Blues Legend Ready to Help Honor the Genre’s Greatest at the Paramount

Joe Louis Walker has been on a fascinating, circuitous musical journey since childhood in northern California. Years before the Blues Hall of Fame inductee released his first solo album, “Cold is the Night” in 1986, he had been a successful and highly sought-after session musician, having appeared on albums or played alongside the likes of Sly Stone, Buddy Miles, Thelonious Monk, The Soul Stirrers, Steve Miller and Jimi Hendrix.

Walker has toured extensively since he came of musical age in the 1960s San Francisco music scene, and later playing concerts and festivals throughout North and South American, Europe, Australia and Asia over the decades.

That musical journey brings Walker to Peekskill’s Paramount Hudson Valley this Saturday night, returning to the historic 92-year-old venue to be one of the featured performers in Professor Louie’s Century of the Blues concert, a tribute to history’s greatest blues artists.

The evening will also feature Guy Davis and Professor Louie & The Crowmatix. Walker said the program is the brainchild of Professor Louie, who is considered the torchbearer of the true spirit of American Roots Music. The multi-instrumentalist is also an award-winning producer and engineer.

“I think we connected to our electric blues, piano blues, which he does, and acoustic blues, which Guy does very, very well. He was nominated for a Grammy,” Walker said. “He loved what he’s doing. Louie came from a very historical Black family, to be quite honest about it. I think (the concert) is a great idea that Louie had and I’m honored that he wanted to include me and Guy along with it.”

While Walker may be best known for playing the blues, his musical influences are as wide and varied as the San Francisco clubs and musicians he met in his youth. His parents moved to California from the deep South looking for better opportunities and took their music with them, he said. Walker’s mother made sure he went to church regularly and gospel music became his early influence.

Add that to living in a neighborhood that was a cultural and musical melting pot, mainly comprised of African American, Jewish and Japanese families. The city’s music scene was just as rich and also attracted musicians for all over the United States, such as his friend and roommate Michael Bloomfield, who came from Chicago, fueling amazing creativity.

“I joined the musicians union at 14. I think I was 15-and-a-half, 16 (and) these guys from around the corner, they played all day and that was the Grateful Dead. To this day, me and (Dead drummer) Bobby Weir are still friends. He was born in the same hospital I was born in.”

The teenage Walker traveled throughout California performing in all types of venues from motorcycle clubs to eventually the Whiskey a Go Go, the famed West Hollywood night nightspot.

As Walker described it, he and his fellow musicians were living like grownups playing night and day. It didn’t seem to impress his father.

“My dad got tired of me not going to school,” Walker said. “(He said) ‘You’re 16 now, you can go out and be a man.’ I said, ‘Well, I guess I can.’ But I didn’t realize how hard it was going to be.”

As Walker, now 72, matured into adulthood, he became increasingly known among some of the biggest acts in music in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s and appeared on numerous albums. He also worked hard to get a recording contract of his own, but until that time, had no takers.

In 1975, Walker left the scene and devoted himself to gospel music for the next decade.

“I named all those people to you…a lot of them ended up dead and I would have been right there with them on the cutting room floor, and I’m not going to lie about it,” Walker revealed. “So in a way, that saved my life.”

After a performance at the 1985 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, Walker was inspired to return to the blues, signed by HighTone Records for his debut album. Walker would release another two dozen albums over the next 35 years, while keeping up an extensive touring schedule.

He’s collaborating on his next album while working with Weir on another effort – and looking forward to Saturday night at the Paramount.

“It’ll be an interesting show,” Walker said. “I think Louie had a little bit of vision there, so it’s going to be sort of an amalgamation of my musical mind.”

Tickets are on sale from $25 to $40 each and can be bought by visiting www.paramounthudsonvalley.com.

Martin Wilbur

Martin has more than 30 years experience covering local news in Westchester and Putnam counties, including a frequent focus on zoning and planning issues. He has been editor-in-chief of The Examiner since its inception in 2007. Read more from Martin’s editor-author bio here. Read Martin’s archived work here: https://www.theexaminernews.com/author/martin-wilbur2007/