Little Walter retrospective

Episode 100 is a retrospective on the greatest ever blues harmonica player, Marion Walter Jacobs, aka Little Walter.
Little Walter was born in 1930, probably, and started playing harmonica age 8. He was busking on the streets of New Orleans by age 12, spent some time in Helena, before heading north to Chicago to make his indelible mark on blues and the harmonica. Little Walter teamed up with Muddy Waters and Jimmy Rogers and cut some classic blues recordings before he went out under his own name after he was launched into superstardom with his instrumental Juke, in 1952. He was riding high in the charts and touring for the next few years, including another number one with My Babe, while still also recording with Muddy Waters.
The arrival of rhythm and blues started to replace the blues as the popular music of the day, which saw Little Walter start to go down slow, but he still made some great recordings and completed two tours of Europe.
He was then taken far too young, at the age of 37, as a result of an injury sustained in a street fight. But he left behind numerous masterpieces in the blues harmonica genre, that have influenced pretty much every player since.

Links:
The Little Walter Foundation:
https://littlewalterfoundation.org/

Billy Boy Arnold interview:
https://www.harmonicahappyhour.com/billy-boy-arnold-interview/

Kim Field website:
https://www.kimfield.com/

Bob Corritore Little Walter photo tribute page:
https://bobcorritore.com/photos/little-walter-photo-tribute/

Videos:
Lonnie Glosson and Wayne Raney:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfXb7OEjVzU

Ora Nelle Blues, first recording:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-E7z56E0DwI

Playing Walter's Jump with Hound Dog Taylor in 1967:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8GWEvIkzGE

Trailer of Blue Midnight Little Walter biography:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtZDbiCEfnM

She’s 19 Years Old bootleg recording with Sam Lay from 1967:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9-pYoSCcHc

Little Walter’s induction into Rock ’n Roll Hall of Fame:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyYk_PlnnUo

Podcast website:
https://www.harmonicahappyhour.com

Donations:
If you want to make a voluntary donation to help support the running costs of the podcast then please use this link (or visit the podcast website link above):
https://paypal.me/harmonicahappyhour?locale.x=en_GB

or sign-up to a monthly subscription to the podcast:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/995536/support

Spotify Playlist:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5QC6RF2VTfs4iPuasJBqwT?si=M-j3IkiISeefhR7ybm9qIQ

Podcast sponsors:
This podcast is sponsored by SEYDEL harmonicas - visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seydel1847.com  or on Facebook or Instagram

Chapters

• 2:00 Scott Dirks, Kim Field and Dennis Gruenling join me to discuss the great Little Walter
• 2:20 Scott is co-author of the book: ‘Blues With A Feeling: The Little Walter Story’. An essential read for any harmonica fan!
• 2:48 Scott got involved in writing the book after he met a harmonica player in Chicago who had been working on a book about Little Walter for ten years, and had done lots of research
• 3:47 Found that Little Walter was buried in an unmarked grave, and Scott was involved in putting a marker on his grave in 1991
• 4:09 Tony Glover heard about the grave and contacted Scott. Tony was well known from being in the band called Koerner, Ray and Glover
• 4:33 Tony Glover wrote the first blues harmonica instructional book: ‘Blues Harp’
• 4:42 Tony contacted Scott about the idea of putting together the book on Little Walter, as Tony was in process of putting together a discography on Little Walter
• 5:11 Tony started writing a book with Ward Gaines on Little Walter, and Scott joined and started putting the book together in earnest in 1995, until 2001, without knowing if it would be published
• 6:13 Tony Glover helped get the book published
• 7:15 Scott used his connections in Chicago to do the research on Little Walter from some of the people who knew and worked with him
• 8:49 Other information that was available on Little Walter
• 9:40 Kim Field is a musician and writer, having written two books: ‘Harmonicas, Harps and Heavy Breathers’ and ‘The Blues Dream of Billy Boy Arnold’
• 10:13 Kim first took up harmonica when he saw a James Cotton show
• 10:49 Got the idea for the Billy Boy Arnold book after described his time meeting John Lee Williamson, with Billy Boy having tremendous recall of the events of the past
• 12:13 Billy Boy had a great interest in the harmonica players around him, especially Little Walter
• 12:36 Dennis Gruenling is the third guest, being the last person to record a tribute album to Little Walter
• 13:22 Scott wrote the liner notes for the Dennis tribute album to Little Walter
• 13:43 Much of the research material for this podcast is based on Scott’s Little Walter book
• 13:50 Little Walter was born in 1930, in Marksville, Louisiana, although the year of his birth is somewhat disputed, with Tony Glover’s wife having done some good research into the topic
• 14:47 He didn’t have a birth certificate
• 16:21 Knowing his age allows us to date the various milestones in his life
• 16:33 He started playing harmonica age 8
• 16:40 May have started playing on the Regimental Band harmonica, the cheaper version of the Marine Band
• 16:54 His sister said he wanted to be a saxophone player, but the harmonica was chosen as it was cheaper
• 17:08 Lonnie Glosson was probably the first harmonica player he heard. Lonnie was a big star and appeared a lot on the radio, playing country music on harmonica
• 17:47 Kim provides some more info on Lonnie Glosson and Wayne Raney, who played together on national radio and sold over 5 million of their harmonicas
• 18:44 Honeyboy Edwards said that Little Walter had a Cajun style of playing when he was young, showing that he definitely had different influences from blues early on
• 20:11 Sister had a photo of Little Walter leaving to go to New Orleans for the first time, age 12, where he spent a lot of time busking
• 20:57 He used to stand outside clubs in New Orleans and play along with the songs he could hearing being inside the clubs
• 21:13 John Lee Williamson (Sonny Boy Williamson I) was a big influence on Little Walter’s blues playing and Little Walter imitated his style early on
• 22:53 John Lee Williamson was the first to use the harmonica as a lead instrument, and he was a huge star
• 23:23 Billy Boy Arnold was a John Lee Williamson fanatic, heard Little Walter compliment John Lee Williamson (the only player he might have ever complimented!)
• 24:46 Little Walter went to Helena, Arkansas, Rice Miller (Sonny Boy Williamson II) was based, although feeling is he didn’t learn much from his style
• 26:18 Little Walter filled-in for Rice Miller on his radio show sometimes
• 27:19 Met Walter Horton, who was 13 years older than him
• 27:32 Played with Honeyboy Edwards in the south before making his momentous move to Chicago, where he started playing on Maxwell Street
• 27:49 Advertisement in the Chicago Defender of his first gig there, in 1946, at the Purple Cat Lounge
• 28:42 Story where John Lee Williamson told Little Walter he played too fast
• 29:13 Jimmy Roger’s suggested Little Walter’s time wasn’t great, but the panel refute this
• 31:27 First recording made in 1947, Ora Nelle Blues, made in a backroom studio on Maxwell Street
• 32:13 Floyd Jones claimed he made the first recording with Little Walter, with Walter playing guitar, although this recording isn’t available
• 32:45 Little Walter played some guitar, and recorded on several tracks playing guitar
• 34:19 Billy Boy Arnold said he only saw Little Walter play guitar on the bandstand once
• 34:36 He would change instruments with Louis Myers in his band, to play guitar with Myers playing harmonica, to take on harmonica challengers
• 35:26 In the first recordings he made, he sang on I Just Keep Loving Her
• 36:00 Little Walter syncopated his rhythms and improvised from the beginning, something which John Lee Williamson didn’t do
• 37:05 Little Walter didn’t play stock licks, as a lot of his contemporaries did, and he quickly broke away from playing like Sonny Boy I to always push himself to play something different
• 38:27 The influence of saxophone players on his sound
• 40:04 Little Walter really wanted to swing and he became frustrated playing the slow blues style of Muddy Waters
• 40:39 Muddy Waters was a generation older then Little Walter but Walter wanted to play faster
• 41:12 Little Walter preferred to play to a dance crowd
• 41:43 Started playing with Muddy Waters in 1948
• 42:43 The Chicago blues sound and the part the trio with Muddy Waters played in evolution of that
• 43:38 Real Chicago sound came later when Muddy started recording with drums and piano
• 44:06 Took some time for Leonard Chess to allow Little Walter to record with Muddy, but he eventually did, and it was a hit
• 44:25 First song recorded with Muddy at Chess was You’re Gonna Need My Help
• 45:59 I Can’t Be Satisfied was a huge hit with Muddy playing just with bass player Big Crawford, hence Chess were reluctant to change the winning formula
• 47:18 Walter also made recordings with Jimmy Rogers at Chess, although the band was the same personnel
• 47:39 His first amplified harmonica recorded at Chess was Country Boy with Muddy Waters
• 48:14 Frustrations at not always being able to record with his amp at Chess
• 49:05 Little Walter’s amplified sound was down to the way that he play through the equipment, not the equipment itself
• 50:10 Most players were using amps in Chicago at this time but Walter heard a way he could advance his sound using an amp, like Charlie Christian did on guitar
• 52:02 While on tour they overheard another band trying to work out what instrument Walter was playing on Juke as it played on the juke box
• 53:00 Juke was released in 1952 and was a huge hit and launched Walter’s solo career
• 53:40 Snooky Pryor probably recorded amplified harmonica in the studio before Walter did
• 54:38 The released version of Juke was the first cut made in the studio for Checker records
• 54:59 Juke was played live with Muddy before Walter recorded it
• 55:09 A story as to why Walter left Muddy’s band was because someone gave him a dime instead of the quarter they gave to Muddy
• 55:48 Walter’s rise to stardom
• 55:58 How much would white audiences hear blues music in the early 1950s
• 56:53 Released numerous singles with Chess, which were double-sided, with one side vocal and one side instrumental
• 57:24 Juke was the biggest hit Chess had with a record and made them financially stable
• 58:05 Sad Hours was in the charts at the same time as Juke
• 58:22 Every single he released between 1952-1955 charted, and outsold Muddy Waters during this time
• 58:39 Juke was recorded using Muddy’s band
• 59:28 Some of the hits Walter had during the first half of the 1950s
• 59:37 Continued to record with Muddy in the studio, even though he had left that band for live performances, and the song Baby Please Don’t Go
• 1:00:53 First recording on chromatic and in 3rd position was That’s It, and his influence as a blues chromatic player
• 1:02:48 Kim doesn’t think Walter took any inspiration from the non-blues chromatic players who came before him
• 1:03:17 Jerry Murad’s Peg O’ My Heart was recorded in the same studio used by Chess
• 1:04:24 Walter probably was the first to start using 3rd position on the diatonic too, or at least developed its use
• 1:05:53 Rhythm Willie was another harmonica player who imitated horn players, but didn’t have the same presence of sound as Walter
• 1:07:29 John Lee Williamson was also influenced by horn players in his later recordings
• 1:08:25 Little Walter’s band was much louder than horn ensembles at the time
• 1:09:12 The string of great tracks he recorded through the first part of the 1950s
• 1:10:20 One of reasons Walter was so successful on the charts is that he was touring all the time
• 1:10:56 Juke really helped bring a younger audience to the blues, including females
• 1:11:38 Great photo of Little Walter surrounded by women in a record store
• 1:12:15 Walter was a pretty boy who the women certainly liked
• 1:12:32 Bob Corritore website has a great photo tribute page to Walter, as well as many other blues artists
• 1:12:56 Second number one single, in 1955: My Babe, which was based on the gospel song My Train
• 1:14:16 Ray Charles played saxophone with Walter on one of his tours, as well as playing piano as a support act for Walter
• 1:14:50 In 1958 Walter was shot in the leg and also broke his leg separately, which contributed to a downward spiral for him from this time, also from R&B starting to become more popular than blues
• 1:15:43 Walter’s band was starting to lose it’s regular members, and his music output dipped somewhat, although there was always some interesting aspects to his music
• 1:16:45 All the Chess acts suffered a decline at this time due to the rise of R&B, but enjoyed the blues boom later in the 1960s, which Walter missed following his death
• 1:18:16 Walter still released some classic recordings during this time, with Key To The Highway his last top ten hit
• 1:18:35 Crawling King Snake was the only song he recorded on a tremolo harmonica
• 1:19:21 Walter did a tour of the UK in 1964, which wasn’t too successful, partly due to the quality of the backing bands
• 1:20:21 Walter probably suffered by being ahead of his time somewhat, his ideas too modern for the day
• 1:21:33 Billy Boy Arnold saw Walter play whole sets just on harmonica
• 1:22:09 The difference of Walter on record and playing live in clubs was significant. He improvised much more freely when playing live
• 1:22:45 Such a crying shame we don’t have live recordings of Walter in his heyday
• 1:23:18 Earliest live recording of Walter is from 1964, in the UK
• 1:23:44 The next live recording was from 1967: Walter’s Jump, an acoustic recording which is favourably received
• 1:25:51 Scott actually named this live recording as Walter’s Jump, as it was untitled
• 1:26:44 Last session as a leader at Chess was in 1966
• 1:27:01 Great album where you can hear lots of studio outtakes and alternate takes of songs: ‘Little Walter: The Complete Chess Masters (1950-1967)’. This won a Grammy for Best Historical Re-issue
• 1:27:45 Scott co-produced this album, and says there was a lot more material in the studio that wasn’t used, including an instrumental version of One Of The Mornings
• 1:29:19 Did another UK tour in 1967
• 1:29:25 Live bootleg recording of Walter playing with Sam Lay in 1967, where his playing is strong
• 1:31:01 It is rumoured that Muddy was going to hire Walter back into his band in 1968, just before his death
• 1:31:15 Little Walter on February 15, 1968, after being involved in a street fight, twenty years after John Lee Williamson died in very similar circumstances
• 1:31:59 He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame, and then later the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008 (for a sideman category!)
• 1:32:58 Dennis thought the sideman category was ok as it recognised how Walter revolutionised the role of the harmonica
• 1:33:57 The panels favourite two Little Walter songs, Louisiana Blues & Mellow Down Easy for Neil
• 1:34:34 Kim chooses Blue Midnight and Back Track
• 1:35:16 Back Track was recorded after Walter had been insisting he could record a song in the studio using his amp
• 1:36:27 Scott chooses Roller Coaster and That’s It
• 1:37:35 Dennis chooses Sad Hours and Fast Boogie (Scott had already chosen Roller Coaster!)
• 1:39:06 Eight songs were chosen but there were many more we could selected
• 1:39:20 Walter wrote the book on how to play back-up harp with Muddy and Jimmy Rogers, and then to go on and have such a successful solo career
• 1:40:02 Walter used a Marine Band diatonic and a 16 hole chromatic, either or both of the Hohner 280 or the Super 64
• 1:40:41 Experimented a little with harmonicas, using Kock and a tremolo
• 1:41:29 Didn’t use a harmonica customiser, although the harps were made, and tuned differently back then
• 1:41:45 Embouchre: mainly tongue blocking with some puckering and possibly U bend
• 1:43:19 John Lee Williamson tongue blocked
• 1:43:38 The harmonica was built to be tongue blocked (to play chords), with Paul Butterfield being a major reason puckering rose to prominence
• 1:44:45 Most of the classic players used both tongue blocking and puckering
• 1:45:05 For live performances Walter usually used the PA systems available, which had inputs for crystal mics
• 1:46:30 JT30s and Green Bullets were used for vocals back then, which has resulted in modern players using them by this happy accident
• 1:47:23 The JT30 also has a wide face to accommodate the harmonica
• 1:47:40 The PA systems used in the 1950s were tube driven
• 1:48:24 What Walter used to record in the studio: his recorded tracks with amps used in the studio all sound different, so he probably used different amps
• 1:49:38 Small Masco PA system is a strong possibility
• 1:50:54 Dennis saw that Snooky Pryor and James Cotton really appreciated using some of the classic amps that Dennis owned
• 1:52:18 There isn’t one Chicago blues tone, there were many different ones
• 1:52:43 Augmentation of Walter’s sound in the studio (by adding reverb, delay slapback, etc)

