Nothing kills a thrill like hearing “Stormy Monday” by a band with three guitarists. You can go out, grab a snack and be back before they’re done telling you that Tuesday’s just as bad. Walker’s innovations are so dyed into the blues/rock fabric that it’s hard to believe that this music was once revolutionary.
But Jimmie Vaughan still remembers how he felt when he first heard T-Bone Walker. “T-Bone was a total original,” Vaughan says. “After I’d been exposed to his guitar-playing, I told myself that that’s what I wanted to do with my life. It pretty much ruined any chance that I’d end up with a responsible job.”
As he turns his ES150 on its side, so the strings are perpendicular to his body, Vaughan plays another favorite lick by his hero. “Hear that tone?” he says. Indeed, the notes resonate fuller. “That’s why he played the guitar like this. Amazing, huh?” He’s no longer in his bedroom, but in his manager’s office. And he’s still trying to get inside T-Bone’s musical mind. *
10 ELECTRIC GUITAR ALBUMS THAT SHOULD BE IN EVERY TEXAS BLUES FAN’S COLLECTION
BY MICHAEL CORCORAN
T–Bone Walker- ‘Blues Masters: The Very Best of T–Bone Walker‘ (Rhino)
This single disc gives a lot of Bone for the buck, but if you want to go the triple-disc route, get “The Complete Capitol/ Black & White Recordings” (Capitol).
Pee Wee Crayton- ‘The Complete Aladdin and Imperial Recordings’ (Capitol)
The first man to front a band with an electric guitar was Walker. The second was this Austin native, who, like B.B. King, began as a T-Bone acolyte but grew some swing of his own.
Clarence ‘Gatemouth’ Brown- ‘The Original Peacock Recordings’ (Rounder)
Gate’s 1950’s work with Don Robey is gritty electric blues at its best. Amazingly, the 79-year-old can still sling the heat.
Lightnin’ Hopkins- ‘The Herald Recordings’ (Collectables)
From sessions in the early ’50s, this raucous party represents the hard-driving soul that linked country and electric blues.
Freddie King- ‘Hideaway: The Best of Freddie King’ (Rhino)
Such dexterity. Such range. Such soul. This’ll make you melt all your old Eric Clapton albums.
Albert Collins- Frostbite’ (Alligator)
The greatest guitarist to ever play Antone’s is in top form on this 1980 release, which includes “Snowed In,” where the Iceman’s guitar duplicates the sound of a car trying to start on a cold winter
Johnny Copeland- ‘Texas Twister’ (Rounder)
This compiles the Houston native’s best work on Rounder, concluding with three Afro-blues tracks that “Clyde” recorded in Africa.
Johnny Winter- ‘Johnny Winter’ (Columbia)
Lousy voice, but what magnificently athletic axe work.
Fabulous Thunderbirds- ‘What’s the Word?’ (Takoma)
That rare white band that doesn’t come off like the Sha-Na-Na of the blues.
Stevie Ray Vaughan- ‘Texas Flood’ (Epic)
The album that almost singlehandedly resurrected the electric blues guitar hero in 1983. If T-Bone was the spark, SRV was the flame. The magic.
T-Bone Walker: a true musical innovator
Blues star T-Bone Walker died 40 years ago. He inspired BB King to play the electric guitar and led the way for Jimi Hendrix to play guitar with his teeth
T-Bone Walker plays at Jazz At The Philharmonic in London in 1967 Photo: David Redfern/Redferns
He was the first person to play blues on an electric guitar and led the way for blues maestro BB King, now 89, who says: “When I heard T-Bone Walker play the electric guitar I had to have one”.
As well as being a remarkable musician, Walker was one of the great
showmen. Even in the Forties, he would perform stage acrobatics such as
the splits. Walker did almost everything that Jimi Hendrix did later,
from exploiting feedback to playing the guitar behind his back to
playing his guitar with his teeth. No one of Walker's era would have set
a precious guitar on fire, however, so Hendrix must have learned that
one from someone else.
Chuck Berry
was another musician who learned his stagecraft from Walker. "All the
things people see me do on the stage I got from T-Bone Walker,” says
Berry, the master of the stage duckwalk.
T-Bone Walker performing at London's Hammersmith Odeon REDFERNS Walker was of African-American and Cherokee descent. His parents, Movelia Jimerson and Rance Walker, were both musicians and his nickname was given to him by an aunt (he had originally been called T-Bow). Walker was playing music from the age of five and was inspired in his early teenage years by the blues singers Ida Cox and Leroy Carr, Lonnie Johnson and Bessie Smith. "Bessie Smith is my favourite girl blues singer," Walker recalled in a 1947 interview. "Ma Rainey could sing the blues, but she couldn't sing the blues like Bessie. They had different styles. Bessie was the queen for everybody, better than Ethel Waters."
T-Bone Walker in 1968 REDFERNS
His golden period was between 1946 and 1950. Walker played regularly at the Rhumboogie club in Chicago and when it closed, at the end of the Second World War, the owner started Rhumboogie Records. Walker was one of the first artists to record for the label. The 10 songs he cut for that label got him noticed and in 1946 he signed to the more powerful Black And White Records.
Call It Stormy Monday (But Tuesday Is Just as Bad) was recorded in September 1947. This was to become the most famous of Walker's songs and has been covered by numerous musicians including Bobby Bland and The Allman Brothers. In this same period Walker recorded Inspiration Blues, T-Bone Shuffle, Go Back To The One You Love, Bobby Sox Blues, I’m Still In Love With You and West Side Baby.
