When Joe Louis Walker was 11, he moved with his mother and siblings to a new neighbourhood in San Francisco.
He was happy to discover he had five cousins living just blocks from his new home. He was even happier to discover that many of them were musicians. Walker’s father was a blues pianist and his mother a blues aficionado who played B.B. King 45s at the house. So young Joe was already a blues convert by that age with a fledgling interest in guitar.
Within a year of moving to the neighbourhood, Walker’s cousins allowed him to play in their band. It was the early 1960s and Walker’s mother agreed but only on the condition her son take guitar lessons and maintain a strict practice schedule. “This was before the hippies came to our neighbourhood,” says Walker, who will be playing with Silent Partners on the main stage of the Calgary International Blues Festival on Sunday, July 31. “This was way before. This was way before Bill Graham. This was way before the Grateful Dead. This was way before all of that. We had a great playhouse there where we could go see James Brown and I would take my Grandma to see gospel shows. I got to see the real Temptations when I was 15.
Walker would eventually befriend Michael Bloomfield, an American guitarist whose rock-oriented licks had a huge impact on Walker’s playing and the San Francisco scene in general.Article content Walker may speak enthusiastically about this period and his formative years as a player, but he has certainly never been one to rest on his laurels or stay in the past. His star would continue to rise in the blues world, where he became known as an inventive, fiery guitar player well-versed in various shades of the blues. He released dozens of albums, played on iconic recordings by B.B. King and James Cotton and toured the world extensively. In 2013, he was inducted into The Blues Hall of Fame.
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