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Episode 100 is a retrospective on the greatest ever blues harmonica player, Marion Walter Jacobs, a.k.a. Little Walter. In this extended episode, I'm joined by a panel of experts in Scott Dirks, Kim Field and Dennis Grunling. Little Walter was born in 1930, probably, and started playing harmonica at age 8. He was busking on the streets of New Orleans by age 12, spent some time in Helena before heading north to Chicago to make his indelible mark on blues and the harmonica. Little Walter teamed up with Muddy Waters and Jimmy Rogers and cut some classic blues recordings before he went out under his own name after he was launched into superstardom with his instrumental Duke in 1952. He was riding high in the charts and touring for the next few years including another number one with My Babe while still also recording with Muddy Waters. The arrival of rhythm and blues started to replace the blues as the popular music of the day which saw Little Walter start to go down slow but he still made some great recordings and completed two tours of Europe. He was then taken far too young at the age of 37 as a result of an injury sustained in a street fight but he left behind numerous masterpieces in the blues harmonica genre that have influenced pretty much every player since.

UNKNOWN: 1:29

Well, I just keep loving. I don't know the reason or why.

SPEAKER_04: 1:49

Hello Scott

SPEAKER_00: 2:00

Dirks, Kim Field and Dennis Groening and welcome to the 100th podcast.

SPEAKER_06: 2:04

Hello! Hello, great to be here.

SPEAKER_00: 2:07

Welcome all and thanks so much for joining today. We're going to talk about the great Little Walter today. So we got you three panel of experts to do that. So I'll just go through your credentials for why you've joined. So first start with you, Scott. So Scott Dirks, you are a co-author of the Blues of the Feeling Little Walter story along with Tony Glover and Ward Gaines. So tell us about how you got this book together and going.

SPEAKER_06: 2:35

My involvement with the book started... Really, in 1991, I've been a little Walter fan since I first heard a Muddy Waters record, which would be probably in the late 70s. Around 1991, I met a harmonica player named Ilmat Rasson. He was a guy who lived on the south side of Chicago. He grew up in the neighborhood where Jimmy Rogers had lived, and he knew some of the people who had known Jimmy Rogers and through him, little Walter. And he was a huge Little Walter fan and a harmonica player himself. By the way, I should mention that when I met him around 1990, he had been working on a book about Little Walter for about 10 years. So he had interviewed a bunch of people and he had done a bunch of research already. And I thought that he was going to do this, you know, he was going to end up being the author of the Little Walter book. Unfortunately, he was never able to get all of his research together into any kind of usable form. He died a couple of years ago, and unfortunately, all of his research kind of disappeared after that. But anyway, in the course of his research, he'd found that Little Walter was buried in an unmarked grave. So, Eamott had discovered that Little Walter was buried in an unmarked grave, so we decided that we would do something about that. So, we put a marker on Little Walter's grave in 1991, and we sent out some press releases to let Little Walter fans know about it. And through that, Tony Glover contacted me. Tony was kind of famous. He had been in a group called Kerner, Ray, and Glover back in the early 60s that made several albums. Tony wrote what, as far as I know, was the first album. blues harmonic instructional book that was called Blues Harp in 1965. So Tony contacted me when he found out that we're doing this book. He says, oh, wow, I'm in the middle of making a little Walter discography. He wanted to just catalog everything little Walter had ever recorded. So we started talking about that. By the way, Tony lived in St. Paul, Minnesota, which is a couple hours by plane from here. So we had never spoken in person, but via email, we sort of started putting our heads together about little Walter history and so on. He eventually started writing a book with another guy, Ward Gaines, who he had been in touch with separately. Once we'd made contact, Tony and I had made contact, he asked me if I'd be interested in being involved in the book. And I was a little bit reluctant because I'm not really a writer. I didn't have any experience You know, as a professional writer or anything like that, although I'd written a few things for blues magazines and so on. But eventually, you know, they persuaded me to get involved. So Ward, Tony and I, around, I guess, 1995 or so, decided to get serious about writing this book. So at that point, we all just started gathering information, doing interviews, you know, talking to people and really trying to put it all together. We worked for from about 1995 till about 2000. on this book. Really, as a labor of love, we didn't know if we'd ever get a publisher. We were prepared, actually, just to publish it online, just put it up as a website or something. But Tony, because he'd been a published author already through his Blues Harp book, and I think he did a couple of other Blues Harmonica instructional books after that one, he had some connections in the publishing biz, and he eventually... got us in touch with Peter Goralnik, who's a pretty well-known music writer in the US. And he knew Peter Goralnik, and Peter Goralnik suggested that we submit samples of our proposed book to a couple of publishers, and we got an offer right away to publish it. So then we got really serious about like, you know, this is real now, we have to make it into a book.

SPEAKER_00: 6:51

Yeah, and it's a fantastic book. I read it some years ago, and I just read it just before this podcast interview to brush up, and I love every second of it, apart from the sort of sad bit at the end, which we'll get to. But fantastic research and all the people and the information you got of him. It's incredible. I mean, how did you get all that together?

SPEAKER_06: 7:13

Well, thank you, first of all. Part of my... motivation is that Ward is on the East Coast. I think he's in Maryland, and Tony is in St. Paul, Minnesota. Neither of those guys really had any experience or connections in Chicago. Because I'd been a Little Walter fan and a harmonica player for a while by that time, I had just sought out some of the guys who had played with Little Walter, just really for my own curiosity. I sought out guys like Lewis and David Myers, the two brothers who'd been in Little Walter's first band that he had after he made his first recordings for Chess or Checker. I had been asking all these questions just for my own curiosity. What did Little Walter do in the studio? What kind of equipment did he use? What kind of a guy was he? And just stuff like that. So I had this sort of one degree away from him connection that my other two co-authors didn't have. So once I had a reason to I got really serious about just nailing these guys down, recording some interviews, recording some firsthand recollections and stuff. And that's where a lot of it came from. The guys in Chicago who had known Little Walter, and then there were a few people who, well, I should say either Ward or Tony had some connection with, and they were able to ask. I believe that it was Ward who, maybe it was Tony, I can't remember now, but one of those guys knew Charlie Musselwhite, and Charlie had had some experiences with Little Walter when he was in Chicago. And of course, there was a lot of stuff that was already out there. There was a really great interview with Lewis Myers in Blues Unlimited magazine that that supplied lots of good info. So there was a fair amount of published stuff out there that we were able to draw from. And then we just filled in the rest by really buckling down and trying to find the people who knew the answers to these questions. And over time, I'd become kind of friendly with guys like, like I said, the Myers brothers, Jimmy Lee Robinson, a few other people who had played in Walter's band. So I was really able to grill them over time to kind of dig a little bit deeper and get the story. And I think, you know, just the combination of our research and then the research that had already been done, you know, that ended up being the book.

SPEAKER_00: 9:36

So thanks, Scott. We'll bring in our second guest now, Kim Field. So Kim, you're a musician, obviously a harmonica player, and also a writer yourself. You've written another fantastic book on harmonica, which I've read, which is the Harmonica's Harps and Heavy Breavers, which covers lots of different players and including Little Walter you've got a section on and some great some comments from Jimmy Rogers and others and you've also recently co-written the Blues Dream of Billy Boy Arnold and that was released in the last year or so wasn't it and of course Billy Boy you know sort of knew Little Walter right he was around at the same time so you've got that connection there too.

SPEAKER_02: 10:12

Yeah that's right I was a 17 year old trumpet player when I caught a James Cotton show in 1968 and I went out and bought a sea marine band the next day. So I've been banging away at that thing ever since. I wrote that book on the history of the harmonica, harmonica's harps and heavy breathers. I was really interested in putting myself out there as a writer as well as a musician, and I needed a topic that I could stick with through the lifetime of creating a book, and obviously the harmonica was that topic. I met Billy Boy Arnold at a Mark Hummel show. He described his early meetings as a a 12-year-old with John Lee's Sonny Boy Williamson, which was quite remarkable. And that put the idea in my head of, here's this guy who's basically lived the entire history of Chicago blues. He was born, Billy Boy was born in Chicago in 35, had already been on the scene for about 10 years before Muddy Waters, you know, really hit it big. So he also was in contact with the early generation of Chicago blues players like Big Bill Brunzi and John Lee Williamson and people like that. And he was a harmonica player. But more to the point, he was a very intelligent, Billy Boy's a very intelligent person who has total recall of events from like 70 years ago. It's just remarkable. So I talked him up at a Mark Hummel show about coming out to Chicago to visit him and I I did that, and Dick Sherman set up a lunch with Billy Boy, and somehow I convinced Billy Boy to let me help him tell his story. And in a big way, it's the story of Chicago Blues Harmonica, including Little Walter, too, because I've never met anyone who is more passionate about Blues Harmonica than Billy Boy, and so he took a very keen interest in everybody on the scene, most especially Little Walter, whom he considered to be top player at the time. It was very interesting to learn more about Little Walter in the course of doing that book with Billy Boy.

SPEAKER_00: 12:36

So, and then our third guest today is Dennis Gruenling. You might remember him. He was on the last podcast, Long Time No Speak, Dennis.

SPEAKER_01: 12:43

Yeah, good to be here. Thanks, man.

SPEAKER_00: 12:45

So, you are the man we understand to do the last tribute album to Little Walter. Have you heard any of this since?

SPEAKER_01: 12:51

I haven't, and you know, and I mentioned it in the last podcast that I was so, I'm still, when I think about it, I'm just baffled that there was really no official recorded tribute album to Little Walter since, you know, the year that he It just kind of boggled my mind. So it just seemed like, how has anybody else not done this since George Smith? I mean, I'm really proud of that project. It obviously was a labor of love and a passion project for me, but just glad I was able to do that. I'm glad I was able to write the liner notes. Yes, thank you, Scott. You're very welcome.

SPEAKER_06: 13:27

I was glad to be able to buy it.

SPEAKER_00: 13:30

Thank you even more, Kim. I was glad to listen to it and play along. Thanks, man. great so enough about us let's talk about the the subject of today let's talk about uh little walter himself so um again scott i won't apologize too much from drawing quite heavily from the book that you co-authored for the life of little walter so so he was born um in 1930 probably

SPEAKER_06: 13:53

probably uh

SPEAKER_00: 13:55

on may the first in marksville uh louisiana so um that's quite close to new orleans so yeah so yeah any any mentions around he's uh the year of his birth

SPEAKER_06: 14:06

well you Yeah, a little bit. When we were working on the book, Tony Glover, his partner, was really into genealogy. And she was able to dig pretty deeply. And the first chapter of the book is a lot of her research about little Walter's birth. And one of the things that she found was that there were records that showed that little Walter's father was in prison nine months later. before the date that's accepted as his birth. So that suggests that he might have been born at a different time than is indicated in most biographies. In fact, there was no birth certificate. He never had a birth certificate. When he traveled overseas, he had to go to a church to get what I guess, is accepted as a certificate of birth, but it was 30-some years after his birth. But in order to get a passport, he needed this document. But over the course of researching the book, I think we found five different birth years that were documented. And I decided that the best thing to do is just leave it at the most commonly accepted one. But I think it's Possible, maybe even likely, that he was a little bit older than his 1930 birth date would suggest.