Listen afresh and you will hear Walker had a sound and playing style all his own; unique phrasing with smooth and melodic staccato runs. He played solos that brought the guitar out of its role as an accompanying, rhythm-oriented instrument. He was one of the first musicians who proved that a guitar could go head-to-head with brass, pianos and woodwinds as a legitimate solo instrument.
Although his success back home in the Sixties was limited, he delighted audiences wherever he played and toured Europe regularly. Walker visited England several times during the decade (playing at big venues such at the Hammersmith Odeon and small ones such as the Wyvern Ale House in Leicester). Walker had one last triumph up sleeve, when his album Good Feelin′ won a Grammy Award for Best Ethnic or Traditional Folk Recording in 1971.
Walker had a stroke in 1974 and died, aged 64, of bronchial pneumonia following another stroke in March 1975. He remains a man who changed the face of music. As he said himself, a quote used in the original Telegraph obituary (printed below): "I played sweet blues."
http://www.pbs.org/theblues/songsartists/songsbioalpha.html
T-Bone Walker
Born: May 28, 1910, Linden, Texas
Died: March 16, 1975, Los Angeles, California
Also known as: Aaron Thibeaux Walker
Some music critics maintain that no one has ever matched T-Bone Walker's genius as an electric blues guitarist. His extraordinary talent influenced blues and rock greats, including Chuck Berry, Jimi Hendrix, B.B. King, Otis Rush and Stevie Ray Vaughan, among others. Walker was born into a musical family, and Texas blues legend Blind Lemon Jefferson was a family friend. As a boy Walker reportedly acted as escort to Jefferson when the blind musician played on the streets of Dallas, and was definitely influenced by Jefferson musically. Walker began his career in Texas and later moved to Los Angeles. Walker's absolute authority with the instrument translated into precise, incendiary musicianship complemented by a confident, masterful stage presence. His ability as a vocalist was every bit as impressive, and he is the author of many blues classics, including "Stormy Monday," which has been covered endlessly and would probably appear in any top 10 list of the best blues ever written.
Essential listening: "Stormy Monday," "Strollin' With Bones," "T-Bone Shuffle," "T-Bone Blues," "I Walked Away," "Cold Cold Feeling"
Born: May 28, 1910, Linden, Texas
Died: March 16, 1975, Los Angeles, California
Also known as: Aaron Thibeaux Walker
Some music critics maintain that no one has ever matched T-Bone Walker's genius as an electric blues guitarist. His extraordinary talent influenced blues and rock greats, including Chuck Berry, Jimi Hendrix, B.B. King, Otis Rush and Stevie Ray Vaughan, among others. Walker was born into a musical family, and Texas blues legend Blind Lemon Jefferson was a family friend. As a boy Walker reportedly acted as escort to Jefferson when the blind musician played on the streets of Dallas, and was definitely influenced by Jefferson musically. Walker began his career in Texas and later moved to Los Angeles. Walker's absolute authority with the instrument translated into precise, incendiary musicianship complemented by a confident, masterful stage presence. His ability as a vocalist was every bit as impressive, and he is the author of many blues classics, including "Stormy Monday," which has been covered endlessly and would probably appear in any top 10 list of the best blues ever written.
Essential listening: "Stormy Monday," "Strollin' With Bones," "T-Bone Shuffle," "T-Bone Blues," "I Walked Away," "Cold Cold Feeling"
https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fwaap
WALKER, AARON THIBEAUX [T-BONE]: 1910-1975
T-Bone Walker also known as Oak Cliff T-Bone, the only son of Rance and Movelia (Jamison, Jimerson) Walker, was born Aaron Thibeaux Walker in Linden, Texas, on May 28, 1910. Looking for a better future for her son, his mother left her husband and moved to Dallas, where Aaron attended Norman Washington Harllee School through the seventh grade. His mother played guitar, and his stepfather, Marco Washington, played bass and several other instruments. Family friendship with Blind Lemon Jefferson and Huddie Ledbetter familiarized him with the blues from infancy. T-Bone was recruited to lead Jefferson around the Central Avenue area, and he absorbed the legendary musician's style. While still in his teens, Walker met and married Vida Lee; they had three children.
Walker was a gifted dancer who taught himself guitar. Around 1925 he
joined Dr. Breeding's Big B Tonic medicine show, then toured the South
with blues artist Ida Cox. In 1929 in Dallas he cut his first record,
"Wichita Falls Blues," under the name Oak Cliff T-Bone, using the name
of his Dallas neighborhood. Around 1930, after winning first prize in an
amateur show promoted by Cab Calloway, Walker toured the South with
Calloway's band and worked with the Raisin' Cain show and several other
bands in Texas, including those of Count Biloski (Balaski) and Milt Larkin. He also appeared with Ma Rainey, a great figure in blues history, in her 1934 Fort Worth performances.
In
1935 Walker moved to Los Angeles, where he quickly made a name for
himself singing and playing banjo, and then guitar, for black audiences
in two popular nightclubs, Little Harlem and Club Alabam. Crowds of fans
were attracted to his acrobatic performances, which combined playing
and tap dancing, and in 1935 he became the first blues guitarist to play
the electric guitar. The Trocadero Club in Hollywood, where Walker had
become sufficiently well known to appear as a star, welcomed integrated
audiences after his 1936 performances. From 1940 to 1945 he toured with
Les Hite's Cotton Club orchestra as a featured vocalist; he recorded the
classic "T-Bone Blues" with Hite in New York City in 1940. Walker used a
fluid technique that combined the country blues tradition with more
polished contemporary swing, his style influenced by Francis (Scrapper)
Blackwell, Leroy Carr, and Lonnie Johnson. He was subsequently billed as
"Daddy of the Blues."
