PHILLIP WALKER "GOING BACK HOME" Source: Austin Sound.net Date: 02/2007 Writer: Roger Gatchet

Legendary Texas bluesman Phillip Walker returns to his Louisiana and GulfCoast roots on his new record Going Back Home, coming out this Tuesday on the Delta Groove label. Walker is a seasoned veteran with a recording career that dates back over fifty years, when he cut his first sides with Memphis piano man Roscoe Gordon and Cajun King Clifton Chenier. He now resides in Los Angeles, where he has developed a unique style that fuses the best of Texas and West Coast big band blues. On Going Back Home, his finest album to date, Walker and an outstanding backing band revisit the sound of his old stomping grounds in the South. Phillip Walker will be the featured artist on KVRX’s Artist Hour this Saturday, February 17 from 10-11pm on KVRX 91.7. You can also tune into Blues at Sunrise every Wednesday morning from 7-9am as Smokehouse Brown takes you through the best in blues.

Austin Sound: This new album Going Back Home on the Delta Groove label is just a beautiful, beautiful record. Phillip Walker: Yea, I thought I’d try to switch things up there with the string bass, and unload the thing from all the heavy horn things I’ve been doing. We did pretty good on some of the old songs we selected.

AS: It’s a real nice back-to-the roots album, exploring your musical history in Louisiana, Texas, and of course the West Coast. PW: Yea, it’s right back there where it was about thirty years ago. Yea, the real gritty thing.

AS: You’re from Louisiana originally, but you grew up in Port Arthur, Texas?

PW: I grew up in Port Arthur, but originally I’m from Welsh, Louisiana, just about 25 miles south of Lake Charles there, in a little farming town. I grew up around there until I was about seven or eight years old, nine maybe.

AS: Do you have any memories of Louisiana?

PW: Yes, I have some. I remember when I was a young kid I used to run the fields a lot, ya know, doing a lot of things at a small age. I was a water boy there. I can remember ’44 and ’45 pretty well, I was a water boy back there in ’44. When they was harvesting rice back in those days, I would ride a horse with two wooden kegs on the horse, with a cup. And I’d bring the working guys that was working in the hot sun out there, I’d bring ‘em water.

AS: Do you have any memories of listening to music around that time?

PW: No, not at that age. But a couple of years later we had moved out of Louisiana into Texas in 1945, and I was still doing farm work with my dad around there, my brothers and sisters. And I started listening to this old station out of Nashville, Tennessee. They used to play a lot of blues, that station would reach way down there in Texas. I heard a lot of Leadbelly, a lot of early Lightnin’ Hopkins, a lot of early early John Lee Hooker stuff, and some lady singers, before I attempted to pick up a guitar and learn how to play one. That was somewhere around ’52, ’53 I started trying to play and I got discovered by a guy, the King of the South, Clifton Chenier. I was about sixteen years old when I met up on him. I actually started traveling with him when I was about seventeen years old.

AS: What was Clifton like?

PW: He was quite a guy. He was a good guy to work with, fun guy to work with, fun guy to travel with. Matter fact that guy gave me my first break in music. I probably would have never left the farm if he hadn’t a ran across me. Yea, I’d probably still be a farmer somewhere back down there!

AS: So you got the chance to perform not only blues, but traditional Louisiana and Cajun music too.

PW: Yes, I got to play some of that stuff with Cliff before we merged up out of Louisiana and started spreading out a little bit into Texas and different states. He was originally an early Bayou player, you know where he started from. I stayed with him about three and a half years before I decided to go on my own.

AS: You had the opportunity to record with him as well. Was that your first time in a recording studio?

PW: That was my first time in a recording studio, with Clifton Chenier for Specialty Records about 1954. We came to California twice, ’54 and ’55, and each time we came they recorded him.

AS: After playing with Clifton and living in Texas, you eventually made your way out to the West Coast to California, like a lot of blues artists did who grew up in this part of the country.

PW: Yes, I went to the tip of Texas and stayed there for a couple of years, trying to develop myself into a lead singer and a lead guitarist, and a band leader. That was in El Paso, Texas. I did two years in El Paso before I went out to the West Coast in 1959.

AS: What prompted you to head out to the West Coast?

PW: I was seeking a recording career at the time. And I knew an old guy who lived in Los Angeles who had a small record label. So I came to California in ’59 and recorded for him, for Echo Records. I done a 45 for him, “Hello My Daughter,” with one vocal and one instrumental side. And that was my first recording of my own self.

AS: There were quite a few high-profile blues artists in California back then. What was the blues scene like down there?

PW: Oh it was a great blues scene, it was at its peak when I got there in ’59, but jazz and blues had been big in Los Angeles in the forties and fifties. And in the latter part of ’59 it was still going strong, with a lot of blues clubs to play and a lot of recording opportunities. I been here ever since!

AS: Have you noticed the scene change there over the years?

PW: Oh boy, haven’t I though! It’s going on forty-five years since I’ve been livin’ here, and I’ve seen it change quite a bit musically. I look around me for all of the original people that was here when I got there, and I don’t see any of those folks hardly now. I guess they all headed for the hills!

AS: Who were some of the early artists that influenced your style of playing?

PW: A guy I was into, second to Elmore James, was B.B. King. I wanted to play like that guy. He was a great influence on me, but all of the blues players, T-Bone Walker, Lowell Fulson, but my idol was B.B. King when I was comin’ up. I was a B.B. King man. I loved that Elmore type of, he wasn’t playin’ a slide but he was pickin’, and on some of the riffs he’d sound like Elmore James, ya know? Without even using a slide. That was the guy I really idolized early comin’ up.

AS: Who are some of your favorite blues artists right now? If you were to put a record on, who would you be listening to?

PW: Albert King, if I want to listen to some real gut bucket, really gutty blues sound. And after B.B., Albert King, Freddie King, Albert Collins. Those would be the Texas players I’d be listening to. And I like all of that harmonica stuff from the Chicago era. I like the Jimmy Reed stuff, Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters, they just fill me up full of the blues stuff, you know what I mean? So I get my stuff from both sides, the Texas scene and the Chicago scene, and part of the West Coast scene.

AS: You’ve had the opportunity to tour quite a bit internationally. What are the international blues fans like?

PW: Oh they’re great blues fans! You know, cuz they don’t have the talent that we have in the U.S.A. So it’s a privilege for a guy like me to come from the states down in one of those countries. The audience is just completely different because they appreciate the music so good, because they know they won’t get the chance to see this guy for three or four years, ya know?

AS: Mr. Walker, could you tell us what the blues mean to you?

PW: Well, a lot of people, ya know, they think you got to be drinking your last glass of whiskey and fallin’ down, or even cryin’ all the time, to sing the blues. But the blues is somethin’ that makes you feel good and happy. I enjoy playing it, you know what I mean? It just has that feelin’, ya know? And I don’t see it as a sad music. There are some sad songs, but also some very happy songs.

AS: Your new record is going to be one of the top blues albums of 2007. There’s something special about it.

PW: Yea, we call it a kind of a strip-down. We took all the glamour down from the Phillip Walker guy and kinda, put some of the old sound behind him. And I think it came out great, I was just thrilled to do that album. We got [Fred] Kaplan on piano there, and most of the Hollywood Fats band. Some top players, some great players. It was just a joy for me to be able to record with those guys again. As soon as the weather breaks, I’m gonna strike out with it. I think it’s gonna do well.

AS: Do you have any plans on coming back to Texas?

PW: I had a lot of fun there ten years ago, when Austin was really cooking man! I played Antone’s, some great blues bars around town, and I’d love to come back to Austin again.