Phillip Walker Live at Biscuits & Blues

It has been a little over two years since Phillip Walker passed away. The Texas-born, West Coast based blues singer and guitarist came a long way from his days playing with Clifton Chenier, and then later Bruce Bromberg produced an album for Playboy Records. The following review appeared in the September 2002 DC Blues Calendar to which I have made a few minor stylistic edits.

Its been several years since Phillip Walker had an album under his name (even the Lone Star Shootout album he made with Long John Hunter and Lonnie Brooks is at least three years old). Walker has a new disc with his big band on MC Records, Live at Biscuits & Blues. This recording features his longtime working band augmented by a full horn section along with guest appearances by Charlie Musselwhite, Angela Strehli and Rick Estrin. 

Its a solid set, if not quite as good as Walker’s best studio recordings, Walker performs his own Hello My Darling, as well as Jimmy McCracklin’s Think, Harold Burrage’s Crying For My Baby, the classic Breaking up Somebody’s Home and Dennis Walkers Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark on which Walker performs a bit more grittier version than Cray’s original. 

Its nice to have a new album by Walker whose grainy voice and raspy guitar playing is a distinctive blues voice. Some of his best stuff is out of print or hard to find so even if this is not quite his best stuff, it will make due for his fans or others not familiar with this grossly underrated blues veteran. 

Here is Phillip in performance.

Phillip Walker Going Back Home

Its been way too long since Philip Walker had a new studio album. Delta Groove has just issued Going Back Home, that finds the Gulf Coast native and longtime West Coast bluesman in solid form. The strength of the disc is Walker’s characteristically strong vocals (with just a hint of sandpaper in his voice and his guitar playing which rock and swing at the same time.

Producer Randy Chortkoff has selected a solid backing band that includes guitarist Rusty Zinn, Jeff Turmes on bass (and sax for a few tracks, Richard Innes on drums as well as provided Walker with a diverse range of material from the pens of Percy Mayfield (the opening Lying Woman), Lowell Fulson (Mama Bring Your Clothes Back Home), Lightnin’ Hopkins (Don’t Think ‘Cause Your Pretty), his old friend Cornelius Greene aka Lonesome Sundown (Leave My Money Alone and If You See My Baby), Ray Charles (Blackjack), Champion Jack Dupree (Bad Blood), and Frankie Lee Sims (Walking With Frankie) along with several originals from Chortkoff (although Honey Stew is suggestive of a Lightnin Hopkins recording).

Eddie Snow’s Mean Mean Woman features an accompaniment derived from Junior Parker’s Mystery Train. The backing is a bit too upfront at times and the music loses some of its regional flavor with the somewhat anonymous groove. One wishes the rhythm section was not right on the beat at times such as on the two Lonesome Sundown blues where more of the laconic Excello groove would have been beneficial. The band might also have limbered up on some of the grooves of Lightnin’ Hopkins’ Jewel Recordings at times.

These are still very good recordings, with Walker first rate throughout and his take on Blackjack, Leave My Money Alone, Bad Blood and Walking With Frankie are particularly outstanding, and if not a perfect date, there is still plenty to enjoy.

This review appeared in the April 2007 Jazz & Blues Report (Issue 292) and my review copy was sent by either Delta Groove or a publicist for them.  


Here is the late Phillip Walker in performance.

Wood & Fraher's Texas Zydeco Excellent Book On Creole Music

If you are looking for a holiday present for the blues and/or zydeco fan, then the superb, Texas Zydeco is a book that should be considered. It combines authoritative writing with some beautiful photography.

Texas Zydeco
by Roger Wood & James Fraher (photographer)
University of Texas 2006


Zydeco music is usually associated with Louisiana, but historically Texas, and especially the city of Houston has been central to the growth and development of the idiom from the more traditional la la music of the creole population that is concentrated in southwestern Louisiana and neighboring portions of Texas that include House. The place of Texas in the rise and evolution of zydeco is the subject of Texas Zydeco, the latest collaboration between writer Roger Woof and photographer James Fraher, who previously collaborated in Down in Houston: Blues in Bayou City, the superb book on Houston’s blues scene.