He also toured United States Army bases in the early 1940s and, recruited by boxing champion Joe Louis in 1942, went to Chicago, where he headlined a revue at the city's Rhumboogie Club so successfully that he returned year after year. In the mid-1940s he became a bandleader, signed a recording contract with the Black and White label, and turned out some of the best titles of his long recording career, including "Stormy Monday." Many of his songs reached the Top 10 on the Hit Parade. In the 1950s he recorded under the Imperial label and worked for Atlantic Records. In 1955 he underwent an operation for chronic ulcers.
In
the early 1960s T-Bone joined Count Basie's orchestra, appeared in
Europe with a package called Rhythm and Blues, U.S.A., and played at the
American Folk Blues Festival and Jazz at the Philharmonic. This began a
new phase of his career as a blues legend, during which he appeared
before largely white audiences. He was a regular attraction abroad,
where his recordings made him a great favorite, and he was a participant
on television shows and at jazz festivals in Monterey, California;
Nice, France; and Montreux, Switzerland. In Europe he recorded a Polydor
album entitled Good Feelin', which won the 1970 Grammy for ethnic-traditional recording. Among his other albums are Singing the Blues, Funky Town, and The Truth.
As an artist and performer, Walker was accurately evaluated by blues authority Pete Welding as "one of the deep, enduring wellsprings of the modern blues to whom many others have turned, and continue to return for inspiration and renewal." Among those he influenced were B. B. King, Pee Wee Crayton, Eric Clapton, Albert Collins, and Johnny Winter. Many titles from Walker's more than four decades of recording have been reissued. Walker died of a stroke in Los Angeles on March 16, 1975. His funeral at the Inglewood Cemetery was attended by more than a thousand mourners.
In 1980 T-Bone Walker was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame, and in 1987 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an early influence of the genre. He is also a member of the Houston Institute for Culture's Texas Music Hall of Fame. Walker's T-Bone Blues (1959, Atlantic) album was inducted as a Classic of Blues Recordings in the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in 2009.
John Chilton, Who's Who of Jazz: Storyville to Swing Street
(London: Bloomsbury Book Shop, 1970; American ed., New York and
Philadelphia: Chilton, 1972; 4th ed., New York: Da Capo Press, 1985).
Helen Oakley Dance, Stormy Monday: The T-Bone Walker Story (Baton Rouge: Lousiana State University, 1987). Stanley Dance, The World of Count Basie (New York: Scribner, 1980). Sheldon Harris, Blues Who's Who: A Biographical Dictionary of Blues Singers (New Rochelle, New York: Arlington House, 1979). Per Notini, Notes to T. Bone Walker: The Invention of the Electric Guitar Blues (Blues Boy LP, BB-304, 1983). Jim and Amy O'Neal, "Living Blues Interview: T-Bone Walker," Living Blues, Winter 1972–73, Spring 1973. Arnold Shaw, Honkers and Shouters: The Golden Years of Rhythm and Blues (New York: Macmillan, 1978).
Listen to this artist
He also toured United States Army bases in the early 1940s and, recruited by boxing champion Joe Louis in 1942, went to Chicago, where he headlined a revue at the city's Rhumboogie Club so successfully that he returned year after year. In the mid-1940s he became a bandleader, signed a recording contract with the Black and White label, and turned out some of the best titles of his long recording career, including "Stormy Monday." Many of his songs reached the Top 10 on the Hit Parade. In the 1950s he recorded under the Imperial label and worked for Atlantic Records. In 1955 he underwent an operation for chronic ulcers.
T-Bone Walker. Courtesy Houston Metropolitan Research
Center, Houston Public Library.
As an artist and performer, Walker was accurately evaluated by blues authority Pete Welding as "one of the deep, enduring wellsprings of the modern blues to whom many others have turned, and continue to return for inspiration and renewal." Among those he influenced were B. B. King, Pee Wee Crayton, Eric Clapton, Albert Collins, and Johnny Winter. Many titles from Walker's more than four decades of recording have been reissued. Walker died of a stroke in Los Angeles on March 16, 1975. His funeral at the Inglewood Cemetery was attended by more than a thousand mourners.
In 1980 T-Bone Walker was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame, and in 1987 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an early influence of the genre. He is also a member of the Houston Institute for Culture's Texas Music Hall of Fame. Walker's T-Bone Blues (1959, Atlantic) album was inducted as a Classic of Blues Recordings in the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in 2009.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96761445
T-Bone Walker's 'Stormy Monday'
December 12, 2012
T-Bone Walker cradles his beloved Gibson guitar.
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images Walker first recorded "Stormy Monday" in 1947. His daughter, Bernita Walker, says it's a classic because it speaks to everyone.
"You know, Monday morning most people don't want to get up to go to work cause they've had a great time over the weekend," she says, "and now they've got to hit that 9 to 5." She continues, echoing the lyrics, "Tuesday is just as bad. Wednesday's worse 'cause that's the hump day, and Thursday's also sad."
B. B. King picks up the song's tale of the work week.
"The eagle flies on Friday. [That] means that he gets paid."
After two nights of partying, it's time to straighten up and fly right.
"Sunday he go to church and fall on his knees and pray," King says. "That, I think, is one of the best ways of singing the blues."
The Texas Blues
T-Bone Walker was born Aaron Walker on May 28, 1910, in Linden, Texas. He started playing guitar and banjo when he was 13. Blind Lemon Jefferson was a family friend and an influence on Walker — the young man would lead the legendary blind blues musician to gigs.
