Show Notes: 

Today’s show is devoted to pianist/organ/singer Johnny “Big Moose” Walker and is inspired by a recent two-part article in the magazine Blues & Rhythm, The Gospel Truth (#382 & 383) by Jim O’Neal. The program spans 1955, when he made his first recordings, through 1979. Walker recorded variously as Big Moose, Bushy Head, Moose John, J. W. Walker, over the course of several decades for a variety of labels both as a leader and session player. During the ‘50s he became known as a pianist and bass player as he roamed through the Delta and beyond. He played with many local Greenville bluesmen, joined Ike Turner’s Kings of Rhythm in Clarksdale and sat in with the King Biscuit Boys in Helena, Arkansas. He worked the Mississippi juke joints with Elmore James, Sonny Boy Williamson and traveled extensively with Earl Hooker. Starting in 1955 he recorded several more or less obscure singles for Ultra, Age and The Blues under variants of his name. In 1960s Chicago he spent time with fellow pianists Sunnyland Slim and Johnny Jones and toured with Otis Rush, Muddy Waters – playing bass, a skill he had picked up while with Ike Turner and Howlin’ Wolf. In the early 60s he appeared on several records with Elmore James for the Fire/Enjoy label. He then rejoined Earl Hooker, playing on his 1969 Bluesway album Don’t Have To Worry. Bluesway producer Ed Michel also featured him on his own album, Rambling Woman, and hired him for the singer Andrew “Big Voice” Odom’s Farther On Down The Road, and a joint effort by Earl and John Lee Hooker, If You Miss ‘Im… I Got ‘Im. In the 70s and 80s Walker worked with the singer-guitarists Jimmy Dawkins, Mighty Joe Young and Son Seals. He was featured in Alligator Records’ showcase series of albums titled Living Chicago Blues and made further albums of his own in the US and Europe.

John Mayon Walker was born June 27, 1927, in Stoneville, Mississippi, but the way Moose told it, “I was really born in a graveyard, playing with the tombstones.” Indian blood and long flowing hair ran in the family. He picked up the nickname Moose as a youngster hanging around the pool hall in Greenville, Mississippi. “I wore my hair so long maybe I looked like a moose, I don’t know. I asked the guys, ‘Why you call me Moose?’ They said, ‘Well, that’s the only thing that fit for you.'” Moose made his first music on an old church organ and also picked up guitar. In his 50s he played piano in bands led by the drummer Cleanhead Love and the Memphis-based bass-player Tuff Green, then toured with Elmore James and Sonny Boy Williamson. He switched to guitar for gigs with Boyd Gilmore in Arkansas and with pianist Eddie Snow in Cairo, Illinois. He backed Sonny Boy on a 1953 Trumpet session, with several tracks unreleased at the time as well as backing the obscure Lonnie Holmes for the label. Trumpet Records was the first record company in Mississippi to achieve national stature through its distribution, sales, radio airplay and promotion. Willard and Lillian McMurry launched the label from their retail store, the Record Mart,  at 309 North Farish Street, in 1950, and later converted the back room into a recording studio. The first releases by Mississippi blues legends Sonny Boy Williamson II, Elmore James, and Willie Love appeared on Trumpet in 1951. “Dust My Broom” by Elmo (Elmore) James was the only Trumpet record to reach the national rhythm & blues charts of Billboard magazine (in April 1952), but other records by Williamson and Willie Love appeared on regional charts. “We all was young and crazy,” Moose would say of those days. “All we wanted was some whiskey and some place to play. We didn’t care anything about any money.” He was in the army in Korea in 1953-55.

In 1955 Ike Turner taped Moose in a Greenville club; two of those sides, credited to J.W Walker, appeared years later on the Kent Label. He appeared with Earl Hooker on Johnny Otis talent show in Los Angeles and cut his first 45, as Moose John, for Otis’ Ultra label, also in 1955. In 1960 Big Moose Walker with Jump Jackson’s Combo cut two takes of “Footrace To A Resting Place” for End Records which is essentially the same song. He recorded the song several times over the years including a fine version simply titled “Footrace” on the album Rambling Woman for Bluesway in 1969. I’ve always been intrigued by this strange song which was first recorded by James Stanchell  in 1959 as “Anything from a Foot Race to a Resting Place.” The song was also recorded as “Foot Race ” by Frank (Shake Aplenty) Frazier in 1960. In the notes to Treasury Of Field Recordings Vol. 2, Mack McCormick wrote: “The song is Jealous James’ own composition, well known around Houston and Kansas City from his own singing, but not previously recorded or published. The recording came about one afternoon when Lightnin’ Hopkins was scheduled to make some tapes but, as usual, found himself without an acoustical guitar. He went out and found Jealous James inviting him and his guitar to come along. After finishing ‘Corrine, Corrina’ – in Volume I of this set – Lightnin’ turned things over to Jealous James who sang several of his own songs including this. Lightnin’ was so delighted with it that he promptly recorded a boogie which he dubbed ‘The Footrace is On’ which takes its inspiration from Jealous James his song.”