SPEAKER_00: 15:27

There's another document in the book where he signed his birth, what, in 1923, was it? So that's a date that he wrote, wasn't it? Right.

SPEAKER_06: 15:34

And there were several others, too. Yeah, 1925, 1926. 728 there were a bunch of different documents unfortunately since there was nothing that was really contemporary you know contemporaneous with his birth like a newspaper announcement or a you know an entry in a bible or something like that that would have specifically dated his birth it's sort of unknown but i i strongly suspect that he was a little at least a little bit older and you know frankly he looked a little bit older at the time of his death he you know if you accept his 1930 birth year he would be 38 years old, or 37 years old I should say, he looked like he might be at least 5 or 10 years older.

SPEAKER_00: 16:18

Yeah, well there's reasons for that, wasn't there? I mean, I guess it's important because when he started playing his first recording, when he started recording with Chess Etc, how old he was is quite interesting, but we'll get on to that. But I think what's documented is he started playing harmonica at the age of 8. Somewhere in there, yeah. And so obviously young, and I believe he was playing the regimental band harp rather than the marine band initially. That was a kind of cheaper version of the marine band at the time, was it?

SPEAKER_06: 16:47

You know, I honestly don't know. I don't know. I can't remember, actually, if we documented that in the book. The one thing I do remember is that his sister Lillian said that he wanted to be a saxophone player. But the family could not afford a saxophone, so that's why he ended up with a harmonica. The Mississippi saxophone, as they sometimes call it.

SPEAKER_00: 17:08

And the first harmonica player he probably heard was Lonnie Glosson. He was a kind of white hillbilly player who was on the radio, yes, who was kind of hearing this kind of hillbilly harmonica to begin with.

SPEAKER_06: 17:20

Yeah, and you know, I don't know how much of that got completely absorbed into his own style, but Lonnie Glosson was everywhere at that time. He had his own brand harmonicas and I think they advertised you could buy him on the on his radio broadcasts and Kim might know more about this than I do but but he was a very famous maybe the most famous harmonica player outside of the realm of like you know classical music Larry Adler and people like that

SPEAKER_02: 17:46

yeah Lonnie and Wayne Rainey were two of the like really early prominent country western harmonica players they both played in fact they both played together on some of the Delmore Brothers right records. They were very popular

SPEAKER_03: 18:02

at the time.

SPEAKER_02: 18:14

But then Lonnie and Wayne, they signed up with one of those Texas border radio stations, 50,000 watt stations just across the border. So they were on like, I think they were on 300 different stations around the United States at their peak. So they, they sold like 5 million harmonicas over the airwaves. And they, they, you just, you couldn't not run into Lonnie Glosson in those days. So it's not surprising that little Walter did too.

SPEAKER_06: 18:43

You know, honey boy Edwards also said little Walter, as you mentioned, Neil is from Louisiana. He went to new Orleans and played there very, very early on when he was before he ever came North. And he, Honey Boy Edwards said that his harmonica playing had what he called a Cajun-ly sound. And by that, I think he meant at that time it had sort of an accordion sound. And that might be just the way he used chords or whatever. He was influenced by stuff other than blues, I think, at the very beginning.

SPEAKER_02: 19:18

That's a part of Walter's story that I guess we'll never really know, but I think it's a really fascinating one. He had so many formative experiences in Louisiana before he went to Chicago or even became West Helena in the blues scene there. It's really fascinating to consider what it must have been like for a very hip young guy like Walter to spend time in New Orleans when he was really just forming his style and the influence that that must have had on him. And then, you know, per your earlier comments, Scott, that he even at the, you know, as a boy, he wanted to be a saxophone player. I mean, that's kind of the hallmark legacy of little Walter is putting a horn-like kind of concept behind the harmonica. Exactly.

SPEAKER_06: 20:10

Yep. Yep. By the way, speaking of New Orleans, Walter's older sister Lillian told me that she used to have a photograph of little Walter when he was leaving home for the first time. She said he was 12 years old and he was hitchhiking to New Orleans. And she said she had a picture of him standing on the side of the road with his thumb out, hitchhiking to New Orleans. And she said she'd I did not know whatever happened to that picture, but that's a picture I would have liked to have seen. I did hear, again, through his sister Lillian, that he played a lot on the streets there. There was someone who he stayed with who was sort of a distant relative who he stayed with in New Orleans, this woman named Waver Humphreys. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 21:13

So his first influence, I think very well documented, the person he really tried to imitate was the first Sonny Boy, John Lee Williamson, and that was a huge draw. So Dennis, you tell us something about John Lee Williamson's style, and maybe let Walter copy that of his early days. Well, anybody

SPEAKER_01: 21:32

who has studied blues harmonica, in particular Chicago blues harmonica, can very easily tell that early on, on Walter's early recordings, was pretty much mimicking John Lee's style. And, you know, John Lee at that time was a superstar in the blues world anyway. But you could easily tell that he looked up to his style. I mean, I don't know. I'm not as much of a researcher slash historian as Scott and Kim. But you can tell just from a harmonica player's perspective that he really listened to and studied John Lee Williamson. And after the first year or two of a couple of years, I would say, I guess, of listening to his first recordings, first couple of years of recordings, you can really hear him kind of start to grow a bit with his what Sonny Boy One was doing, and he clearly kind of based a good portion of his style off of that.

SPEAKER_00: 22:52

So as you say, Sonny Boy was a massive star, then he was everywhere on the radio, but he was also the sort of first one to really sort of use the harmonica as a lead instrument, yeah, and that was a, you know, he was really pushing it in that blues genre then.

SPEAKER_01: 23:04

Sure, of course, yeah. I mean, he was, he's the granddaddy of them all, really.

SPEAKER_00: 23:17

so Kim anything to add on Sonny Boy 1?

SPEAKER_02: 23:20

Yeah well it was interesting you know there is Billy Boy Arnold was a John Lee Williamson fanatic by the time he was about 10 or 11 years old he had a paper route and he spent all his extra money on John Lee Williamson records then he tracked John Lee Williamson down and met him visited John Lee at his apartment on two different occasions and even got some harmonica tips and so there's no bigger fan or idolizer of John Lee Williamson than Billy Boy Arnold. Billy Boy told me in the course of the interviews for the book that the first time he met Walter, well, the second time he met Walter, first time he met him on the street, second time he went into a club to see Walter play, and he walked by the bandstand and Louis Myers muttered to little Walter, there's one of those so-called harp players who just went by. So little Walter had Billy Boy come up and sit in on the set to check him out. And then they sat at a table and chatted afterwards And Billy Boy said that Walter told him that Sonny Boy was the absolute best. John Lee Williamson was the guy. I think Billy Boy also mentioned that that was probably the only time he ever heard Walter speak admiringly of another harp player.

SPEAKER_06: 24:32

I think he was interviewed by Val Wilmer during one of his trips to England. And when asked about his favorite harmonica players or who influenced him, he only mentioned John Lee Williamson. He didn't mention anyone else.

SPEAKER_00: 24:45

So we mentioned that he went on to Helena in Arkansas, and that's where he saw Sonny Boy 2. So Rice Miller, who had his King Biscuit Time radio show, so he was big around then.¶¶ Did he start then hanging around with Sonny Boy 2 and sort of listening to him, picking up from him?

SPEAKER_06: 25:16

It's hard to say. I mean, he did spend some time around him, but of the harmonica players who were out there, I hear less of Sonny Boy 2 and Little Walter. than sometimes he gets credit for. I don't hear a whole lot of Sonny Boy 2 in Little Walter's style. I think Walter was in some way reacting to the older style that I think he thought that Sonny Boy 2 was playing. I think Little Walter was like, yeah, yeah, that's old stuff. I'm going to do the new stuff, you know? Yeah, so I don't know. I mean, there's a little bit. I've speculated at times that, you know, and we're kind of fast-forwarding here a little bit, but towards the late 50s, Little Walter started making some recordings without the amplified harp, and I think it's possible that that might have been a reaction to Sonny Boy, because some of that stuff does have a little bit of a Sonny Boy feel to it, but not Not a lot, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_00: 26:13

Yeah, no, I agree you don't hear his style in Little Waltz's playing, for sure. But I mean, I think it does say in the book that he did sort of kind of fill in for him on his radio show when he wasn't available. So I think he was definitely hanging around with Reisman a little.

SPEAKER_06: 26:25

Yeah, yeah, he was part of that scene, for sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 26:28

I think, you know, there's all this apocryphal talk about who influenced who and who took lessons from who. And I think Dennis and Scott are on the right track. The proof is in the recordings. And Scott is right. I really don't hear... Rice Miller influences in Walter's playing anywhere near the extent you do John Lee Williamson and so forth. I think it might have been the other way around in terms of who was influencing whom, but I just don't hear that in Walter's playing.

SPEAKER_06: 26:59

It's possible that Sonny Boy influenced him more in how to hobo and get a free meal, that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_02: 27:07

Well, and how to be a professional. I mean, Sonny Boy gigged all over the area, and he had a daily radio Sure.

SPEAKER_00: 27:17

yeah yeah and then finally just just name dropping home monica so he sort of did meet big walter as well walter horton he was sort of 13 years old so all these three guys were older than little walter so i guess they were you know they were people he was certainly listening to and uh you know i had some contact with then he started moving around you mentioned honey boy edwards earlier on i think kim and uh he was moving around playing with him before then uh he sort of made his big move north to to move to chicago and then started playing on maxwell street and that's when uh things started taking off for him

SPEAKER_06: 27:46

yes that is definitely Definitely when things started taking off. I found an ad in the Chicago Defender from 1946 that advertises Little Walter as the Wonder Harmonica King. That's the first advertisement that I've been able to find for anything that Little Walter did. It's not that important, except that it confirms that he was in Chicago that early in 1946. I think there's some speculation that he had come up in 47 or 48, but he was definitely gigging in Chicago in 1946. The place that he did this gig, it was called the Purple Cat Lounge, and it was on the west side, and Little Walter took over the gig there. He had a regular weekly thing there, and he took over for John Lee Williamson, who had moved on from there. In the book, there's a story, I believe it was... told by Johnny Williams, maybe. He was a guitar player in Chicago. But anyway, he said that little Walter went to the Purple Cat when Sonny Boy was playing there and persuaded them to let him sit in. And that afterwards, Sonny Boy told Walter, you play too fast.

SPEAKER_02: 28:58

Billy Boy Arnold, when he was telling me about that conversation he had at the table in the club with Walter for the first time, he also mentioned that Walter told him that John Lee had told him that same thing, that he played too fast.

SPEAKER_03: 29:12

Yeah,

SPEAKER_00: 29:13

there's certainly talk in the book about him, you know, his time not being good. Obviously, he's young at this stage, right? But it's interesting to see the great little Walter, you know, probably didn't have great time when he was younger. So there's hope for us all yet.

SPEAKER_06: 29:24

If I can jump in on that for one second, you know, because I'm the guy who wrote the book, I usually am the guy who's the big defender of little Walter. I don't think everything he did is perfect. I think he did some, you know what I mean? I'm not going to defend everything he ever did, but I'm going to defend that. I don't hear anything on any of his recordings that from the first to the last that would indicate his timing was any worse than Muddy Waters or Jimmy Rogers or Howlin' Wolf or Sonny Boy. I think that came from Jimmy Rogers himself. Jimmy Rogers is the only person that I've seen say that little Walter had bad time. Don't know why, but as Kim just said, listen to the records. His timing is solid, or as solid as anyone else was at that time.

SPEAKER_00: 30:11

I think the time he started recording with Moody and Jimmy, I think he definitely sorted his time out by then. I was thinking maybe when he was younger, but yeah.

SPEAKER_06: 30:18

Yeah, and that's sort of a hallmark of guys who play solo too, who don't have an accompanist with them. they follow their own time. They do the John Lee Hooker thing or Lightnin' Hopkins. They change when they feel it's time to change. But once you start playing with people, and I think once Little Walter started playing with people, he probably sorted that out pretty quickly.

SPEAKER_01: 30:39

You can hear it, I think, on his earliest recordings, too. He's playing fairly rhythmically on his earliest recordings, and his timing is pretty dang good.

SPEAKER_02: 30:50

And when you also consider his influences, again, he's listening to pop music and he's listening to swing and Louis Jordan and all those horn players and so it's not like he's only coming out of the blues tradition right so it's funny how you know there's that one comment by Jimmy Rogers and it becomes sort of a gospel thing that's accepted you know as being completely true and I'm with Scott and Dennis on this one it's hard to imagine that that was a huge project for Walter in terms of perfecting his time so

SPEAKER_00: 31:24

right well and I think it's evident on his first recording. So he made his first recording in 1947 in a record shop where there was a Maxwell Radio Record Co. So it's Oranel Blues, which he made with a guy called Otham Brown. So this is his very first recording. We've got that captured.

UNKNOWN: 0:00

......

SPEAKER_06: 31:56

Yes. And thankfully, you know, this is just like a literally like a little back room, a portable recording type situation. But they put out a few records and, you know, of the guys who were out playing on Maxwell Street at that time. And Little Walter was among them. So he got lucky. By the way, I should mention, too, that Floyd Jones, who was kind of a contemporary of Little Walter's and, you know, in Chicago on the Chicago scene. He was a guitar player and later a bass player. Floyd Jones played. claimed that he made the first recording that little Walter ever made. They went into one of those recording booths where you can make a a single recording for 50 cents. And he said Little Walter backed him on guitar on that recording before he did the Oranelle record. Wow, I'd buy that for 50 cents. Hell yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 32:45

Well, you mentioned him playing guitar. That's an interesting thing. A lot of people probably know that he played a little bit of guitar. There was a few photos of him. But it sounds like he played quite a lot of guitar, didn't he? He actually recorded quite a lot of guitar.