Walker played in carnivals as a teenager — singing, dancing, playing banjo, accompanying such well-known blues singers as Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, and learning how to put on a show — a skill his daughter Bernita says he mastered.
"He would do the splits in time with the music that he was playing. And his facial [expressions] were just phenomenal. And the women would scream and holler. And even the men were clapping like, 'Go, Bone.' And I would just sit there smiling because that was my dad doing those great performances."
But T-Bone Walker was also a ground-breaking blues guitarist, says one of those who's followed in his footsteps: guitarist Duke Robillard.
"T-Bone Walker single-handedly developed the style and way to play blues on electric guitar that was totally different than anything that had been done before," says Robillard. "He used a lot of double timing in his soloing, which at that time was something only horn players did, you never heard a guitar player do it — very unusual and very innovative. He'd be playing actually twice as many notes per beat."
Walker Bridged Blues, Jazz
The guitarist and singer made his first recording — a blues 78 — when he was 19. He didn't record again for more than a decade, and by that time, he was playing in the Les Hite and Freddie Slack orchestras.
Walker had already met a young man who would do for jazz guitar what Walker did for blues — electrify it. Charlie Christian was six years younger than Walker. The two played shows together and Christian influenced Walker's approach to the blues. In the March 1977 issue of Guitar Player Magazine, the late Jimmy Witherspoon compared Walker to another jazz great.
"All I can say is that he's the Charlie Parker of guitars when it comes to blues," Witherspoon said. "And in jazz guitarists, he's right with Charlie Christian. No one else can touch T-Bone in the blues on guitar."
Walker went on to perform and record with the likes of Johnny Hodges, Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie and Count Basie, among many others.
The Roots Of Rock
Walker held the guitar differently — perpendicular to his body and parallel with the stage floor. He also played it behind his head long before Jimi Hendrix took that stunt mainstream. That wasn't the only Walker influence on rock 'n' roll.
"Chuck Berry just took T-Bone's style and put it to a different beat," says Robillard. "And a lot of the technique and the little T-Bone phrases that define his style, Chuck Berry, when he rearranged the beat, they became rock 'n roll guitar licks. So in essence, T-Bone was not only the first electric blues guitar player, but he was the first electric rock 'n roll guitar player, really."
But it was Walker's "Stormy Monday" blues that became his signature. Robillard says it's a different kind of blues.
"The guitar chord line, it's a little guitar ninth chord figure. That was a unique thing and it became T-Bone's signature. And that chord line seems to have grabbed everybody because everybody plays it with that line in it. And it's almost like a law, that you have to, when you play 'Stormy Monday.'"
T-Bone Walker not only inspired Robillard and B. B. King, but also Freddie and Albert King, Eric Clapton, Duane Allman and Stevie Ray Vaughan. Like B. B. King, Walker was a living link to pre-war blues for the younger generation of players. Walker continued performing almost to the end. But a lifetime of ill health and drinking led to a stroke in 1974. Aaron T-Bone Walker died on March 16, 1975.
Featured Artist
http://blues.about.com/od/artistprofile1/p/T-BoneWalker.htm
T-Bone Walker Profile
T-Bone Walker's Blues Masters: The Very Best Of.
Photo courtesy Rhino Records
Died: March 16, 1975 in Los Angeles CA
Blues guitarist T-Bone Walker is not only one of the most influential musicians to rise up from the fertile Texas blues scene, but his impact on blues guitar worldwide cannot be understated. One of, if not the first blues guitarist to plug his instrument into an amp and take it for a drive, Walker revolutionized electric blues and, in doing so, influenced artists from B.B. King and Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown to contemporary bluesmen like Dave Specter, Joe Louis Walker, and Ronnie Earl.
T-Bone and Blind Lemon Jefferson
Born Aaron Thibeaux Walker in rural Linden, Texas near the Louisiana border, Walker's family moved to Dallas when he was two years old. Walker began performing with his stepfather, Marco Washington, bass player for the Dallas String Band, where he developed a rudimentary knowledge of various string instruments.
Walker received his education in the blues from Blind Lemon Jefferson, however.
Jefferson befriended the young guitarist, who served as the sightless legend's eyes and collected his tips for him as he performed on street corners and in Dallas bars. In return, Jefferson taught Walker the basics of blues guitar. Walker was a quick study, and by his early teens he was touring with the Dr. Breeding Medicine Show and other carnivals.
Going to L.A.
By 1929, Walker's reputation was such that he was signed by Columbia Records and recorded two sides - "Wichita Falls Blues" and "Trinity River Blues" - under the name Oak Cliff T-Bone. In 1930, Walker won a talent contest in Dallas; first prize was the chance to perform with Cab Calloway's big band.
Walker would subsequently perform with a number of jazz-styled, Texas-area bands, including the Lawson Brooks Band. During this time, Walker became friends with guitarist Charlie Christian, considered to be one of the fathers of jazz guitar.
Walker moved to Los Angeles in 1934, where he performed with a number of small bands. In 1935 or '46, Walker began playing around with one of the first electric guitars, and it is widely believed that he was the first to play one of the electrified instruments in public.
In 1939, as a member of Les Hite's Cotton Club Orchestra, Walker recorded "T-Bone's Blues," one of the classic modern blues songs, with Walker singing. The song's success prompted Walker to leave Hite's band and form his own outfit.
