Big Road Blues

Show Notes:

Today’s feature is on two of the greatest post-war harmonica players: Big Walter Horton also known as Shakey Horton and Little Walter. By most accounts Little Walter was given pointers by Big Walter when he was a teenager in Helena, Arkansas. Little Walter went on to greater fame playing with Muddy Waters and soon after cutting his own celebrated records. Horton isn’t as widely known as his fellow Chicago blues pioneers Little Walter or Sonny Boy Williamson II, due mostly to the fact that, as a rather shy, quiet individual, he never had much taste for leading his own bands or recording sessions.

Horton was born in Horn Lake, Mississippi, in 1918. Horton got his first harmonica from his father when he five, and won a local talent contest with it. Shortly thereafter his mother moved to Memphis, then a hotbed of blues, and according to blues researcher Samuel Charters, Horton was playing with the Memphis Jug Band by the time he was nine or ten. He also may have recorded with them in 1927 as he himself claimed but many researchers doubt this assertion. During the thirties he played with Robert Johnson, Honeyboy Edwards, and others, and later gave pointers to both Little Walter and Rice Miller. His first verifiable sides were done in 1939 backing guitarist Charlie “Little Buddy” Doyle on sessions for Columbia. Around the same time (according to Horton himself), he began to experiment with amplifying his harmonica, which if accurate may have made him the first to do so. In the late forties he went to Chicago, but later returned to Memphis to record for Modern/RPM and Sun. Of these sessions, the 1953 instrumental “Easy”, based on Ivory Joe Hunter’s “I Almost Lost My Mind”, became a hit. He also backed artists such as Joe Hill Louis, Willie Nix and others.

Following the success of “Easy,” Horton went back to Chicago to play with Eddie Taylor. But when Junior Wells got drafted, Horton took his place in Muddy Waters’ band. It didn’t last long, though-Horton showed up drunk at a rehearsal and Muddy fired him. We play one of those tracks, “My Life Is Ruined”, and then one track when he reunited with Muddy on the 1977 record “I’m Ready.” Around the same time he cut a memorable session backing Tampa Red, delivering a tremendous solo on “Rambler’s Blue.”

Big Walter cut his best work as a sideman. Always described as shy and nervous, he preferred this role to that of a bandleader. His playing graces numerous records behind Johnny Shines, Johnny Young, Sunnyland Slim, Otis Rush, Koko Taylor, and others. He also taught a number of younger players, including Charlie Musselwhite and Carey Bell. In 1964, Horton recorded his first full-length album, The Soul of Blues Harmonica, for Chess subsidiary Argo; it was produced by Dixon and featured Buddy Guy as a sideman, though it didn’t completely capture Horton at his best. Two years later, Horton contributed several cuts to Vanguard’s classic compilation Chicago/The Blues/Today! Vol. 3, which did much to establish his name on a blues circuit that was thriving anew thanks to an interest from white audiences.

Horton became a regular on Willie Dixon’s Blues All Stars package tours during the 70’s, which made their way through America and Europe over the ’60s and ’70s. He also played the American Folk Blues Festival in 1965. In 1973 he cut an album with Carey Bell for Alligator. After that he became a mainstay on the festival circuit, and often played at the open-air market on Chicago’s legendary Maxwell Street, along with many other bluesman. In 1977, he joined Johnny Winter and Muddy Waters on Winter’s album I’m Ready, and during the same period recorded some material for Blind Pig, which later found release as the albums Fine Cuts and Can’t Keep Lovin’ You. Horton appeared in the Maxwell Street scene in the 1980 film The Blues Brothers, accompanying John Lee Hooker. He died of heart failure on December 8, 1981, and was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame the following year.

Marion “Little Walter” Jacobs is widely considered the greatest blues harmonica player ever. He was born in Marksville, Louisiana in 1930. He took up the harmonica as a child, at first playing polkas and waltzes, and by the time he was 12 he was on his own, working the sidewalks and bars of New Orleans with his instrument. He had also discovered the music of John Lee Williamson, and modeled his early blues style on that of Williamson’s. When he was fourteen he drifted to Helena, Arkansas, and came under the influence of Rice Miller, who along with Walter Horton, gave him pointers on the harp. The following year, Little Walter’s evolution beyond traditional folk-blues began when he started to listen to the records of jump saxophonist Louis Jordan and learn his solos note for note on harmonica.

In 1947 Little Walter arrived in Chicago with Honeyboy Edwards, and became a part of the fabled Maxwell Street scene that at one time or another included almost every postwar Chicago blues luminary. He first recorded that year behind singer Othum Brown on the Ora Nelle label, and also began playing in a trio with Jimmy Rogers and Muddy Waters, whom he had met on Maxwell Street. He debuted on wax that same year for the tiny Ora-Nelle logo (”I Just Keep Loving Her”) in the company of Jimmy Rogers and guitarist Othum Brown. Along with Muddy Waters, Jimmy Rogers and Baby Face Leroy Foster, they became informally known as the Headhunters. They would stroll into South side clubs, mount the stage, and proceed to calmly “cut the heads” of whomever was booked there that evening. Little Walter began recording in 1950 with Muddy, first on the Parkway label, and then for Chess, the label he was to stay with for the rest of his short life. With Waters’s “Long Distance Call,” Walter became the first to record amplified harmonica.

On May 12, 1952, Little Walter recorded an instrumental under his own name that the Muddy Waters band had been using to close sets with. “Juke,” with its fat, amplified tone and sax-like phrases, was released under Little Walter’s own name and became a huge hit. Following its success, he left Waters’ band to form his own group, but continued to record with Muddy.

From 1952 to 1958, Walter notched 14 Top Ten R&B hits, including “Sad Hours,” “Mean Old World,” “Tell Me Mama,” “Off the Wall,” “Blues with a Feeling,” “You’re So Fine,” “You Better Watch Yourself,” “Last Night,” and “My Babe” among others.

In 1964 he toured Europe with the Rolling Stones, but substance abuse and his hot temper still plagued him. “Little Walter was dead ten years before he died,” Muddy Waters said. At gigs, as well as offstage, he would sometimes wave a pistol or two around, and had trouble keeping a band together. Photos taken towards the end of his life show a scarred, haggard man looking closer to 55 than 35. On February 14th, 1968, Walter Jacobs died of injuries sustained in a Chicago street fight. He was only 37 years old