Moose recorded even more after Sunnyland Slim brought him to Chicago. He backed Earl Hooker, Ricky Allen, Lorenzo Smith and others on local sessions. Willie Dixon took Moose to New York in 1960 to do some studio work for Prestige/Bluesville (he played guitar on Curtis Jones’ album Trouble Blues). Moose rejoined Elmore James at Silvio’s on the West Side and went to New Orleans with Elmore to record for Bobby Robinson’s Fire/Enjoy label. At another session for Robinson, Moose sang a few himself. Those tracks ended up being credited only to “the mysterious Bushy Head” on an Elmore James LP release titled To Know A Man (Blue Horizon, 1969). Earl Hooker was Moose’s closest partner, on Chicago gigs and chaotic road trips.

Earl Hooker’s initial recordings were in 1952 for King with Johnny O’Neal, cutting sides the following year for Rockin’ and Sun. By the early 50’s he was back in Chicago cutting singles for Argo, C.J., and Bea & Baby before joining with producer Mel London (owner of Chief and Age) in 1959. Walker appeared on some of the C.J. & Chief records and also backed Junior Wells on Chief. When Hooker contributed slide work to Muddy Waters’ 1962 Chess waxing “You Shook Me”, Moose also appeared on the record along with backing Hooker on his own 45 for Chess. In 1957, Mel London recorded Junior Wells for Profile, Chief, and U.S.A., among other labels. His “Little by Little” on Profile hit the national R&B charts in 1960. During this period he also cut “Come On in This House” and “Messin’ with the Kid,” which became his signature tune and features Walker on organ.

Moose rejoined Elmore James at Silvio’s on Chicago’s West Side and went to New Orleans with Elmore to record for Bobby Robinson’s Fire/Enjoy label. At another session for Robinson, Moose sang a few himself. Sam Myers cut his first sides for Ace in 1957 and played both drums and harp behind slide guitar great Elmore James at a 1961 session for Bobby Robinson’s Fire label in New Orleans. In 1960 he cut a single for Robinson’s Fury label and another in 1961 backed by Elmore James and Big Moose Walker.

Between recordings under his own name and session work, Earl Hooker was prolifically recorded by BluesWay in 1969 less than a year before he passed away. Hooker brought along Walker and singer Andrew Odom for the sessions. After the initial sessions, Producer Ed Michel was so impressed with results that additional sessions were set the following week for Big Moose Walker and Andrew Odom. Walker and Hooker back Odom on Farther On Down The Road and John Lee Hooker’s If You Miss ‘Im…I Got ‘Im…. The Odom record wasn’t treated well by the critics as Mike Leadbitter clearly expressed in a 1973 edition of Blues Unlimited: “What a bitter disappointment! Muffled sound, endless boring songs and total lack of variation. What have BluesWay done to my heroes?” The album was finally released in 1973 and virtually sank without a trace. On the other hand Leadbitter gave a rave write up to Walker’s full-length debut, Rambling Woman (recorded five days after the Odom session) in the January 1971 issue of Blues Unlimited: “He plays piano with the sort of boogie-woogie drive you just don’t hear anymore, and has a nice husky voice-this is an exceptionally good blues album.”

In the late ‘70s, Moose joined Eddie Shaw and the Wolf Gang, just in time for their session for Alligator’s Living Chicago Blues series. Alligator president Bruce Iglauer was so impressed by Moose’s two-fisted piano that he offered him a session of his own for the series. Moose backed artists on Delmark in the 70s including Mighty Joe Young (Blues With A Touch Of Soul) and Otis Rush (Cold Day In Hell). Moose went on to record a handful of albums for various small labels, mostly in Europe, and to tour whenever anyone called him. “I never wanted to be a bandleader or have a big name,” he claimed. “I just like to be in a band and make it sound good if I can.” Walker suffered a serious stroke in the late 1980s and lived for a number of years in a Chicago nursing home before his death in 1999.