Black & White Records
Walker began recording for Capitol Records in 1942, cutting songs like "Mean Old World" and "I Got A Break Baby" that displayed the emergence of Walker's individual style. Sometime during the early-1940s Walker relocated to Chicago, performing frequently at the city's Rhumboogie Club and recording for the club's label. A consummate showman, Walker was a dynamic performer that would thrill audiences by playing his guitar behind his back or between his legs, and doing splits and slides on stage.
Walker's onstage performance style would influence artists like Chuck Berry and Jimi Hendrix.
In 1946 Walker would return to L.A. and sign with the Black & White Records label. It was with Black & White that Walker began to build his legacy, recording songs like his signature, "Call It Stormy Monday (But Tuesday Is Just As Bad)" and "T-Bone Shuffle," which featured Walker's soulful vocals and elegant, jazz-flavored blues guitar. Several of the sides that Walker recorded for the label would later be released by Capitol after Black & White folded, but by that time he had signed with Imperial, where he would release classic material like "Vida Lee," "Cold Cold Feeling," and "Blue Mood" over the next five years.
Walker's Later Years
Walker signed with Atlantic Records in 1955, his first session for the label including the talents of players like Junior Wells and Jimmy Rogers. Subsequent sessions produced a number of songs, but by the end of the decade Walker's classy, jazzy blues style was pushed aside by audiences in favor of soul and rock 'n' roll. Walker's participation in the first American Folk Blues Festival alongside Willie Dixon and Memphis Slim in 1962 earned Walker a loyal European audience, and he would tour the continent frequently during his later years.
Walker recorded sporadically during the 1960s, and seldom to the standard of his 1940s and '50s work. Two stand-out albums include 1968's I Want A Little Girl and 1970's Good Feelin', for which Walker won a Grammy™ Award. Walker's live performances during this time would also become sporadic, as he would tour without a band, playing with whatever musicians the promoter could put together. Although the performances were often unpredictable, Walker's skills as a guitarist seldom failed to disappoint. Suffering from stomach problems caused by his long-term alcoholism, Walker would die in 1975 from pneumonia following a stroke.
Walker was inducted posthumously into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1980 and into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. Walker was ranked #47 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.
Recommended Albums: T-Bone Walker's discography is a landmine of dubious releases, shabby repackaging, and half-baked compilations. Rhino's single-disc Blues Masters: The Very Best of T-Bone Walker spans the guitarist's productive 1945-1957 period and includes some of Walker's essential recordings, making it a perfect introduction to the artist's talents. For fans wanting an advance class, the two-CD The Complete Imperial Recordings: 1950-1954 offers 56 excellent performances.
Related
A Simple T-Bone Walker Blues Lick
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Freddie King Profile
THE MUSIC OF T-BONE WALKER: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH T-BONE WALKER:
T-Bone Walker - The Complete Imperial Recordings 1950-1954:
1. Glamour Girl 0:00
2. Strollin' With Bone 2:44
3. The Sun Went Down 5:14
4. You Don't Love Me 7:35
5. Travelin' Blues 10:30
6. The Hustle Is On (78rpm Version) 12:51
7. Baby Broke My Heart (78rpm Version) 15:25
8. Evil Hearted Woman (Alternate Take) 18:09
9. I Walked Away 20:46
10. No Reason 23:03
11. Look Me In The Eye (78rpm Version) 25:35
12. Too Lazy (Alternate Take) 28:02
13. Alimony Blues 31:29
14. Life Is Too Short 34:10
15. You Don't Understand 36:55
16. Welcome Blues (Say Pretty Baby) 39:34
17. I Get So Weary 42:00
18. You Just Wanted To Use Me 44:43
19. Tell Me What's The Reason 47:08
20. I'm About To Lose My Mind 49:47
21. Cold, Cold Feeling 52:10
22. News For My Baby 52:22
23. Get These Blues Off Me 57:43
24. I Got The Blues Again 1:00:47
25. Through With Women 1:04:03
26. Street Walking Woman 1:07:12
27. Blues Is A Woman 1:10:16
28. I Got The Blues 1:13:04
29. Here In The Dark 1:15:59
30. Blue Mood 1:19:01
31. Every Time 1:21:52
32. I Miss You Baby 1:24:21
33. Lollie Lou 1:27:15
34. Party Girl 1:30:11
35. Love Is Just A Gamble 1:32:21
36. High Society 1:35:15
37. Long Distance Blues 1:38:10
38. Got No Use For You 1:41:13
39. I'm Still In Love With You 1:43:53
40. Railroad Station Blues 1:47:00
41. Vida Lee 1:49:41
42. My Baby Is Now On My Mind 1:52:06
43. Doin' Time 1:54:43
44. Bye Bye Baby 1:57:45
