This is the latest from The Bluesmobile’s C.C. Rider, who spends her life venerating the founding fathers of the blues. She’s walked the crooked highways of this singing country to resurrect the voices of the past. With the dirt of the Delta on her hands, she sleeps in the shadow of the giants on whose shoulders popular music now stands.
Big Walter Horton
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What you’re hearin’ right there is one of the very first songs recorded at Sun Studios. Sun Studios, of Elvis, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Roy Orbison fame, of course. But that incredible, aching sound is none other than Big Walter “Shakey” Horton. One of the greatest harmonica players of all time. Sam Phillips, founder of Sun, said it best “When Big Walter played, the blues fell all over you.” So who was Big Walter? Let’s hear about him from another great harp player, Charlie Musselwhite.
He was from Memphis. Actually, he was from Mississippi but grew up around Memphis, Walter was the kind of guy that to entertain himself he was always putting everybody on with a straight face. He’d just tell you whatever he thought was funny to himself as the absolute truth. He was a great harp player. To me, he was the first harp player that really stepped away from being just another harp blower and became a player. He could play anything. He would play big band swing era tunes like String of Pearls and In the Mood and stuff like that. I once heard him playing on a chromatic what sounded to me like the Vienna Waltz or something, classical sort of stuff, and I don’t know what it was. And I was afraid to ask him, because I knew he wouldn’t give me the right answer. He told me that he taught Sonny Boy Williamson II, Rice Miller, and Little Walter, and I used to think, sure, okay, Shaky, I’ll believe you. But over the years, more and more people that I knew that had known Walter in Memphis when he was growing up all said that it was true, that Sonny Boy and Little Walter came to Memphis to meet Shaky Walter to learn how to play, because he was the harp player. – Charlie Musselwhite
