Cold Is The Night. Farewell to My Friend Joe Louis Walker

Paying tribute to Joe Louis Walker, a brilliant guitarist, singer and songwriter and the first person I was ever paid to write about.

I was devastated by news of the passing of Joe Louis Walker, a brilliant guitarist, singer and songwriter and a smart, sweet, generous man. He was a friend for almost 40 years, and someone with a special place in my heart because he was the subject of the first article I sold to a national publication, which was also his first real recognition as a solo artist. That bonded us together.

In the fall of 1986, I took a semester off from the University of Michigan and followed my girlfriend to Cal-Berkeley. The romance was doomed, but my time in California, while disorienting and often lonely, gave me confidence that I could make my way in the world, because I was completely cut off from everyone else I knew, a stranger in a strange land. It was also fruitful for my nascent career as a music journalist - and a lot of that started with Joe.

I walked into Larry Blake’s on Telegraph Avenue for the regular Blue Monday night, paid a few bucks cover and descended to the basement Rathskeller where the house band, led by Tim Kaihatsu, a great guitarist who would go on to play with Robert Cray for years, was wailing away. They were always great, but on this night they were fantastic - joined by a guest player who was absolutely killing it on a blue Stratocaster: Joe Louis Walker.

I was already deeply immersed in live blues and had seen Buddy Guy, Son Seals, Lonnie Brooks, Koko Taylor, Robert Cray and Albert Collins working at Rick’s in Ann Arbor the prior two years. I knew that this guy was as good as them - so how did I not know his name? How could someone this brilliant be a complete unknown?

This was the guy I met in 1986.

When the set ended, I introduced myself to Joe, telling him I wrote about music for the Daily Californian, which was sort of true. Joe excitedly told me that his debut album, Cold Is the Night, was coming out the next week and gave me a copy when I promised I would try to review it. It became one of the first pieces I published in the Daily Cal, and I wasn’t done with Joe. I saw him as much as I could, including at the San Francisco Blues Festival and often at Blake’s and other clubs. (The 86 SF Blues Fest included Albert King, Etta James, Buddy Guy and Junior Wells joined by Carlos Santana, Katie Webster, Roy Buchanan, The Kinsey Report, the Paladins and others over two glorious days that remain a peak musical experience.) A friend took a picture of Joe that day and I made a 5x7 and asked him to sign it. He wrote “Alan, Write On! Joe Louis Walker.” That picture hung above my desk for years, moved from one location to another before it vanished.

Obsessed with Joe and wanting to find somewhere to profile him, I started pitching, and it led to an assignment for Tower Pulse magazine, the first of many articles I did for them over the next five years. I was 20 and in college and realizing I could actually be paid to write articles about musicians I loved was a tantalizing revelation. Pulse was an essential outlet for me, and my 1990 Allman Brothers article on the release of Seven Turns led to me being hired at Guitar World, essentially launching my for-real career - and that all started with simply having a passion to write about Joe and seeking an outlet to do so.

This intense live performance is what Joe looked and sounded like when I walked into Larry Blake’s and had my brain fried.

Of course, there was a reason and a story behind why someone so talented was making his solo debut at about age 35. By the time Joe was a Bay Area teenager, he was immersed in his city’s blues and psychedelic rock scenes, hanging out with Jimi Hendrix, playing with Mississippi Fred McDowell at the legendary rock club the Matrix, and befriending — and eventually rooming with — Michael Bloomfield. But he also became a victim of the times and its vices, drinking and drugging heavily and eventually landing in jail. “I was a wild kid,” he told Rolling Stone in 1990. “I was just into making money for a drink or getting high.”

By the mid-Seventies, Walker was working odd jobs and soon started playing with the gospel group, the Spiritual Corinthians. A performance with the group at the 1985 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival drew him back to the blues. In a 2023 interview with Premier Guitar, he recalled the revelation he had at the festival’s gospel tent. “I just said, ‘You know what? I’m a restless soul with music.’ Anybody listening to the 30-plus albums I’ve got, they’ll hear me doing all kinds of stuff. It was just a sign of things to come for me.”

He recorded consistently, producing dozens of albums, often in collaboration with others, from Dr. John to Jorma Kaukonen and BB King to Dion. In a 2004 Guitar World review I wrote, “Joe Louis Walker’s blues are tinged with rock, r&b and gospel. His big ambitions and wide talents allow Walker to mix and match at whim, tossing an overdriven rock tone into a straight blues tune, for instance. Walker has a big, distinct vibrato, an array of great tones and a creative, fun way of sneaking slinky riffs into the cracks of every song.”

I wrote about Joe several times for Guitar World and saw him throughout the 90s when he came to New York. Though I continued to enjoy his many albums and followed him from afar, we were out of touch for over a decade before literally bumping into each other in the pit of a Rolling Stones concert in Philly in 2019. Someone asked me to take a picture of him and his friend and when the other guy turned around it was Joe. We called out each other’s names and embraced and started talking and after 5 minutes I remembered I was holding the other guy’s phone. I took their picture and then we snapped this one together, delighted by the happenstance reunion.

Joe played more than once at Greg Williamson’s Soho Sessions, the intimate New York private club shows I’ve been fortunate to attend. We also hung out extensively and introduced each other to our wives Rebecca and Robin at a holiday party at Greg’s Manhattan apartment. There I got to see him play “Born Under A Bad Sign” with the song’s author, a dapper, octogenarian William Bell. Joe and I were consistently in touch for the last five or six years, texting often. He was also friendly with Junior Mack and we talked about him joining Friends of the Brothers as a guest.

The last time we texted was in January. He was on the island of Mustique, where he put together an annual blues festival for Mick Jagger to benefit local kids. He said he would try and bring me and Junior next year.

“Keep hoping we’ll cross paths,” he wrote. “Maybe I’ll see you in Jersey for a gig. I think THIS WILL BE THE LAST TIME I TOU)…. Lemme know where you and Jr are playing, I’ll try to make it. Though I’m not gigging a whole lot, like I used to. I’m still doin some cool things ,,,, Mark Knopflor Guitar Army , Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz,Stanford Workshop,, Indigenous People’s Rocks, Seva Blindness etc etc I hope your book did good. Let’s stay in touch, JLW “

It meant a lot to me to know that after almost 40 years, our relationship meant something to him. It sure did to me, and I am crying as I write this. Sail on Joe and thanks for the fabulous music and your incredible spirit. Love and condolences to Robin and to Joe’s daughters Leena and Bernice.

The paperback edition of my fourth book, Brothers and Sisters: the Allman Brothers Band and The Album That Defined The 70s, was recently released by St. Martin’s Press. It was the third consecutive one to debut in the New York Times Non-Fiction Hardcover Bestsellers List, following Texas Flood: The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan and One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band. My first book, Big in China: My Unlikely Adventures Raising a Family, Playing the Blues and Becoming a Star in Beijing, about my experiences raising a family in Beijing and touring China with a popular original blues band, was optioned for a movie by Ivan Reitman’s Montecito Productions. I am also a guitarist and singer with two bands, Big in China and Friends of the Brothers, the premier celebration of the Allman Brothers Band.