45. When The Sun Goes Down 2:00:31
46. Pony Tail 2:03:02
47. Wanderin' Heart 2:05:25
48. I'll Always Be In Love With You 2:07:56
49. I'll Understand 2:10:13
50. Hard Way 2:12:19
51. Teen Age Baby 2:14:27
52. Strugglin' Blues 2:16:31
Tracks 1-8 recorded in Los Angeles April 6th, 1950
Tracks 9-12 recorded in Los Angeles around September 1950
Tracks 13-20 recorded in Los Angles August 20th, 1951
Tracks 21-26 recorded in Los Angeles circa March 1952 (unconfirmed)
Track 27 recorded in Los Angeles circa March 1952 (unconfirmed)
Track 28 recorded in Los Angeles circa December 1951 (unconfirmed)
Tracks 29-35 recorded in Los Angeles, March 1952
Tracks 36-39 recorded in Los Angeles, March 10th, 1952
Tracks 40-42 recorded in New Orleans, March 20th, 1953
Tracks 43-46 recorded in Detroit Michigan, October 21st, 1953
Tracks 47-50 recorded in New Orleans on March 20th, 1953 or Los Angeles on November 6th, 1953
Tracks 50-52 recorded in Los Angeles on June 20th, 1954
3. The Sun Went Down 5:14
4. You Don't Love Me 7:35
5. Travelin' Blues 10:30
6. The Hustle Is On (78rpm Version) 12:51
7. Baby Broke My Heart (78rpm Version) 15:25
8. Evil Hearted Woman (Alternate Take) 18:09
9. I Walked Away 20:46
10. No Reason 23:03
11. Look Me In The Eye (78rpm Version) 25:35
12. Too Lazy (Alternate Take) 28:02
13. Alimony Blues 31:29
14. Life Is Too Short 34:10
15. You Don't Understand 36:55
16. Welcome Blues (Say Pretty Baby) 39:34
17. I Get So Weary 42:00
18. You Just Wanted To Use Me 44:43
19. Tell Me What's The Reason 47:08
20. I'm About To Lose My Mind 49:47
21. Cold, Cold Feeling 52:10
22. News For My Baby 52:22
23. Get These Blues Off Me 57:43
24. I Got The Blues Again 1:00:47
25. Through With Women 1:04:03
26. Street Walking Woman 1:07:12
27. Blues Is A Woman 1:10:16
28. I Got The Blues 1:13:04
29. Here In The Dark 1:15:59
30. Blue Mood 1:19:01
31. Every Time 1:21:52
32. I Miss You Baby 1:24:21
33. Lollie Lou 1:27:15
34. Party Girl 1:30:11
35. Love Is Just A Gamble 1:32:21
36. High Society 1:35:15
37. Long Distance Blues 1:38:10
38. Got No Use For You 1:41:13
39. I'm Still In Love With You 1:43:53
40. Railroad Station Blues 1:47:00
41. Vida Lee 1:49:41
42. My Baby Is Now On My Mind 1:52:06
43. Doin' Time 1:54:43
44. Bye Bye Baby 1:57:45
45. When The Sun Goes Down 2:00:31
46. Pony Tail 2:03:02
47. Wanderin' Heart 2:05:25
48. I'll Always Be In Love With You 2:07:56
49. I'll Understand 2:10:13
50. Hard Way 2:12:19
51. Teen Age Baby 2:14:27
52. Strugglin' Blues 2:16:31
Tracks 1-8 recorded in Los Angeles April 6th, 1950
Tracks 9-12 recorded in Los Angeles around September 1950
Tracks 13-20 recorded in Los Angles August 20th, 1951
Tracks 21-26 recorded in Los Angeles circa March 1952 (unconfirmed)
Track 27 recorded in Los Angeles circa March 1952 (unconfirmed)
Track 28 recorded in Los Angeles circa December 1951 (unconfirmed)
Tracks 29-35 recorded in Los Angeles, March 1952
Tracks 36-39 recorded in Los Angeles, March 10th, 1952
Tracks 40-42 recorded in New Orleans, March 20th, 1953
Tracks 43-46 recorded in Detroit Michigan, October 21st, 1953
Tracks 47-50 recorded in New Orleans on March 20th, 1953 or Los Angeles on November 6th, 1953
Tracks 50-52 recorded in Los Angeles on June 20th, 1954
T-Bone Walker - 'T-Bone Blues' (1960):
00:00:00 01 Papa Ain't Salty
00:02:43 02 Why Not
00:05:26 03 T-Bone Shufle
00:08:16 04 Play On Little Girl
00:10:47 05 T-Bone Blues Special
00:13:25 06 Mean Old World
00:17:31 07 T-Bone Blues
00:21:19 08 Call It Stormy Monday
00:24:25 09 Blues For Marili
00:28:45 10 Shufflin' The Blues
00:32:06 11 Evenin'
00:34:48 12 Two Bones And A Pick
00:37:38 13 You Don't Know What You're Doing
00:39:32 14 How Long Blues
00:44:52 15 Blues Rock
T-Bone Walker - "I Want A Little Girl" (Full Album):
Here
is a nice classic gem from 1968. This is T-Bone in the R&B era, I
think this album in general proves that he was also a very good singer
as well as a guitar player (he plays piano on this one too!) This is an
original vinyl rip, it is not the CD release.
1. I Want A Little Girl 0:00
2. I Hate To See You Go 5:10
3. Feeling The Blues 8:50
4. Leaving You Behind 15:00
5. Baby Ain't I Good To You 19:14
6. Someone's Going To Mistreat You 23:44
7. Ain't This Cold, Baby 27:00
8. Late Hours Blues 33:31
1. I Want A Little Girl 0:00
2. I Hate To See You Go 5:10
3. Feeling The Blues 8:50
4. Leaving You Behind 15:00
5. Baby Ain't I Good To You 19:14
6. Someone's Going To Mistreat You 23:44
7. Ain't This Cold, Baby 27:00
8. Late Hours Blues 33:31
T-Bone Walker & BB King - "Sweet Sixteen":
T-Bone Walker - "Goin' to Chicago":
London.
Nov 30th,1966. Jazz at the Philharmonic concert: T-Bone Walker, Dizzy Gillespie, Teddy Wilson,
Louis Bellson, Clark Terry, Coleman Hawkins, Zoot Sims, Jimmy Moody,
Benny Carter and Bob Cranshaw.
