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T-Bone Walker (Aaron Thibeaux 1910-1975)T-Bone Walker started in the early Twenties picking banjo and ukulele among street-strolling string bands of Dallas. Blind Lemon Jefferson (listen) gave him his first guitar lessons as he would lead Blind Lemon around the streets of Dallas and collect contributions for him. His mother and stepfather both played and T-Bone was a fast learner who by age 19 was so good that Columbia released a record with him. He immigrated to Los Angeles like so many Texans after him, and around 1935 he got a chance to play one of the very first electric guitars ever made and became his axe from that day on.
All the major labels had studios in Hollywood but didn't care much for the blues scene on South Central Avenue which is why nobody recorded him in the 1930s. Nevertheless that was where by age 26 he worked the clubland strip with Les Hite's orchestra, sometimes as the featured singer and guitarist. In 1940 in New York he finally cut some vocal blues with Les Hite's big band, but he got enough nationwide attention to go out on his own with "T-Bone Blues".
T-Bone Walker was famous for doing the splits and playing the guitar behind his back as well as for the fine urban blues he sang and played. For a decade he filled the best African-American nightclubs in the land, and had everyone screaming for more. T-Bone Walker created the modern blues guitar more than anyone else. His influence can be traced through Gatemouth Brown (listen), Pee Wee Crayton (listen) and practically every other picker in the South-West, straight on to B.B. King and from B.B. in all directions to Buddy Guy, Eric Clapton (listen) and Stevie Ray Vaughan (listen).
In 1942 Walker cut "Mean Old World"/"I Got A Break Baby" (listen) a record that strongly can claim to be the first modern blues record. He was unable to record during the war and union-imposed ban until 1946. He gave the new record company Black & White their first hit with his "Bobby Sox Baby" (listen) and in his frequent studio bookings over the next few years, he developed a new blues dialect on guitar as well as in lyrics such as "Love Is Just A Gamble" with horn arrangements.
His singing is not showy, but emotional in a subtle way and prototypical urban blues restrained. His guitar playing reflects the jazz he heard while growing up as well as the jazz played down on Central Avenue. His solos are full of little rhythmic excursions even in a slow tempo he would make the music jump for a line or two with a little syncopated pattern only to return to the mellow groove. Though that I, IV, V structure was still recognizable he would throw some augmented and diminished chords in the tune just to spike things up, and then those 12 bars was not 3 chords anymore but a more jazzy harmony.
The blues classics "T-Bone Shuffle" (listen) and "Call It Stormy Monday" (listen) was recorded in 1947-48 and became hits. He then moved from Capitol (Black & White) to Imperial and made the next hit "Glamour Girl" (listen) in 1950 once again with a horn arrangements directed by tenor player Maxwell Davis. Most of the time however, Walker was touring and sharing busses and rooming houses with fellow stars like Wynonie Harris (listen) or Lowell Fulson (listen) playing in R&B package shows.
Walkers big hits stopped after 1950 but his concerts kept people coming for many years, though he cooled his pace after the mid-Fifties where rock'n'roll sidelined the blues. "T-Bone Blues" (listen) a jazzy album for Atlantic helped introducing him to Europe where he enjoyed lots of success in the 1960s.
T-Bone Walker didn't live to see enthusiasm for the blues at the end of the 1970s, since a persistent stomach ulcer and alcoholism were taking a toll on him. He can take a lot of the credit indirectly for a lot of that enthusiasm that B.B. King helped initiate. Important recordings:•The
complete Capitol/Black & White Recordings Here is a taste of T-Bone Walker:
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