SPEAKER_06: 33:06

Yeah, I at one point decided to just dig into that and I compiled a little collection and I think there are 11 recordings, 11 recordings that I've been able to find where he's on guitar, several of them where he's backing himself. There's a record that came out on Delmar called The Blues World of Little Walter that features some of his things where he was recording and playing guitar and singing on record. And then he backed Muddy Waters, Jimmy Rogers, and a piano player named Eddie Ware, who was Jimmy Rogers' piano player. And his guitar playing was solid. I think it's kind of obvious if you're a guitar player, you're going, yeah, this is a guy who doesn't play guitar full time all the time. But for blues guitar playing, it's totally He was a really good guitar player, and someone who saw him play at the University of Chicago in the early 60s wrote a review that said that on stage he only played harmonica, but backstage he was playing guitar, and in this review they said someone is missing a huge opportunity by not recording him on guitar because he has a beautiful guitar style. Sadly, I don't think he ever made any more guitar recordings after the 50s.

SPEAKER_02: 34:18

Yeah, Billy Boyd told me that, again, it was one of those first times he saw Walter in the the clubs Walter did play a little guitar on the bandstand but Billy Boy said that was the only time he ever saw Walter play on the bandstand and Billy Boy saw Walter hundreds of times so

SPEAKER_06: 34:36

yeah and I should mention this this reminds me of the the famous story that both Walter and Lewis told this story so it's it's not a legend or a myth that Walter used to out on the road when he was playing with Lewis there were always guys who wanted to challenge him on harmonica I can play better than you, little Walter. So Walter would invite them up. Before inviting them up, he would switch and have Louis Myers blow harmonica, and Walter would play guitar while Louis... Cut the head of the other guy. That's an expression that means he put the other guy in his place. Lewis was a great harmonica player.

SPEAKER_00: 35:13

Well, it goes to show, right, even if he had, you know, reasonably rudimentary guitar skills, that's important, you know, even as the greatest harmonica player that, you know, to have those other knowledge of other instruments. Yeah, yeah. Going back to that recording in 1947, so as I say, he recorded that Oranelle Blues, but then he also recorded I Just Keep Loving Her during that take in which he sings, right? Because I think, you know, there's association when he's playing with Muddy Waters that he didn't start singing until he went solo, but obviously he's singing right then, you know, on his first recording, yeah.

SPEAKER_06: 35:44

Yeah, I think he wanted to have his own career rather than backing someone else, but it just didn't really happen for him. Maybe it didn't happen because he was too closely connected aligned with John Lee Williamson, and maybe there's like, oh, we already have one of those. I had a conversation with Jerry Portnoy once about John Lee Williamson, and he was saying that he thought that all Chicago blues harmonica goes back to the later John Lee Williamson, the post-war John Lee Williamson. You can follow it all back there, and I kind of disagreed with that, because one of the things that Walter did that John Lee Williamson didn't do as much is syncopate his rhythms. John Lee Williamson specialized... I mean, listen to Little Walter's first recording. That's kind of the way John Lee Williamson played. But it was very rhythmic. It was very much, you sort of play the melody. He didn't really go off the sheet music so much. John Lee Williamson, I should say. Little Walter... almost immediately was like improvising stuff that john lee williamson just never did from his very first recordings he was playing things that that were sort of outside the john lee williamson thing and that's where the little walter style i think came from is the stuff where you know where he's like okay i'm gonna move on from john lee williamson now

SPEAKER_00: 37:02

yeah and i think that's a good indication of why we all probably consider him to be the the greatest blues harmonica player right because particularly back then the guys kind of had the stock riffs right you could definitely tell Well, you

SPEAKER_06: 37:18

know, they played kind of repeated riffs quite a lot, but he didn't do that, right? You know, the question that is always in the back of my mind whenever I think about Little, what drove him? What drove him? What was the guiding principle that made him just continually strive for something new? And I think it's that he just wanted to do something no one else was doing. I once heard a story, an anecdote. Little Willie Anderson was kind of a Little Walter disciple in the 50s and 60s. And I heard a story that Little Willie Anderson would go see Little Walter and little Walter would just try and mess with little Willie's mind, and he would play some crazy lick and then look right at Willie Anderson, who's standing in front of the stage and say... try and cop that

SPEAKER_00: 38:26

so we mentioned that he probably you know he might want to be a saxophone player but couldn't afford to get a harmonica he clearly listened to a lot of jazz a lot of harmonica so you know Dennis right we talked on our last podcast about you know you know you're playing low tuned harmonicas to try and get that sort of baritone sax sound so I think he was definitely maybe the first person to try and imitate the saxophone and the harmonica Dennis what do you think about you know he's playing for the respect of that

SPEAKER_01: 38:52

well yeah I I mean, I agree with everything Scott's saying about this. I also think there are other things at play. I mean, I'm sure he did want to do other things that other players weren't doing. He was also that guy. You know, I mean, he had that musical gift. to blend different things that he was drawn to. Of course, one of the big things being John Lee Williamson, but we also know he talked about and listened to a lot of jazz and R&B sax players. And what I hear when his style kind of got a little further away from just mimicking John Lee is he's incorporating probably everything else that he loved about music into his playing. So would it be the same? If John Lee wasn't around for him to first mimic and learn from, I would bet not so. Would it still be amazing? I'm probably sure it would be because that's just who Walter was musically. That's just part of him. But it certainly would have been different, I think, without him learning from the style of John Lee. So he definitely added something different, but he added to that foundation for sure that we can all hear that when we study what he did.

SPEAKER_02: 40:03

I think Walter really wanted to swing. Yeah. Billy Boy mentioned that Walter had told folks that he, he kind of got frustrated playing with Muddy because, uh, and they kept playing that same old slow shit. Yeah. And, uh, he, and you can hear in like, uh, just keep loving her, you know, like even in the earliest recordings, Walter's playing really pops, it jumps, it swings, you know, he's got a really beautiful swing feel to, to his approach to music. And I think that's what he unleashed, you know, when, uh, He did juke and broke things wide open.

SPEAKER_06: 40:36

Yeah. If I can jump in on that a little bit. Remember, too, that Walter was playing with Muddy. Muddy was a generation older than Walter. Right. And Dave Myers told me once that one of the reasons little Walter moved on from Muddy, even though it was a good gig, right? It's probably the best harmonica gig that ever existed. But one of the reasons he moved on is he said Muddy played too slow. Right. Muddy always played slow stuff. And, you know, that's true. That's part of Muddy's thing. That's part of what made Muddy great. But little Walter didn't want to play slow. He played fast, like John Lee Williamson said. He played fast, you know.

SPEAKER_02: 41:12

Like Billy Boy mentioned to me that, you know, even like in terms of the different clubs that were available as venues to them, that Muddy preferred, I think it was the Zanzibar, where Billy Boy described that as a place where people came and sat and listened to the music. Whereas, you know, Walter played at Silvio's and other places, you know, where there's more of a dance crowd, you know. So there was even a difference in terms of... of some of the venues that they worked at.

SPEAKER_00: 41:40

So before we get on to Little Walter leaving Muddy Waters, let's start with how he started playing with Muddy Waters in 1948. So he joined up with Muddy Waters and Jimmy Rogers. They had a band, they called themselves the Headcutters, as you mentioned, I think, Kim, earlier. That's, you know, they kind of put the other bands in their place. Yeah, so he did some great, you know, his really great classic recordings with Muddy Waters. So his first recording with Muddy Waters, not Jimmy Rogers, was Blue Baby with Sonny Lensley He was a piano player. And then he became part of this trio with Muddy Waters and Jimmy Rogers. And they did some fantastic recordings. Some of my favorite Little Waters recordings for sure with Muddy Waters. they were big, right? And they were making a big splash on the Chicago. And they sort of really sort of set that Chicago sound, you say, you know, the sort of that trio.

SPEAKER_01: 42:48

That Chicago sound was really already happening, but I think that was, I guess, the beginning of that newer Chicago sound.

SPEAKER_06: 42:56

Yeah, it was the post-war Chicago sound was really, you know, there had been this, you know, we don't have to go too far down this road, but there had been a Chicago sound that was sort of epitomized by what a lot of people call the Bluebird sound. It was this, you know, it was like... a session band, basically, that backed up pretty much anybody. Washboard Sam, Big Bill Brunzi, John Lee Williamson, Jazz Gillum, same guys playing behind all of them. So that was sort of the bluebird sound. The sort of post-war reaction to that was these small, hard-hitting trios, like, as you say, the Head Cutters, and I think that's sort of going in the direction that things ended up. But I think of that as a transitional period right there, because I think the real... chicago sound hit when muddy started recording with drums and a piano player

SPEAKER_01: 43:48

that's the classic sound and of course you know you add in the amplified harp here being a harp player i mean that was a huge part at least for me when i first discovered this that was just it didn't it wasn't always amplified but a big portion of it was and it really made a different impact listening to the band with that

SPEAKER_00: 44:06

Another sort of milestone is that Muddy Waters was recording solo at Chess, and Chess wanted him to be solo. That's the sound, the country blues sort of style he was playing. And it wasn't until a little bit later that he was allowed to record with Muddy at Chess, and the first song they recorded there was You're Gonna Need My Help.

SPEAKER_04: 44:28

All right, little water.

UNKNOWN: 44:30

You're gonna need my help.

SPEAKER_00: 44:38

And so, yeah, so then they started recording together at Chess. And so, yeah, what about those recordings with Chess?

SPEAKER_06: 44:45

Yeah, the early recordings with Chess, you know, the story goes that Muddy wanted to record with a full band, which is what he was gigging with. I think it's sort of interesting that some of the greatest Muddy Waters recordings, when he first started recording with just him and Big Crawford on bass... those really elemental sort of low-down blues. Big Crawford was never in Muddy's band. That was never a thing that Muddy did live. That was a studio concoction. It's interesting that those records, I always sort of marvel at how great those records are, considering Muddy was completely out of his element, playing with a musician that he did not normally play with, and he made all these great records. Then they added in Jimmy Rogers and Little Walter. It really started to flower then. It became sort of an ensemble where all the pieces were woven together in this beautiful way. Those early recordings are part of what makes them so great for me, is that you can really hear each piece individually and see how they sort of fit together and make the larger thing out of these smaller pieces. I just love that stuff.

SPEAKER_02: 45:59

Muddy hit with I Can't Be Satisfied, which again was basically him with Big Crawford. Leonard Chess is a record company guy, and he hit the jackpot with that formulation, and so I think he stuck with that as long as he... Yeah, lock it in, right? Yeah, and so he was kind of resistant to Muddy's urging him to bring the band into the studio and so forth, because he's you didn't want to kill the goose

SPEAKER_01: 46:24

that laid the golden egg for him. And you can hear it. Well, you know, Scott, you had mentioned, it's kind of like, this is like the transitional period, the beginning of this stuff, the beginning of what we think of as the post-war Chicago blue sound and earlier pre-war or bluebird era of the Chicago sound.

SPEAKER_04: 46:41

Had,

SPEAKER_01: 46:50

Obviously, different instrumentalists in the band. I mean, there was band backing up. A lot of it wasn't just solo artists. The interplay and the response of how everybody in this new era was different. It felt different. It played different. It was a little more interplay. There was a little more responsiveness to how everybody played together. I think that's an exciting part of this new sound that was being created. Yeah, agreed.

SPEAKER_00: 47:18

Yeah, and so he made recordings with Muddy, and then he also made recordings with Jimmy Rogers, some great recordings with Jimmy Rogers, such as that so right, real classic song. And he recorded his first amplified harmonica at Chess with the song Country Boy. which he recorded with Muddy alongside She Moves Me, which was recorded in the same session. This was a kind of turning point for Little Walter. He was wanting to play amplified. As it goes through, as we get on too shortly, he sort of left Muddy's band, but he carried on recording with Muddy. He was always very frustrated that he couldn't record amplified very much at chess, and it was a kind of really big frustration point for him. A

SPEAKER_06: 48:21

lot of the 50s stuff with Muddy was amplified, I think it was in the later fifties that they sort of handcuffed him by asking him not to play with his, you know, there's a famous session. I think it was on one of the little Walter or the little Walter box set that came out. There's a little interplay where little Walter's complaining in between songs about, I can't hear me though. He's saying that, that the other musicians can't hear him in the studio when he's playing. And that was why he wanted to use his amplifier and so that everyone could interact with each other. And he was somehow or another persuaded not to do that. So he started recording in the late 50s, minus the amplifier. But one of the things, if I can go back just a little bit, when I started getting into Little Walter, much like what Dennis said, the amplified sound was like, wait, what is this? This is like something that I have not heard before. And so I really went down the rabbit hole Trying to find out how to get that sound. And like a lot of beginning harmonica players, I thought it was, you could buy a microphone or an amplifier that will make you sound like that. You know, 10 years later and countless amplifiers and microphones later, I realized it's really not that. Most of the equipment that was available when little Walter was playing will give you that sound. It was the way that he used it and the way that he, you know, manipulated it in his playing. He would play soft. He would play hard. He would really, you know, dig in and get this amplified sound. I guess the point is, you know, the amplifier was sort of the focus of a lot of people's interest in Little Walter. But, you know, as it turns out, that's not really the thing. There were people playing, you know, with amplifiers before him.

SPEAKER_00: 50:06

It was him with an amplifier, wasn't it? Exactly.

