A highly charismatic performer, T-Bone Walker was one of the first blues artists to popularise the electric guitar.
The guitarist T-Bone Walker was a pivotal character in the story of the blues. In his youth he helped Blind Lemon JEFFERSON in street performances, and he was one of the first blues artists to play the electric guitar. He was a dynamic performer and excellent songwriter, and his influence is evident in the recordings of B. B. KING, Jimi HENDRIX, Albert KING, Buddy GUY, Eric Clapton, and Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Aaron Thibeaux Walker was born on May 28, 1910, in Linden, Texas, and grew up in Dallas. His mother, stepfather, and virtually all his uncles played guitar. Walker himself took up the instrument when he was 13, and also became proficient on the ukelele, banjo, violin, mandolin, and piano. In the early 1920s, he helped lead Blind Lemon Jefferson, a friend of his family, around the streets of Dallas, often collecting his money for him. By the mid-1920s, Walker was good enough at the guitar himself to make a living travelling with a medicine show and various carnivals. He recorded two songs for Columbia in 1929, under the name Oak Cliff T-Bone, but they did not sell. After a stint playing with Texas bands, he moved to California in 1934. Five years later, Walker attracted attention after joining Les Hire’s Cotton Club Orchestra, winning praise for his strong, virile singing, his songwriting, and his work on the guitar.
Walker had begun experimenting with the electric guitar as early as 1934, and he first recorded with it in 1939. The classic single ’T-Bone Blues” was cut the same year, and after its success Walker set out on his own. His combination of single-string melodic work and arpeggio became the backbone of the electric blues guitar style. During this period he wrote many songs that were to become standards, including the one for which he is best known, “Call It Stormy Monday” (1947). As well as being an accomplished musician, Walker was also a great showman, playing the guitar behind his back and between his legs.
In the 1950s, Walker recorded for Imperial and Atlantic, and while he was not able to match his hits from the 1940s, he remained a popular touring attraction. His T-Bone Blues album for Atlantic, released in 1960, found him a whole new audience when jazz enthusiasts and white folk fans embraced his work. Walker remained in demand at jazz and folk clubs around the world throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, before he was sidelined by ill health. He died of pneumonia on March 16, 1975.
A highly charismatic performer, T-Bone Walker was one of the first blues artists to popularise the electric guitar.
”I can still hear T-Bone in my mind today, from that first record I heard, ’stormy Monday,’” B. B. King once said. “He was the first electric guitar player I heard on record. He made me so that I knew I just had to go out and get an electric guitar.”
Stan Hieronymus
SEE ALSO: BLUES.
FURTHER READING
Dance, Helen Oakley. Stormy Monday: The T-Bone Walker Story (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1987).
SUGGESTED LISTENING
The Complete Recordings of T-Bone Walker, 1940–1954.