Our featured blues artist this week is the wonderfully named “T-Bone” Walker . He was born Aaron Walker in Texas in 1910 and was of African-American and Cherokee heritage. He was a blues musician, a composer and bandleader, and most importantly a pioneer of jump blues …the precursor of rhythm & blues and rock and roll and an early proponent of the electric guitar in blues . His nickname ‘T Bone’ comes from his middle name Thibeaux.

T Bone’s parents were both musicians and his stepfather Marco Washington taught him guitar, ukulele, banjo, violin, mandolin, and piano . He had a great early start in music beginning in Dallas in the 1920s. Blind Lemon Jefferson was a family friend which must have been an inspiration too. By the time he was a young teenager he was performing in blues clubs with the help of Blind Lemon Jefferson. His very first recording was with Columbia in 1929 and was the single “Wichita Falls Blues” with the B side of “Trinity River Blues”.

By his 20s he was working in clubs in Los Angeles as guitarist and occasional singer with the Les Hite orchestra. By 1940 he had started playing the electric guitar . The war years saw T Bone playing in Chicago and in 1946 and 1947 he performed at the second and third Cavalcade of Jazz concerts held at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles . It was in the late 1940s that he had 3 of his best known hits including his most famous number , “Call It Stormy Monday” as well as “Bobby Sox Blues” and “West Side Baby” .

In the first half of the 1950s he recorded steadily for Imperial Records but Walker’s only record in the next five years was T-Bone Blues released by Atlantic Records in 1959 but oddly having taken 3 years to complete .

He appeared at the American Folk Blues Festival in 1962 along with Memphis Slim and Willie Dixon , and released several acclaimed albums in the 60s including ‘I Want a Little Girl’ in 1968. He won a Grammy Award for Best Ethnic or Traditional Folk Recording in 1970 for ‘Good Feelin’

Tragically he had a stroke in 1974 and died of pneumonia at his home after a second stroke the following year, at the age of only 64.