SPEAKER_06: 50:09

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 50:10

Well, you know, amplification was a survival tool, right, in these loud, crowded bars in Chicago and every other major city. And, you know, John Lee Williamson was playing amplified before he died, too. Sure. So it was just sort of a sonic boost, get your sound over in a crowded room. Right. But the thing that Walter had, Walter saw that I think he heard the future in the amp in a different kind of a way, and it's sort of akin to... Charlie Christian realized on the guitar, you know, with the combination of a guitar with an amplifier, the ability to sustain notes and to just create a whole different section of the sonic catalog for harmonica. I think Walter really like understood that in a in kind of an immediate, innate way. It's true that his core acoustic sound and technique is still totally evident in his amplified recordings, but he also really understood how the amplifier could make you

SPEAKER_01: 51:16

different. Exactly. I couldn't agree with that more, especially that Charlie Christian analogy. I mean, I've always thought the same thing. Not only are they great players, but they heard something different that they can use as a tool to further express what they wanted to do musically. That wasn't just the instrument itself. It was other things added to the instrument to create even more exciting colors and dimensions and textures.

SPEAKER_06: 51:42

Yeah, and it's worth pointing out too that, you know, the microphone and the amplifier is just to make things louder, but that's not exactly what little Walter used it for. He sort of realized that you could push this thing further than it was really intended to go and create And they were on tour in Texas. in a cafe across from the venue after having dropped their equipment off, and they were in the cafe having dinner or whatever, Ivory Joe Hunter's band came into the cafe, and while they were there, somebody put juke on the Jukebox, Little Walter's recording of Juke. And Dave Myers said they sat there and laughed while the other musicians in Ivory Joe Hunter's band argued over what instrument it was that they thought they were hearing. They had literally, these are professional musicians who had literally never heard that sound before.

SPEAKER_00: 53:00

So let's get on to Juke now. So, you know, you mentioned this song there. So released in 1952, all of the harmonica players know Juke, know it's a huge hit. But I think we should, probably don't quite realize the significance of that song like you say what you've just mentioned there about the sound and the other instruments couldn't really recognize that as a harmonica but it also made little walter a massive star he left muddy waters band went solo it was a huge hit he suddenly sort of propelled to be a star in his own name and suddenly harmonica was you know everyone wanted a harmonica in their band you know this

SPEAKER_06: 53:33

yeah the the amplified sound you know where other people were really just using it to get louder matter of fact there's i believe snooki prior beat Little Walter into the studio and record Amplified before Little Walter did. But it doesn't sound that much different from anything else that Snooki Pryor was playing. The tone is just very slightly different. Little Walter's like, no, no, no. We can use this to create this sonic palette that just isn't heard anywhere else. And I've seen ads, you know, Little Walter and his... Amazing electric harmonica. It was just something that just didn't really exist. There were microphones and there were harmonicas before Little Walter's Juke, but there really wasn't amplified harmonica before Little Walter started doing it, actually on Country Boy, as you said, with Muddy. But as an instrument, amplified harmonica came into being on the date that Country Boy was recorded. And Juke is just the follow-through on that. Juke, by the way, the record that we all know and love as the national anthem of blues harmonica, what we hear is the very first attempt at the very first take of the very first song that little Walter tried at his very first session for Checker. That's it. The very first thing that came out, that's Juke.

SPEAKER_00: 54:59

but they were playing it on the bandstand as I understand before they recorded it

SPEAKER_06: 55:03

yeah supposedly Muddy was using it as a sort of set closer or opener and a story I don't know how true the story is but supposedly one of the things that inspired Little Walter to leave Muddy's band is someone came up and asked to hear that song their theme song back in those days by the way the musicians all sat while playing back in the early 50s at least these guys did and someone Somebody came up and put a quarter on Muddy's knee and a quarter on Jimmy Rogers' knee and a dime on Little Walter's knee. And supposedly that was one of the things, allegedly, that inspired Little Walter to go, no, no, no, this is my thing. Always the harp player getting no respect.

SPEAKER_00: 55:45

No respect. I'm telling you, no respect. But again, I think, you know, the Duke and his rise to stardom, you know, was a change in that, right? Again, you know, he was one of the great stars of the day. I mean, one thing I'm interested in, and again, maybe Scott or Kim, is he had 14 top 10 hits and two number ones, My Baby and the other one. So this was on the R&B charts, right? Not on the kind of pop charts. So who was hearing the R&B charts? Was this just kind of black charts? Were white people hearing at that stage? I think if white people

SPEAKER_06: 56:15

were hearing it, it's because they were listening to black radio, which is a thing, right? That wasn't unheard of. I remember as a little kid listening with my little Transistor Radio, just trying to listen to distant radio stations and finding weird things like this to listen to. I sometimes wonder if at some point I had listened and not known to some live broadcast because there were a lot of blues live broadcasts from clubs back in the 60s when various guys were out there doing it. And I used to listen. I was in Chicago. I used to listen to my little radio. I'd go through the dial, listen for weird things, but I probably heard it and said, eh, you know, where are the Beatles?

SPEAKER_00: 56:53

so then Little Walter proceeds with his very successful solo career for the neck well through the 50s mainly until at least getting on to the later 50s and what's really interesting is that with Chess they released singles and they were all sort of double-sided singles so they had one side where generally he was singing a song and then they had a harmonica instrumental on the other side and so again music to our ears right that harmonica instrumentals would be like the big hits of the days guys we were definitely born in the wrong era

SPEAKER_06: 57:22

yeah yeah Yeah, and speaking of that, you know, Juke was a number one hit. It was the biggest hit released, at least on the Billboard charts. It was the biggest hit that the chess label or the chess combine had ever released up to that point.

SPEAKER_02: 57:36

It was a big deal for them. That's a really important point because it also put the chess label on solid financial footing, you know, made them a player in the national distribution record business.

SPEAKER_06: 57:50

Yeah. I don't know if you can really overstate how important it was to chess as a label and obviously to Little Walter's career. You know, while Juke was still on the charts, they released the next Little Walter single. It also charted. So he had, I think, Sad Hours and Juke were on the charts at the same time. It was like a rocket from there. For the next two or three years, every single that he released between 52 and, I think, 55, every single he released charted.

SPEAKER_02: 58:29

Yeah, it's also important to note that he outsold Muddy Waters by a pretty large margin, like during the 1950s.

SPEAKER_00: 58:39

But interesting to say that Duke was actually recorded with Muddy's band, wasn't it? So they did that, didn't they? They would just sort of swap around the same band and play with Jimmy Rogers, play with Muddy Waters. So it is Muddy's band or that band on Duke, isn't

SPEAKER_06: 58:52

it? It is, yeah. And that's because Little Walter did not have a band at that point. There's a story that goes around that Duke was recorded at the end of a Muddy Waters session in some spare time. That's not true. There was a session. It was called specifically to record Little Walter. Little Walter recorded his first single on that session. And in the time left over at the end of that session, Muddy cut one song that was then used on one side of one of his later singles. But it was definitely a Little Walter session. and called for the purposes of getting something out on him.

SPEAKER_00: 59:27

He carried on recording with Muddy during this time, as I mentioned earlier on. So despite the fact that he'd left Muddy's band, Chess still wanted him to record with Muddy. So the first song he recorded after he recorded Duke, he went back and recorded Baby Please Don't Go with Muddy, which is incidentally the first harmonica solo I ever learned.

UNKNOWN: 59:48

Oh!

SPEAKER_01: 59:57

Obviously, I think that is a fairly important recording and a very influential recording for me, not just for me personally. It was also one of the first amplified harmonica recordings that I heard and very influential to me. But, you know, it's kind of like epitomized this new era of post-war Chicago blues where it's taking, you know, a more traditional blues song slash theme and completely modernizing it with these new sounds and this new way of interplay and this whole new palette of colors of blues that they were playing with, which is just, I can only imagine, I can't because I wasn't there, but I can only imagine how amazing it sounded to people of that era to hear something like that for the first time, especially if you were already listening to blues and to hear this kind of new

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:51

thing. So another one for you, Dennis. So the first time he recorded on chromatic and in third position was That's It.

UNKNOWN: 1:01:07

That's It.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:13

So obviously you're a great blues chromatic player yourself. So he went on to become a really great chromatic player. I think Muddy Waters originally was a little bit reluctant, but he went on. So what about what he did for the blues chromatic?

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:29

Well, I mean, Little Walter was arguably... When we look at it now, the most directly influential blues harp player in history, and I think we can look at John Lee's Sonny Boy One as the most indirectly influential of all time. But what Little Walter did on chromatic was not really done in a blues context before him, at least in his time. own virtuosic way i mean it was just he along with the amplified approach that he had was kind of mind-blowing for that era and for that time and it just changed everything now i also will say because i mean i'm a huge george harmonica smith fan as well george not long after this, also had a completely different approach, also usually influential, but Walter was really going somewhere Where no other player, no other blues player had gone before on the chromatic at that time. And in a very musical way, not just kind of inhaling and exhaling chords and hitting, you know, some notes that, you know, eventually most of these notes are going to fit. So I'm just going to kind of ramble on and play some notes. I mean, he knew his way. around the instrument and was making music, not just blues, on that chromatic harp.

SPEAKER_00: 1:02:48

Yeah, so Kim, you, obviously in your book, The Harmonicas and Heavy Breeders, you talk about a lot of the different harmonica players and the sort of great, you know, kind of harmonica bands. So do you know about that transition that he made? You know, was he the first sort of blues chromatic player and, you know, where it came from for him?

SPEAKER_02: 1:03:04

Yeah, I don't really, I don't believe Walter was very influenced by the music chromatic harmonica players like Larry Adler and Jerry Murad and people like that. Although it's interesting, Jerry Murad, you know, was also based in Chicago and also recorded his big hit, Peg of My Heart, in the same studios, Universal Studios, where the chess label recorded in their first decade. I think that Walter got a hold of a chromatic, and again, just like he did with the diatonic, he heard possibilities in that instrument, and he just He just went with it. I don't hear any oral evidence of him learning popular show tunes on the chromatic or doing any of the kind of prep work that Jerry Murad and those players did to build their technique. I think it was pretty unique to him. Walter's track record as an innovator, you know, we've already talked about how he brought the horn sensibility to the harmonica and the jazz phrasing and the rhythmic approach, but he also was the first blues guy to delve into the chromatic, and he brought third position diatonic playing to the game. I mean, he just, it's just... kind of staggering how innovative he was in such a short period of time.

SPEAKER_00: 1:04:24

So do we know about Third Position then? Because I've got my notes here that the first song he played in Third Position was on chromatic. So was Third Position diatonic being used by then as well?

SPEAKER_02: 1:04:35

I'd like to hear Dennis about this, but I believe that Walter, Third Position on the diatonic was also a Walter contribution.

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:43

Off the top of my head, I'm trying to remember what year was like, what was it, Please Have Mercy? But that I think was before the chromatic definitely you know something that walter really took in a place that other players were not doing and i think he really obviously made it a thing before anybody

SPEAKER_02: 1:05:01

third position is very interesting too because one of the really interesting realities about the blues is it's kind of a it's a musical zone that's sort of halfway between major and minor Third position is a position that's typically associated with songs in a minor key. Walter used third position in major keys as well and chromatic in major keys and not minor keys too. So I think that was another really cool thing that he brought to the table was even an increasing use of that minor feel on top of a major blues pattern.

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:35

Right, right, for sure. Not truly major, like for regular blues anyway, but also not truly minor in that gray slash blue area,

SPEAKER_06: 1:05:47

you know? You know, I would also like to mention that, you know, we're talking about like horn players and stuff. There was a harmonica player who was amazing. Definitely imitating horn players on record before Little Walter, but it didn't have the impact. It didn't have that amplified thing that just made it so big and so powerful and so powerful. This harmonica player was Rhythm Willie. Yep. He, I think, to my ear, sounds like he was imitating clarinet players specifically. Like... He'd been listening to some jazz clarinet guys, maybe Benny Goodman or something like that. But most people have never heard of Rhythm Willie. He's a deeply obscure character, and he just didn't have that much influence on the people he played around. It just didn't have the same sort of impact, even though, again, he was doing sort of a horn thing. But little Walter just made it so much bigger and more important within the music. You know, just

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:55

that sort of presence. I think a big part of that, obviously, is combining that whole amplified sound and the way that he manipulated the amplified sound. The little rhythm wooly stuff is incredible. Great harmonica stuff. The stuff that I'm familiar with, or that I'm thinking of, at least, is that first position stuff. A lot of great first position on the bottom on the top of the harp. But yeah, when Walter amplified it and used his approach of manipulating the tones and the nuances and the sounds and textures with the amplified gear, the mic and the amp and the way he was playing, it blew everything else out of the water. But also, John Lee, Sonny Boy One, you could hear his later recordings, you could clearly tell that he was influenced by horn players of the day. I mean, it is very clear. And I know that, you know, You all agree with me and you've all studied this stuff and listened to all this stuff as well. The latter half of his recorded output, you could really hear the difference in his approach from more low down gut bucket blues early on to stuff that was clearly influenced by jump blues and horn players of the day.

SPEAKER_06: 1:08:00

Yeah, he was listening to Louis Jordan for sure. He recorded one of Louis Jordan's songs. Wonderful time.

SPEAKER_04: 1:08:16

Yep.

SPEAKER_00: 1:08:19

There's a little section in the book that you're involved with, Scott, where it talks about how, you know, the band, Little Wolters Band, when he was touring, they were much louder than bands with horns because they weren't amplified in the same way. So they had a lot more impact than the bands with horns. And he was kind of outshining them on the humble, small harmonica with his amplifier.