T Bone Walker "Hey Baby" 1965:
The
legendary T Bone Walker playing "Hey Baby" in 1965. Brilliant! One of
the founders of the electric blues guitar. Check out corporalhenshaw for
many more clips like this.
T-Bone Walker - "Call It Stormy Monday":
T-Bone Walker doing his masterpiece Stormy Monday...
Mix - T-Bone Walker- T-Bone Blues - "Mean Old World":
https://www.guitar.com/articles/t-bone-walker-interview-bad-t-bone
T-Bone Walker Interview- Bad to the T-Bone
Few blues records were made during World War II. Soon afterwards, though, the long, lean sound of Texas blues was crackling over jukeboxes and radios. Enter T-Bone Walker, whose sophisticated electric-guitar stylings would bring Texas blues guitar center stage to swank nightclubs and concert halls. Walker fronted swinging big bands, and his flamboyant stage antics - playing with the guitar held behind his head, dancing around, doing splits - anticipated the moves of Chuck Berry, Guitar Slim, Buddy Guy, Jimi Hendrix, and Stevie Ray Vaughan. (For the record, though, Walker didn't invent showboating - Charley Patton, for one, was doing it decades earlier.)
Walker was influenced by country, jazz, and Western swing, and, like the great Charlie Christian, he excelled at horn-inspired, single-note solos. Many of his licks have become standard blues vocabulary, echoing through Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, B.B. and Freddie King, Albert Collins, and many others. "To me," says Johnny Winter, "T-Bone Walker is pretty much the father of the electric blues style. He influenced everybody. He played syncopated, he changed the meter around, and he did things that nobody else did. He knew a lot of chords and was a much broader player than many people are aware of. He was the first guy who did it right, and he influenced everybody who came along after him. He really defined electric blues guitar."
Aaron Thibeaux Walker was born in 1910 in Linden, Texas, and moved to Dallas in his youth. By age eight, he was working as Blind Lemon Jefferson's "lead boy," guiding the elder bluesman around town. Walker became adept at guitar, banjo, violin, mandolin, and piano, and by 19 he'd made his first 78, for Columbia, under the pseudonym "Oak Cliff T-Bone." During the 1930s, Walker reportedly studied guitar with Charlie Christian, and he later acquired a Gibson ES-250, which he held against his stomach with the guitar's body parallel to the floor. Walker made his recording debut with an electric guitar in '42, soloing on the Freddie Slack Band's "I Got a Break Baby." He was soon recording on his own, scoring a hit with "Mean Old World." A few years later, his jumping "T-Bone Boogie" sported licks that would become associated with Chuck Berry. During the late '40s Walker recorded his biggest hit, "Call It Stormy Monday." He signed with Imperial Records in 1950, but failed to land another big hit. By the mid '50s he was playing an elaborate blond Gibson ES-5, and dozens of players were imitating his style.
With the rise of rock 'n' roll, Walker's brand of big-band blues fell to the wayside. He tried updating his sound, but his heyday as a headliner was over - at least for a while. In 1960, Atlantic released T-Bone Blues, which featured remakes of "Mean Old World," "T-Bone Shuffle," and "Stormy Monday." Largely ignored by blues fans, the LP broke through to the jazz community, and Walker was soon touring with Count Basie. In 1966 he cut an album with Duke Ellington, and the following year wowed fans at the Monterey Jazz Festival. During a '68 tour of France, T-Bone's treasured ES-5 was stolen, and he replaced it with a Gibson Barney Kessel. He tried touring with a rock band in the early 1970s, but found the noise and pace disagreeable. A hard drinker, Walker suffered a stroke and passed away on March 16, 1975.
Gatemouth Brown
To this day, Gatemouth Brown, one of Walker's closest disciples, carries his style to audiences around the world. The 75-year-old Louisianan has spent more than sixty years on the road, playing what he calls "American and world music, Texas-style." Brown, who bristles at being referred to as bluesman, explains, "I play a part of the past with the present and just a taste of the future. And blues and jazz was not my first music. My first music is country, Cajun, and bluegrass." Gatemouth mastered guitar, violin, viola, bass, drums, and harmonica, and in his teens began touring with road shows.
In 1947, Brown landed in Houston, where producer Don Robey bought him a Gibson L-5 and sent him to Hollywood to record his first four sides with the Maxwell Davis Orchestra. Gate's roots may have been in the fertile country blues territory of east Texas and southwest Louisiana, but his debut records with Aladdin featured jumping orchestrations. He later switched to a Fender Telecaster, and on subsequent Peacock sides such as 1953's "Boogie Uproar" and 1954's magnificent "Okie Dokie Stomp," his tough, trebly tone seemed to pounce off the records.
Like Walker, Brown took inspiration from horn players. "I play horn lines and horn kicks," he explains. "I play horn phrases with my fingers, and I can let the strings ring, or I can smother them in a snap and cut it just like a horn would do when your breath run out. The circle of breathing - I can do that by using my fingers."