Like the previous volume on Houston Blues, Wood does more than simply provide sketches of the history of the music. He takes us into the world of the zydeco as his first chapter introduces us to the various venues for zydeco and the audience and musicians there ranging from the clubs and church dances to the all day festivals at a rodeo arena. The history of the music as it was transformed from la la to zydeco and some of the pioneering figures and recordings are presented and the fact that some of the recordings were made in Houston including a rare Lightnin’ Hopkins recording on organ, Zologo. Folklorist Mack McCormick was responsible for the spelling of zydeco, but it was not until a Clifton Chenier recording used that spelling, that this spelling received the credibility until it became the established way to spell the term


A chapter is devoted to Chenier and his influence. Chenier’s mix of traditional creole music with rhythm and blues as well as his use of the piano accordion led to the emergence of zydeco as a musical genre and through interviews with some of Clifton’s contemporaries as well as some of the musicians who played with him, including his son C.J, and guitarists Philip Walker and Sherman Washington who recall their experiences with Clifton and how he was a mentor to them which they recognize even today the value of his lessons for them. Clifton was a remarkable person. Chenier invented the frottoir (rubboard) which replaced the washboards that had been used previously, having the first frottoirs fabricated and Wood spends some pages with the individuals that crafted these instruments for use.


Another chapter discusses some of the post-Chenier performers in the world of Texas zydeco, noting that many, but not all, have adopted the button accordion as opposed to the chromatic piano accordion, and provides an overview of these new breed performers including Corey Ledet, Dora and the Zydeco Bad Boyz, J. Paul and Skip Riteau, and in showing their individual maturation as artists how Texas remains a fertile ground for zydeco to continue to evolve.


James Fraher, certainly one of the most outstanding blues photographers alive, contributes some stunning photography. It is unfortunate that Wood and Fraher did not include some actual photographs of Chenier and other masters that Fraher never was able to document, as a photograph of a old Zodico poster for Chenier is not quite the same thing. But this is only a quibble as this book brings the world of zydeco, not simply reciting the lives of major figures, and joins Down in Houston as an important and engrossing book on African-American vernacular music traditions.


This review originally appeared in the November/December 2006 Jazz & Blues Report (issue 288). I likely received a review copy from the publisher.

Phillip Walker 1937-2010

2007 Pocono Blues -822, originally uploaded by NoVARon.

This picture from the 2007 Pocono Blues Festival was the last time I saw singer and guitarist Phillip Walker, who passed away today July 22, 2010 at the age of 73.

Delta Groove, the last label he recorded with sent out the following brief obituary:

"Born February 11, 1937 near Lake Charles, Louisiana, in the small town of Welsh, Phillip Walker's earliest musical influences came via the Cajun and Creole rhythms he heard as a youngster. A second cousin to Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown and huge admirer of T-Bone Walker, Phillip began making a name for himself in the early 1950s with his first recording session backing pianist Roscoe Gordon. At the age of 16, Walker left home to tour with Zydeco king Clifton Chenier (who incidentally gave the young fledgling Walker his first bona fide guitar) and never looked back.

After relocating to Los Angeles in 1959, Walker cut his first side as a bandleader; the storming "Hello My Darling", produced by J.R. Fulbright for Elko Records. His first full length album didn't appear until much later though. With the help of long-time supporter and producer Bruce Bromberg, Walker cut the excellent LP "The Bottom of the Top" in 1973 for Hugh Hefner's short-lived Playboy label. Over the next three decades Walker's musical career continued to pick up steam with numerous recording projects for HighTone, Black Top, Rounder, JSP and Alligator Records.

In 2007, Randy Chortkoff signed Phillip Walker to Delta Groove Music and released the critically acclaimed CD "Going Back Home". The recording session featured the renowned guitarist going back to his roots and exploring the rich musical history of Louisiana, Texas and West Coast Blues on classic material by Lowell Fulson, Ray Charles, Lonesome Sundown, Lightnin' Hopkins, Champion Jack Dupree and Frankie Lee Sims among others. Going Back Home was later awarded Best Album of 2007 in the New Recordings / Contemporary Blues category by the Living Blues Awards Critics' Poll."

I (Ron) have been a fan since the Playboy Album that was produced by Bruce Bromberg. Highlight's included the rock and roll of "Hello My Darling," a down home country rendition of Lightnin' Hopkins' "Hello Central," and a terrific gritty rendition of Sam Cooke's "Laughing & Clownin'. Bromberg produced a number of his best recordings, some appearing on Rounder with "Tough As I Want to Be" being a particular favorite of mine. Bromberg also united him with swamp blues legend Lonesome Sundown for another album, "From LA to L.A." He was also part of the "Lone Star Shootout" with fellow Gulf Coast blues masters Lonnie Brooks and Long John Hunter. Walker also did a fair amount of session work for Bromberg, most notably on excellent recordings by Johnny Shines and Eddie Taylor as well as other sessions with legends like Percy Mayfield.

I was fortunate enough to have known this gentleman and true blues master whose moody, grainy performances were in the same vein as the late vocalist Al King and the great Lowell Fulson. What a fine person who should have been a household name. May his music live on forever.