SPEAKER_06: 1:08:38

Yeah, and this goes back to the story about Ivory Joe Hunter's band. Another part of that story is that night when they took the stage, according to Dave, they blew Ivory Joe Hunter's band off the stage. Because they had, you know, and those guys had been laughing, like, where's the rest of your band? It's like, no, this is the band. You wait and see. You know, two amplified guitars, an amplified harp, and Fred Below on drums. And I don't know that anybody in Ivory Joe Hunter's band was even amplified in any way. According to Dave, they... cut these guys. They cut their heads, so. Cut their heads, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:09:12

But he made some more classic recordings through the sort of early 50s. He did his own, he did Blues of the Feeling, Quartz of the Twelve was a single, both-sided single, You're So Fine, that's out.

UNKNOWN: 1:09:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:09:33

He recorded the fantastic, iconical Hoochie Coochie Man with Muddy Waters in 1954. I just want to make love to you. I'm Ready was the first time he played chromatic with Muddy. The first time he recorded chromatic with Muddy. Last Night and Mellow Down Easy. So all these fantastic, amazing hits that we all know and love from Little Walter. And so he had this great time sort of through the 50s. He was still, Scott, yeah, a big star at this stage. He was getting paid in Cadillacs from Chess. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06: 1:10:02

You know, up until about 55, 56, I think he could almost do no wrong. His entire band had changed by 56, but he was still out there touring. You know, one of the reasons, and I really wasn't aware of this when I started researching Little Walter, but one of the reasons that he... I think he was sort of more successful on the charts than some of his contemporaries is that he was on the road all the time. Muddy Waters didn't tour all that much. Howlin' Wolf didn't tour all that much. Rice Miller, you know, Sonny Boy 2, he wasn't like a big touring guy. Little Walter was out on the road all the time. So he was spreading the gospel of his music to people. And even today, Dennis, you know this, If you go out and play, that's how you sell records, right? Yep.

SPEAKER_02: 1:10:55

Yep. I don't want to backtrack too much, but also kind of back to the impact of Juke. Billy Boy had some very interesting comments about how that record didn't only just change the blues scene. scene in Chicago, uh, in terms of the impact on musicians, it literally changed the blues club scene. And he said that juke attracted a whole new wave of younger people to, uh, the blues, you know, especially younger women, according to Billy boy. And he said it, it just, um, uh, just changed the entire blue scene in Chicago with a healthy infusion of, you know, younger listeners and appreciators.

SPEAKER_06: 1:11:38

Yeah. There's a great photo that I know you guys have seen. It's little Walter in a record store doing an appearance, and he is surrounded by young women. There are no men. I think the record store owner and maybe Leonard Chess is in the photo with Walter, and there's like 10 or 12 young women all just staring at him adoringly. So, you know, he was kind of a rock star in a way that people like Muddy just never were. That may have been the last time that that happened,

SPEAKER_01: 1:12:06

actually, to a blues artist.

SPEAKER_00: 1:12:08

I hear that. I'm going to see you all the time, Dennis. So, I mean, so he was a pretty boy as well, right? Certainly when he was younger, and we'll get on to his later years, he sort of got lots of scores and he wasn't so pretty, but he was a pretty boy as well when he was a youngster, attracting them there, certainly like the women, didn't he? Yeah, by all accounts, he never

SPEAKER_06: 1:12:30

passed up an opportunity.

SPEAKER_00: 1:12:31

And you mentioned photos there, so I've got to mention that Bob Corritore, I'm sure you guys know, he's got a great website where he's got lots of kind of photos of lots of different artists, and there's a great page with lots of photos of him on there, so I'll put a link onto the podcast page and I think the photo you mentioned is on there as well I know the one you're talking about I think yes yeah it's a great page if you haven't seen it yourself check it out some really good photos from Bob on there so in 1955 he had his second number one which was My Babe which was sort of Willie Dixon tune that he recorded probably a bit more poppy right Scott you know probably appealing more to the sort of mass audience that he'd sort of attracted by this stage he's not playing well he obviously does a kind of two breaks on the harmonica I think doesn't he but it's It's got almost more vocal, isn't

SPEAKER_06: 1:13:17

it? Yeah, there's an interesting sort of, I don't know, I guess you'd call this a coincidence maybe, but My Babe is basically the gospel number this train with secular lyrics. When Little Walter went into the studio, the day that he recorded My Babe, Ray Charles' version of I've Got a Woman, which is based on a gospel song, and was somewhat controversial at the time because I've Got a Woman was a huge hit, but people were sort of offended by the fact that it was obviously gospel. The music backing was sort of based on gospel, and it was actually based on a gospel record that had been famous. I can't recall the name of it. I do recall the name. It was called It Must Be Jesus. Ray Charles had taken that song, turned it into I've Got a Woman, When that song was number one on the charts, Little Walter went into the studio to record his gospel to secular song, My Babe.

SPEAKER_00: 1:14:16

It was interesting reading that. Actually, Ray Charles played saxophone with Little Walter, didn't he?

SPEAKER_06: 1:14:20

He did. He was on a tour as an opening act for Little Walter's band in the early 50s. I think it might have been around 53, 54. And he was doing a solo piano set. to open for Little Walter on the road. And at some point, and this is another story that came from Dave Myers, he said one day they were playing their set and they suddenly heard a saxophone and they looked and Ray Charles had his saxophone and was playing along with Little Walter. So he said for the rest of that tour, that's what they did.

SPEAKER_00: 1:14:49

And so we're getting onto a bit of a turning point for Little Walter. So he was getting in trouble. You know, he never turned down the women. He also never turned down a fight by the sounds of things as well. Scott Wright so and then he got shot in the leg in 1958 and this was this kind of start of a bit of a downward spiral for him and he shortly sort of broke the leg his leg as well shortly after when he slipped on the ice so this had an impact on him yeah

SPEAKER_06: 1:15:13

yeah and I think the slide downward had begun a little bit earlier I think once the chess started experiencing lots of success with Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley guys like little Walter weren't getting quite as much attention anymore from the label they were promoting the stuff that was you know the stuff that was selling well, and little Walter's stuff had stopped selling quite as well at the time when things like Maybelline and and you know Bo Diddley had hit the market around 55 56 so you know he it was around that time that he started his band started having more sort of regular turnover people were kind of coming and going more he was recording a little bit less frequently and then yeah he had these these problems in the later towards the end of the 50s he had some health issues and you know like you say he he he hurt his leg, and he got shot, and gigs weren't coming as frequently as they used to. And it's really that era that I think started to take the wind out of his sails. It seems like he became less engaged in his music. His stuff just wasn't quite as exciting. Although, I have to say, just about everything Little Walter ever recorded, I think, is interesting on some level because it's unlike, on some level, everything else he ever recorded. He always was continually developing new things. Some people didn't like those new things as much as the old things, but he continued to sort of navigate the waters. He wasn't just doing the same thing over and over. I

SPEAKER_02: 1:16:45

think all the Chess Blues acts were victim to that transition in the business. When they were big in the early 50s and selling all those records, they were still selling selling primarily to black record buyers. But then in 55, 56, with Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, Leonard Chess tapped into the white record buying audience, which was infinitely larger than the black record buyer contingent. So it was not a big surprise that he began to put all his energy into those kinds of acts. And Muddy and Bryce Miller and all those other Chess acts also suffered in the same way. Many of them, luckily though, lived long enough to come out into the blues revival in the 60s where they, as musicians, finally made contact with live campus audiences and got a new lease on life. But Walter just missed that transition.

SPEAKER_06: 1:17:45

Or was unable to really muster the resources to participate in it.

SPEAKER_02: 1:17:50

But just think, the Rolling Stones put out that blues album a couple of years ago And I think there are, what, two Little Walter songs on there? Right. Like, just imagine the money that Walter would have made if he'd have lived another 15 or 20 years. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:18:05

Definitely. So as you say, the advent of R&B sort of started putting paid to the blues. I think Little Walter started drinking. So, you know, he was on a bit of a downward spiral, but still releasing some great songs, as you mentioned there, Scott. So Key to the Highway was like these last top 10 hit.

UNKNOWN: 1:18:22

Ah!

SPEAKER_04: 1:18:23

interestingly

SPEAKER_00: 1:18:36

he recorded crawling kingsnake the only time he recorded on a tremolo harmonica so i didn't know that until i read the book scott i had to check that yeah And then he, so he made a few, you know, a few singles and in the late sort of fifties, 1959, his last session with chess, um, 1963 recorded dead presidents that didn't show. So, and then, and then we touched on the, the, the sort of the, the blues boom and the sort of UK, um, you know, sort of blues explosion and that sort of putting the, you know, the attention back on the, um, the American blues artists and that sort of that revival. Yeah. So, so then little Walter went over to, to the UK in 64 for his first tour, didn't have a great time over there scott by the sounds not not great backing bands and they weren't very sympathetic to his music and he was he was drinking a lot right by this stage

SPEAKER_06: 1:19:35

yeah that's that's um what i've heard and read i think it was not a really great idea for him to to travel alone and hope that he'd be able to find suitable backing my understanding is that every venue i don't know he did 20 shows or something in the uk and every venue that he played he had a 1964, had some idea of what he did, but based on the reviews that I've read and the things that I've heard about it, many of the bands just weren't really suitable. They were unable to follow him, and he's a guy who kind of needed somebody who could support him. And so he came away from that pretty dispirited, from what I hear. As

SPEAKER_01: 1:20:17

you can imagine. And, you know, just a side note and a side thought, really, you know, when we were through this whole conversation talking about when he was younger and coming up recording and how people thought he was, you know, playing too fast and hear stories about, you know, he was just kind of always with ideas and a little annoying sometimes with all his ideas and energy and all that stuff, you know, in a different world where maybe he was not held back so much, not even by his own behavior, but just by in different times under different circumstances with more freedom to do what he wanted. He had that forward thinking mentality and energy and persona that he He wanted to be more energetic and more exciting than like what Muddy was doing. Of course, you know, all due respect to Muddy. And of course, we love that stuff. And I love Muddy. But he had a different mindset as we kind of touched upon more probably along the lines of what Bo Diddley was doing and what Chuck Berry was doing in his own way. But because he was lumped in with that more older school, should we say, blues, the blues artist and the blues roster, I think he, you know, it's kind of he got a bum deal because of that just throughout this whole transition because he really was more forward thinking and playing more like the newer generation

SPEAKER_02: 1:21:33

billy boy told me about you know again this is a guy who saw walter hundreds of times in the clubs and there would be whole sets where walter would just play harp yeah like you know according to billy boy he wasn't really that keen about singing and uh but he really you know loved to play that harp and he uh he would be playing he would be riffing on songs that he heard like a half an hour before on the jukebox in the club and, you know, Night Train. They would do, you know, songs like that just off the cuff on the bandstand. And he would blow for like a solid hour just playing harp. And it's interesting to think about like the difference between Walter on record and Walter in the clubs, right? Like what we're hearing on record is Leonard Chess's three and a half minutes or three minutes of Walter playing the blues. And it seems to me from, you know, talking to Billy Boy and others that he was... more varied, you know, on the bandstand.

SPEAKER_00: 1:22:29

I was going to make that exact point, Kim, because that comes across really strongly, that his live gigs were very different than his recorded output, certainly with Muddy, obviously, but even his own stuff, because it was very kind of three minutes, as you say, in the Chess Studios. But he was massively improvising, doing big, long solos. It's such a crying shame we don't have any recordings from that time. Imagine it now, right? Everyone's got their phones, we'd hear all sorts, but it's like, there isn't any live recordings from in the 50s, is there?

SPEAKER_06: 1:22:55

No, not that I know of. I keep hoping that this Muddy Waters thing that came out last year, or a couple of years ago, this recording of Muddy live in 1954, I keep hoping something like that will pop up, that somebody thought it was worth recording one of his radio broadcasts or something. But yeah, none of that has appeared yet. The earliest live recording of Little Walter, I think, is there's a bit of... audio, very poorly recorded audio from that 1964 tour in the UK that a guy brought a little portable recorder and recorded, I think, three songs. But it's really distorted. The band isn't that great. Walter sounds great, but it's so distorted and so overdriven that it's not something you could ever release. But other than that, yeah, then the next live recordings were just from 67 when he did the American Folk Blues Festival tour and got recorded a few times. And by the way, That stuff gets, you know, rightly, I think, at some level, it gets criticized for not really being up to little Walter's level. But I really feel like his playing was pretty good on that and that most of the problems are with the backing and not so much with Walter's part. I mean, he just had to dumb his thing down to where he could play with people who didn't know what he was doing. Totally agreed.

SPEAKER_02: 1:24:15

I think so, too. I remember when I first saw that video of, you know, where he does the shuffle on an E harp, I think. acoustic right and I'm just like I was so disappointed you know that there's no amp in there yeah but then actually later I was watching it and I was like well this is just completely brilliant especially if you're a harmonica player you have Walter's just, you know, naked acoustic sound with no accoutrements, nothing in the way, no amplification, no reverb. If you want to, you know, unravel the mystery of how he played, how he played, it's a perfect teaching source for you. You know, you get his unadorned acoustic sound right out there and it's just,

SPEAKER_01: 1:24:59

he plays great. I agree. I was just going to say that one in particular is really, I think, a standout. And you can kind of hear, you know, for any of us, like I'm sure all of us here, have studied walter's recordings especially the instrumental stuff you can hear when you listen to that that that was like the same guy the same mentality the same approach the same headspace he's in the same zone you can imagine what that sounded like just if you you know if you added a cool mic and amplifier and some studio reverb to his sound it sounds like those classic walter recordings And another bass player. Different band, really. But you know what I mean. You could really hear that.