By the late '50s, Gate's record sales were dwindling. After his final Peacock side in '61, he didn't record again until the mid '60s, when he cut country music in Nashville. His old Peacock sides became collector's items in Europe, and by the 1970s Brown was regularly touring abroad. Since then, he's recorded extensively for Black and Blue, Alligator, Rounder, and other labels, covering blues, jazz, zydeco, and the cherished music of his youth. Until well into the rock era, most people would associate Texas blues with horn sections and T-Bone-style solos. "A lot of people ask me what's the difference between Chicago blues and Texas blues," Albert Collins observed. "Well, we didn't have harp players and slide guitar players out of Texas, so most of the blues guitars had a horn section. That was the difference. The bigger the band is, the better they like it in Texas. It's hard to go down through there with just a rhythm section and get good response."
| T-Bone Walker | |
|---|---|
Walker in Hamburg, Germany, 1972
|
|
| Background information | |
| Birth name | Aaron Thibeaux Walker |
| Also known as | Oak Cliff T-Bone |
| Born | May 28, 1910 Linden, Texas, U.S. |
| Died | March 16, 1975 (aged 64) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Genres | Blues, electric blues, Texas blues, Chicago blues, jump blues, West Coast blues |
| Occupation(s) | Musician, composer, bandleader |
| Instruments | Guitar, vocals, piano, banjo, ukulele, violin, mandolin |
| Years active | 1928–1975 |
| Labels | Atlantic, Black & Blue, Black & White, Blues Way Records, Brunswick, Capitol, Charly, Columbia, Duke, Imperial, Modern, Polydor, Reprise |
Contents
Biography
Early years
Walker was born in Linden, Texas, of African-American and Cherokee descent. Walker's parents, Movelia Jimerson and Rance Walker, were both musicians. His stepfather, Marco Washington, taught him to play the guitar, ukulele, banjo, violin, mandolin, and piano.[4]Walker began his career as a teenager in Dallas in the early 1900s. His mother and stepfather (a member of the Dallas String Band) were musicians, and family friend Blind Lemon Jefferson sometimes came over for dinner.[5] Walker left school at the age of 10, and by 15[3] he was a professional performer on the blues circuit. Initially, he was Jefferson's protégé and would guide him around town for his gigs.[4] In 1929, Walker made his recording debut with Columbia Records billed as Oak Cliff T-Bone, releasing the single "Wichita Falls Blues"/"Trinity River Blues". Oak Cliff was the community he lived in at the time and T-Bone a corruption of his middle name. Pianist Douglas Fernell played accompaniment on the record.[1]
Walker married Vida Lee in 1935; the couple had three children. By the age of 25, Walker was working at clubs in Los Angeles' Central Avenue, sometimes as the featured singer and guitarist with Les Hite's orchestra.[5]
Newfound style
Much of his output was recorded from 1946 to 1948 on Black & White Records, including his most famous song, 1947's "Call It Stormy Monday (But Tuesday Is Just as Bad)".[1] Other notable songs he recorded during this period were "Bobby Sox Blues" (a #3 R&B hit in 1947),[6] and "West Side Baby" (#8 on the R&B singles charts in 1948).[7]
Throughout his career Walker worked with top-notch musicians, including trumpeter Teddy Buckner, pianist Lloyd Glenn, Billy Hadnott (bass), and tenor saxophonist Jack McVea.
Following his work with White and Black, he recorded from 1950 to 1954 for Imperial Records (backed by Dave Bartholomew). Walker's only record in the next five years was T-Bone Blues, recorded over three widely separated sessions in 1955, 1956 and 1959, and finally released by Atlantic Records in 1960.
By the early 1960s, Walker's career had slowed down, in spite of a hyped appearance at the American Folk Blues Festival in 1962 with pianist Memphis Slim and prolific writer and musician Willie Dixon, among others.[1] However, several critically acclaimed albums followed, such as I Want a Little Girl (recorded for Delmark Records in 1968). Walker recorded in his last years, from 1968 to 1975, for Robin Hemingway's Jitney Jane Songs music publishing company, and he won a Grammy Award for Best Ethnic or Traditional Folk Recording in 1971 for Good Feelin′, while signed by Polydor Records, produced by Hemingway,[4] followed by another album produced by Hemingway: Walker's Fly Walker Airlines, which was released in 1973.[8]
T-Bone Walker at the American Folk Blues Festival in Hamburg, March 1972
Legacy
Walker was posthumously inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1980,[10] and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.[9][11]Chuck Berry named Walker and Louis Jordan as his main influences.[12] B.B. King cites hearing Walker's "Stormy Monday" record as his inspiration for getting an electric guitar.[13] Walker was admired by Jimi Hendrix who imitated Walker's trick of playing the guitar with his teeth.[5] "Stormy Monday" was a favorite live number for The Allman Brothers Band.
Discography
Publicity photo for T-Bone Walker in 1942
- Wichita Falls Blues (1929)
- Trinity River Blues (1929)
- Mean Old World (1942)
- Bobby Sox Blues (1946)
- Call It Stormy Monday But Tuesday Is Just as Bad (1947)
- T-Bone Shuffle (1947)
- West Side Baby (1948)
- I Get So Weary (1961)
- Great Blues Vocals and Guitar (1963)
- The Legendary T-Bone Walker (1967)
- Blue Rocks (1968)
- I Want a Little Girl (1968)
- The Truth (1968)
- Feelin' the Blues (1969)
- Funky Town (1969)
- Good Feelin' (1969)
- Everyday I Have the Blues (1970)
- Dirty Mistreater (1973)
- Fly Walker Airlines (1973)
- Well Done (1973)
As sideman
With Jimmy Witherspoon- Evenin' Blues (Prestige, 1963)
- "Kidney Stew Is Fine" (Delmark, 1969)
References
- Welding, Pete (1991). The Complete Imperial Recordings, 1950-1954 (CD booklet). T-Bone Walker. Hollywood, CA: EMI Records USA. pp. 9–10. CDP-7-96737-2.
External links
- T-Bone Walker at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
- T-Bone Walker discography at Discogs
- T-Bone Walker at the Internet Movie Database
- T-Bone Walker at Find a Grave
