Phillip Walker

Although his releases after fronting a session remained infrequent, Louisiana-born guitarist Phillip Walker built an enduring standing as a modern blues stylist whose singular tone developed along the Gulf Coast throughout the 1950s. As a teenager in Port Arthur, Texas, Walker absorbed his initial phrases from Gatemouth Brown, Long John Hunter, Lightnin' Hopkins, and Lonnie “Guitar Junior” Brooks. In 1953 the zydeco king Clifton Chenier brought Walker into his band on guitar, a role that lasted three and a half years. Walker relocated to Los Angeles in 1959, where he cut “Hello My Darling” for producer J.R. Fulbright—a number he revisited on several later occasions, most notably for the short-lived Playboy imprint. Occasional 45s appeared through the 1960s, yet a sustained studio presence began only after he teamed with young producer Bruce Bromberg in 1969. Their collaboration yielded the 1973 Playboy album The Bottom of the Top, later reissued by HighTone in 1989 and still counted among Walker’s strongest collections.

A strong successor, Someday You’ll Have These Blues, appeared on Bromberg’s Joliet label and highlighted Walker’s incisive Texas guitar approach before its eventual Alligator reissue. Further albums for Rounder and HighTone marked the decade’s high points, while 1994’s Big Blues from Texas, reissued in 1999, sustained his run of substantial work. The 1995 Black Top release Working Girl Blues found Walker at full strength, blending sessions recorded in New Orleans and Los Angeles. I Got a Sweet Tooth arrived in 1998 and maintained the same level of intensity. In 1999 Walker joined forces with fellow blues figures Lonnie Brooks and Long John Hunter for the Alligator album Lone Star Shootout, singing lead on four tracks and providing accompaniment on the remainder. A live document of a spring performance surfaced on M.C. Records in fall 2002, and Delta Groove Productions issued Going Back Home in 2007. Phillip Walker died in July 2010 at age 73.