SPEAKER_00: 1:25:37

I was saying, that song's Waltz's Jump, isn't it, I think? Yeah.

SPEAKER_06: 1:25:51

You know, I have to brag a little bit here. When that video was first discovered... That video was unknown until about 20 years ago. And the guy who discovered it had worked with the American Folk Blues Festival people during the time that they were doing those shows. And he knew that there were copies of the video that had been made. I don't know how he did it, but he tracked down a copy in a vault at some remote TV station somewhere. And that's that video. That's the little Walter video where he does that Walter's Jump thing. And the guy said, all right, I'm going to release this on a DVD. What's the name of this song? I said, that's an improvised instrumental. It doesn't really have a name, but if you want to call it something, I would call it Walter's Jump. And that's what it

SPEAKER_00: 1:26:37

is. Cool. You named it. Well done, Scott. Yeah. Great. So just again running through the last part of his career. So his last session as a leader at chess was 1966 with Chicken Shack. You mentioned earlier on, I think, Scott, about when you can hear him in the studio. And there's a fantastic album, which is called The Complete Chess Masters, 1950 to 1967. Probably the best album because you get all these different takes that he made, like different versions. Like, for example, he did various takes of Off the Wall, which is called Fast Boogie. And you can hear the different takes of Off the Wall. And you can hear him talking in the studio. So it's really essential listening to that album. Great album. I think it won an award, didn't it, of some sort? It did. It won a Grammy. You're talking about the little walter box set that came

SPEAKER_06: 1:27:32

out in 2009

SPEAKER_00: 1:27:33

it is that one it's the one when he's talking in the studio and stuff the one i've got it called on spotify is a complete chess masters 1956 but yeah that's that's the one yeah

SPEAKER_06: 1:27:42

it won a grammy for the best historical reissue which i i co-produced that out

SPEAKER_00: 1:27:46

ah did you know fantastic and it's great to hear him in the studio and hear him talking like saying he's frustrated about not being heard and not being to use his app it's amazing to be able to hear him in there yeah

SPEAKER_04: 1:27:59

Well,

SPEAKER_06: 1:28:11

let me frustrate you even more by saying that there was a lot more of that stuff that I could not persuade the record company to include. There was a lot more in-between-the-song stuff. And it's like, ah, we have little Walter swearing enough. You know?

SPEAKER_01: 1:28:27

Could you ever get enough of that? I mean, come on.

SPEAKER_06: 1:28:30

No, I, yeah. I was able to listen to just about everything that they have in the vault. As far as I know, actually, I should say, I listened to everything. They told me that I listened to everything I have in the vault. I don't know if there's more or not. There's some confusion there because there was a fire and some tapes got burned up and I don't know what's what. But anyway, I listened to a lot of the session tapes and there is one thing that has not been released. It's an alternate take. of a previously unissued thing that made it onto the box set. It's the instrumental version of One of These Mornings. There is a second instrumental version of One of These Mornings that's not quite as good. I really did push for it to be included to make the set complete, but I was unsuccessful.

SPEAKER_00: 1:29:16

Great. Well, it's a great album. Again, definitely recommended listening. So he did another UK tour in 67. Again, sort of mixed. I think there's some high points on that. There's also, talking about live recordings, there is a bootleg recording Yeah,

SPEAKER_06: 1:29:46

that's not actually Pepper's. That bootleg, all of the credits are wrong. Almost everything on there is wrong. But there are three songs with little Walter playing with Sam Lay. Yeah. And yeah, that stuff also, I think, really good. He's playing with Lewis Myers and Eddie Taylor on guitars, Sam Lay on drums. How bad could it be? And I think he plays beautifully on that, really powerful stuff. And he's backing Sam Lay, so he doesn't even have to think about the vocals. So I love that stuff. And I think it's really evidence that sort of refutes the idea that he had lost it by the 60s.

SPEAKER_02: 1:30:30

I think that's right. Charlie Musselwhite told me that he felt that Walter was really playing great in 1968. He was really coming on strong. And actually, Charlie attributed that to the Black Power movement at the time, that Walter was seemingly taking more pride in himself and his contributions. But Charlie told me that Walter was really playing great and was kind of on the upswing.

SPEAKER_06: 1:31:00

And I've heard a story from Willie Smith, who was Muddy's drummer, that Muddy was preparing to hire little Walter back into his band at the time of Walter's death.

SPEAKER_00: 1:31:12

Wow. So, yeah, like you say, sadly, in 1968, February the 15th, he died in a street fire. And there's this kind of different accounts of what happened. But basically, he got hit on the head and then he went home and sort of was found dead the next morning. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06: 1:31:30

Yeah, he went to a girlfriend's house, went to bed, and just never woke up.

SPEAKER_02: 1:31:36

And it was like 20 years from when John Lee Williamson died under similar circumstances, too.

SPEAKER_00: 1:31:45

Yeah, isn't that crazy? And like you said earlier on, I think, Kim, that he really sort of missed out on the whole blues revival, right? He would have definitely had a second wind, would have got more recordings out of him. So it's an absolute tragedy, obviously, for him, but for the harmonica community, too. Well, later on, he was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame and then later in 2008 into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. So he was, I think, the first person or the only person to be inducted into both.

SPEAKER_06: 1:32:11

Yeah, and I think so. But yes, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame into a category that no longer exists. I think it was kind of a mistake, actually. They inducted him into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the Sideman category. which completely overlooks the fact that he had bigger hits than anybody he ever played for as a sideman. They have since, and maybe it was because of this one, they've eliminated the Sideman category. Really? Yeah, they call it something else now. They just call it Historic Contributors category or something

SPEAKER_01: 1:32:48

like that. I remember when this happened. And of course, I think it was around the same time Cadillac Records came out. I was like, there's all these things now revolving around Walter. My record was coming out, I think, around the same time too. And I kind of remember having unpopular opinion that I appreciated that he was in the Sideman category. Because when you think about it, I mean, he was a star in his own right, and he always was and always will be very influential and a superstar. However, I think what he contributed as a side man, not just because it was on harmonica, but taking into light that it was on harmonica, what he did changed everything. the way harmonica has been played in a band ever since him. I mean, it was a huge contribution when you think about it. I would not argue with him. Not taking away his own stardom and under his own name and what a success he was and how influential he was and what a great artist he was, but he really did completely change how harmonica was played in the modern era ever since his era in a band setting. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:33:52

Yeah, I think that sums up nicely his influence, Dennis. So yeah, you cover that nicely. So who wants to go next?

SPEAKER_02: 1:34:28

Well, I'd better go next before the other guys claim the other stuff. I really love Blue Midnight. I think that's just my favorite slow blues instrumental. Again, I'm partial to instrumentals when it comes to Walter, although I love his singing too. But Backtrack is also a favorite of mine. I think that's a great up-tempo number that he did.

SPEAKER_00: 1:34:53

That is a great one, Kim. I've been listening to lots of Walter before this interview, and that one really stood out to me. That's quite a late one as well. He did that in the late 50s, I think. So a testament to the fact that he was still playing well then.

SPEAKER_06: 1:35:05

Let me tell you a very quick story about that song. That was recorded at the very end of a session where he had been directed to play acoustic through the whole session. I think it's the Everything's Gonna Be Alright session. And throughout that, I listened to this session tape, was very, very lucky to be able to get access to some of this stuff through a guy named Andy McKay, who was then running the Chess Reissue Program for Universal Music. And so I got to listen to a lot of these tapes, and on that one, throughout that entire session, Little Walter is Complaining, I got it. Where's my mic? I got to use my mic. I can't get my sound without my mic. And in between songs, he would pick it up and play like two notes. And they're like, no, no, no. No, we're going to record acoustic. At the end of that session, he said, let me record something with the mic. Okay. They hit record. Backtrack came out. Wow. Nice. It's like really powerful. Yeah. Like, this is what the amplified thing is supposed to sound like. This is why I want to do this.

SPEAKER_00: 1:36:21

You can't choose that song, Scott. Kim's already had it.

SPEAKER_06: 1:36:24

I cannot choose that song.

SPEAKER_00: 1:36:25

So you have to go for two more.

SPEAKER_06: 1:36:27

I really, really like Roller Coaster. I think Roller Coaster is Little Walter at his freest. I get the impression listening to it that you're just listening to him just improvise off the top of his head just whatever he's thinking. And it just comes out as this crazy patchwork of rhythms and melodies and ideas that just, it's just like tumbling out of it.

UNKNOWN: 0:00

...

SPEAKER_06: 1:37:02

So I really, really like Rollercoaster a lot. Like Kim, I also really, really like his instrumentals quite a bit. So I would say maybe That's It. Because I think the intro to That's It, that's the best intro to any blues harmonica song ever. The first note is just like, it just is devastating.

UNKNOWN: 1:37:26

That's It

SPEAKER_06: 1:37:27

And then the rest of it's great. And he switches to chromatic for a

SPEAKER_00: 1:37:31

chorus. Absolutely. Of course, I'm playing first position. So, Dennis?

SPEAKER_01: 1:37:36

No question. My first one is Sad Hours. Completely changed my life. And I would say for anybody listening who's unfamiliar, maybe hasn't listened to that in a while. What Walter does on Sad Hours, I think, is the most important amplified harmonica recording of all time. The way he shapes the sounds and textures and tone of what he's doing there. Not only, you know, it was new, kind of new at the time, but even this day when you listen to it, it's still so powerful. That's my favorite. That's the first Walter song I learned and still my favorite to this day.¶¶ I was going to choose Roller Coaster for the same reasons that Scott mentioned, but I guess I'll have to go with Fast Boogie, which I think is not Last Boogie, Fast Boogie. And the stuff he does in Fast Boogie, especially cool stuff around the turnaround, doing things that's either fitting a 2-5 chord change or just stuff that's more horn-like in his melodic approach, was really... You know, again, not only was it new and pioneering and different for the time, it's still, when you listen to blues players now, it's still new, pioneering and different for modern day.

SPEAKER_00: 1:38:54

All amazing songs. Interesting you all chose instrumentals, whereas I didn't. But of course I love the instrumentals too. But I'm the only one to choose a song with Muddy Waters too, interestingly. But I love those cuts with Muddy.

SPEAKER_02: 1:39:06

Well, I think the reality is that, you know, between us we picked eight tunes and there's just... There are dozens more we could have easily chosen. I mean, the thing that's really remarkable about Walter is that, you know, as Dennis said, he wrote the book on how to play harp, how to play backup harp in a band. Like his stuff with Muddy and with Jimmy Rogers is just unbelievable. But then to go on and have his own solo career in a completely different direction and to be the top-selling chess artist of the 50s. I mean, that's an incredible career. What are we talking, like six years maybe? Just unbelievable.

SPEAKER_00: 1:39:50

Yeah, absolutely. So we'll move on now to talk about the last section and about gear. So there's much discussion and debate. We've already touched on the question of gear with Little Walter. First of all, let's just talk about harmonicas before we get into the whole amp thing. So I think he pretty much played marine bands, right? That's what all there was back then. And then he played Super 64, 16-hole chromatic horn, etc. at the time. Any differences from those two?

SPEAKER_01: 1:40:18

Well, I mean, Marine Man wasn't really the only thing, but I think it was the clear choice that he played. And not so much a Super 64, but I guess it was that 16-hole 280 honer model. I guess it would be back then, right? I've

SPEAKER_06: 1:40:32

seen pictures of him with both of those, so I don't know in what order he used them. But yeah, I don't think that his harmonicas were anything special. He did experiment a little bit. He played the Koch harmonica on one song. He played the Tremolo harmonica on one song, occasionally played... I think, is there a song where he's playing one of those big marine bands? I don't know. But anyway, it's like he kind of played around a little bit, but... You know, the Marine Band was the standard, and I think that was his standard, too. And then whatever good, you know, 16-hole chromatic, whichever one he, you know, wasn't broken,

SPEAKER_00: 1:41:07

I guess. Did he just play 16-hole, and he's not known to play 12? It sounds like he's always playing 16-hole, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_06: 1:41:13

I think so, because he liked to get down into those low notes. Yeah. Honestly, I've never done the study to see which are, you know, which... Stuff might not be the 16-hole, but in the several pictures of him with a chromatic, I think he's always playing a 16-hole.

SPEAKER_00: 1:41:29

And he didn't use a harmonica customizer, as far as we know. I don't think that existed

SPEAKER_01: 1:41:35

then. Yeah, I don't think it existed. But also, I mean, the harps were made differently back then. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06: 1:41:41

Yeah. And tuned a little bit differently, right?

SPEAKER_01: 1:41:43

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_06: 1:41:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:41:45

Yeah. And so talking about his embouchure. So from what I understand, he's mainly tone blocking, but you also play quite a bit of you blocked as well. Is this right?

SPEAKER_06: 1:41:55

Hmm. That's a good question. I thought that in order to play Chicago blues, you needed to tongue block all the time. But there's stuff that Little Walter plays that you can't really play when tongue blocking, specifically things that are fast staccato. And I think he did that with a pucker thing. I think he puckered more than he probably gets credit for. I've had this conversation with younger harmonica players a few times. What's better? Which one do you use? Which one did Little Walter use? Which one did Big Walter use? I don't think those guys thought about Like, which embrasure should I play this passage with? I think it was like, whatever shape I have to make my mouth into to make this sound come out, that's what I'm going to do. I'm not sure they really thought about it

SPEAKER_01: 1:42:45

all that much beyond that. Yeah, I mean, I would pretty much agree with you. I think he's tongue-blocking most of what he did, but there's clearly examples of him. You know, Rollcoaster, I think one of the clearest examples where you can hear he is not tongue-blocking some passages where he's quickly doing some tongue-blocking. articulations yeah i mean you could hear if if if you're a schooled player somewhat and you have you know some arsenal of technique under your belt so to speak you can hear he is tongue-blocking a good portion of what he's doing, but not everything. Right. Did John Lee Williamson tongue-block?

SPEAKER_06: 1:43:22

Yeah, he did. Sure. But I think he also puckered and tongue-blocked and did whatever he could, because obviously he plays some big chords and things. I don't get the impression that the old-timers thought about it as much as us latter-day guys do.

SPEAKER_02: 1:43:38

I think the way to summarize it is that the harmonica was built to be played tongue block when I bought my first harmonica in 68 or whatever it had a little booklet inside the box and it showed you how to tongue block and I just thought well this is like grandpa style or something this is not what's happening and of course I was you know being exposed to Paul Butterfield and so forth so I mean up until you know Butterfield was really the switch over to the ascension of the first players, you know, versus tongue block. Uh, Butterfield played octaves with his tongue, but it was essentially a pucker player. But up until then, it's really like everybody had that solid foundation of tongue block, both in the like country music and the rural style, as well as the urban blue style. It's fundamentally a tongue block style, but Dennis and Scott are right in that they're, I'm an old trumpet player and there are definitely some double and triple tonguing things that Walter and other guys do that are really just are not feasible with a pure tongue blocked approach. So,

SPEAKER_01: 1:44:42

Right, but I think it's also the understanding that, you know, it's not necessarily one or the other. With most of these players, I don't think all, but with most of these players, these great masters that we think of, especially in Chicago Blues, they're utilizing both. And, you know, I think for most of the great masters we look up, a good portion of it is more tongue-blocked, but they're definitely utilizing both.

SPEAKER_00: 1:45:04

Yeah, sure, yeah. So let's get on to the thorny topic of amplification and microphones. So it seems to be the consensus is that he pretty much used what was available and what was available certainly in the early days was the sort of PA systems that were that were just in the venues he was in and that they sort of I read in the book Scott that they had sort of inputs for crystal mics so they sort of you know is that what he was using early on certainly

SPEAKER_06: 1:45:28

yeah I asked Jimmy Lee Robinson about this on numerous occasions and he all he was very consistent he I would say what kind of amp did little Walter use in clubs and Jimmy Lee said little Walter did not bring an He used whatever was in the club. He used the PA that was there that people sang into. It wasn't like there was a separate microphone for the harp and one microphone for the vocals. It's like, here's the sound system. Here's the microphone. Here's the PA system. And according to Jimmy Lee, little Walter never brought an amp to Chicago club gigs. He just used whatever PA was

SPEAKER_00: 1:46:07

in the club. Interesting. Then he's using a, he's using an acoustic mic then when he's doing that. So was he cupping out to get that sound? Yeah.

SPEAKER_06: 1:46:14

Well, the microphones in the clubs oftentimes were like an ecstatic JT 30 or a, you know, something along those lines.

SPEAKER_00: 1:46:20

And they were singing through those as well. Of course.

SPEAKER_06: 1:46:23

Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So he would just sing through it and, And then when he had to blow his harp, he would just cup his mic to it or cup his harp to

SPEAKER_00: 1:46:30

it. That's really interesting because that almost suggests that we all play through JT30s and Green Bullets because they just happened to use them for vocals back then. I think that

SPEAKER_06: 1:46:41

is absolutely the case. It was an inexpensive microphone. They were plentiful. They could be found in any hardware store. And it's what PA systems used.

SPEAKER_01: 1:46:52

And they were cheap. Right. But it also, I think even more importantly, there's this happy, beautiful accident that happened that when a great harmonica player with great tone and technique cupped one of these bullet microphones into a cool... tube PA system or tube amp, you got what little Walter got out of it. Right. And duplicate it really with the stuff that's made nowadays. I mean, you know, imagine what a world that would be if I could show up to a gig. Oh yeah, we have some new in a box of static JT30 crystal mics and a mask OPA head. Do you mind

SPEAKER_02: 1:47:22

playing through that? I mean, the other advantage to the JT30 biscuit mic types is the broad face. So you can lay a good portion of the Marine Band real estate across the front of that microphone and get a, you know, kind of the broad spectrum.

SPEAKER_01: 1:47:39

Totally.

SPEAKER_00: 1:47:39

Yeah. You made an interesting point there, Dennis. So these PAs, they were tube PAs, were they?

SPEAKER_01: 1:47:45

Oh, yeah, of course. At the time, I mean, it just happens to be a happy accident that this stuff can sound incredible. With all these overtones and textural and tonal nuances that you can't get with modern-day technology and gear. It's a totally different type of thing.

SPEAKER_06: 1:48:04

Yeah, I mean, solid-state transistor amps didn't exist in the 50s. That was sort of an early 60s innovation. So, any tube amplifier... you know, whether it was a PA system or some sort of guitar amp or whatever, there just wasn't that much difference between them back in the early days.

SPEAKER_00: 1:48:24

So that's his sort of live sound. I think we're pretty established that he didn't have one amp that he lugged around with him in his Cadillac. But what about when he was in the studio? He was using small amps to record in the studio, wasn't he? Any idea what he was using for those great recordings we've talked about?

SPEAKER_06: 1:48:39

Yeah, that is the great mystery. The only thing I can really tell, and it's just based on my own observations, is that if you listen to Little Walter's sessions in chronological order through the 50s, his amplified tone is different. on every single session. Exactly. Yep. There are no two that sound exactly the same. The rocker session doesn't sound like the off-the-wall session, etc., etc. So my best guess is that whatever his current amp that he had was the one that he brought to the studio. But, you know, in this little Walter interview that was published in Living Blues magazine in one of the early issues, he talks about having an amplifier that he disliked the sound of so much, and it got, you know, throughout the night it got quieter and quieter so after the gig as they were driving home they stopped at a bridge and threw it off the bridge into the river yeah The point being that he was not married to any specific amplifier, although I will tell you something. I did a gig with Dave Myers once. I have a Masco PA system, an early 50s Masco PA that I've had for a very long time. And I decided it was the kind of gig, it was just me and Dave, so I didn't need some high-powered things. So I brought that amplifier to the gig, a little Masco PA, like a suitcase. And when Dave saw it, he goes, his eyes kind of get narrow, and he looks at me, and he looks at the amp, and he looks at me, and he looks at the amp. He goes, where did you get that? And I said, oh, that's just my PA system. He goes, oh, okay. And I said, why? He goes, nothing, just curious. But I think I might have been onto something there because he clearly had some sort of, he sort of recognized it and there was some sort of thing in his head like, hmm. So I don't know. I will say that when I asked Dave what kind of amps Little Walter played, he said he played a bunch of different amps, but the only one he remembered the name of was a Macon. And since there is no Macon amp that I've been able to find, I think Dave might have been mistaking it for a Masco. Sure. But that's a leap on my part. I'm not sure that that's the

SPEAKER_01: 1:50:44

case, but you

SPEAKER_06: 1:50:45

know.

SPEAKER_01: 1:50:46

No. No. No. You know, they don't care about what they play because they just sound like them no matter what. And of course, that's true because they're great players, pioneering players that sound awesome with great tone and technique. But on more than one occasion, I've had Snooki play through my gear. or setting up for a gig, you know, and then, you know, I offered one particular time I had a Gibson BR-1 amp, kind of top of the line Gibson with a 12-inch speaker, you know, late 40s, I guess it was, early 50s.

SPEAKER_06: 1:51:42

Field coil speaker? Yeah,

SPEAKER_01: 1:51:44

yeah. Yeah. When he plugged into and played that, you know, at Soundcheck, his eyes lit up in a way that I was just like, it's something that you don't forget. And I remember James Cotton also playing through a friend of mine's amp at one time, and he kind of, you know, You know, he played like one chord or one note and he kind of looked at the guy and nodded with this big smile. And, you know, I'm sure they were happy to play through anything and they sounded like themselves. But it was nice to see these pioneering players. They also heard something in the gear, in particular gear that they really liked. And the other side of this is when people talk about the Chicago blues tone, I think it's such a misconception because there is no one. Chicago blues tone to Cotton or especially Little Walter that we know of had. It was just a bunch of different tones and sounds from the different gear.

SPEAKER_02: 1:52:35

Scott, I have a question for you as somebody who's probably listened to more Little Walter master tapes than any other living human being. I've always been really curious about the augmentation of Walter's amplified sound in the studio. Those classic records were made at Universal Studios in Chicago. One of the reasons the chess records sound so great compared to like records maybe on Kent and Modern and some of those labels, is that they used the best studio in the Midwest, which was Universal Studios. And Bill Putnam, the engineer there, who engineered personally a lot of those chess sessions, ended up moving to L.A. and building the Capitol Records Recording Studios and doing all of Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole's stuff. So there are instances on some of those Walter recordings where certain notes will shoot out at you. kind of almost out of the frame and in a way that's not, you know, obviously it's not just him altering his dynamics and his volume. So I just, I wonder if you have any insight as to how they handled him at the board level, whether they, was that where the reverb and the tremolo and the, some of those, you know, really like zooming kind of notes, you know, happened or I just, I've always been curious about that.

SPEAKER_06: 1:53:52

I have spent a little bit of time in recording studios, too, and so I have a little bit of... I'm interested in all that stuff, too. You know, like, how did they get these sounds? There are some little Walter recordings, I think Juke is one of them, actually, where you can kind of hear the engineer fiddling around with the... There's a slapback tape delay on that, and you can kind of hear him dialing it in throughout the song. Like, it's not right there at the beginning, and then you can kind of hear it starting to get louder, and at some point, then it sort of establishes itself. When... Little Walter was interviewed. He was asked, the guy who interviewed him said, how do you get that sound? There's a sound, I think it's in Blue Lights, where it's sort of like this overdriven echo feedback weird sort of thing. You know what I'm talking about, right? How do you get that sound? And Walter says, I don't know. He's doing it with his hand, indicating that the recording engineer is doing something on the board that is making that happen. Universal did use a tape loop for some tape delay on some of those things. You know, this is sort of an interesting thing that I learned quite a long time ago about the little Walter recordings and really just the chess recordings in general. The recording engineer Malcolm Chisholm who worked for chess when chess had their own studio, had begun his career at Universal. He was like an intern and a trainee at Universal. And he said his first job there was building direct boxes using these big transformers. And what these direct boxes would do would allow you to plug, take the output from a speaker, and turned it into a direct signal. Or I shouldn't say the output from the speaker, the output to the speaker. So it had alligator clips that clipped onto the speaker leads, and then it turned the output of the amplifier into a direct signal. So you get all of the tube saturation and all that sound, but it's direct. In other words, you're not hearing it through a microphone, you're not hearing any of the room sound. And That's a sound that really nobody has been able to recreate. A lot of people go in the studio and they want to record this big Little Walter harmonica sound, and they put a mic at one end of a hallway and a speaker at the other end, and you get this big sort of echoey sound, which is missing the direct part. And it's the direct part mixed with the room sound that really is the essence of the Little Walter studio sound on a lot of those early recordings. And Malcolm Chisholm said, why would we record a$12 speaker Let's just take the output of the amplifier. That was the logic. They thought that recording it off the speaker was downgrading the signal that was being created.

SPEAKER_00: 1:56:36

Of course, Universal Studios is one of the greatest studios in the world as well, right? And they had great technicians. So that was obviously a big contribution to the amazing sound is getting on those records. Absolutely. So thanks so much for joining me, Scott, Kim, and Dennis, to talk about The Great Little Walter on the 100th episode of the podcast. Thanks very much.

SPEAKER_02: 1:56:54

Neil, it was a real pleasure.

SPEAKER_06: 1:56:56

I really appreciate you having me on. All right. Thank you very much, Neil. I could talk about Little Walter all day, as you can tell. So it's been a real pleasure. Thank you for having me on.

SPEAKER_01: 1:57:06

Thanks so much. Really appreciate being here, especially with my two friends, Scott and Kim, who I know share this absolute adoration of Little Walter.

SPEAKER_00: 1:57:15

Once again, thanks to Zydle for sponsoring the podcast. Be sure to check out their great range of harmonicas and products at www.zydle1847.com or on Facebook or Instagram at Zydle Harmonicas. Thanks to Scott, Kim and Dennis for joining me today. Also thanks to Brian Shoemaker and Rob Sawyer for their donations to the podcast. Remember you can find most of the full songs for the track clips used in the episode today on the Spotify playlist called Happy How A Harmonica Playlist. The link is on the podcast page. So that's 100 episodes. Wow, what an honour it has been to speak to many of my harmonica heroes, to speak with players from around the world and discuss the range of different styles they play. I've learnt so much from every person I've interviewed. I hope you have too. But it doesn't stop there. I'll be back in the new year with another episode. Hope you can join me then. Thanks for listening. If you want a more in-depth look at Little Walter's life, then I heartily recommend the book we discussed in the episode, Blues with a Feeling, The Little Walter Story. Also check out Kim's two books too. We'll sign off with another masterclass from the undisputed king of the blues harmonica. This is the title track released on the compilation album shortly after his death, Hate to See You Go.

UNKNOWN: 0:00

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SPEAKER_04: 1:58:36

Come on back, baby Come on back home.