Biography

Walker’s career is unique. Unlike those who came in his wake, Joe never had to learn the blues, simply because it was his mother tongue, although he doesn’t hail from the Delta. When other blues legends grew up in the pre-war South, Walker was raised in the Fillmore district of San Francisco in the late fifties and early sixties, at a time when black blues and white rock lived hand in hand. And while honing his skills locally with the likes of Lightnin’ Hopkins, Fred McDowell, Magic Sam and Earl “Zebedee” Hooker, he was very much part of the local psychedelic scene. “I knew them all. Carlos Santana and the guys from the Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead as well as Sly Stone and Larry Graham. My roommate at the time was Mike Bloomfield, fresh from introducing Bob Dylan to the electric guitar.”

Enrolling at San Francisco State University, Walker then earned degrees in music and English, ending up playing guitar for 10 years with a gospel ensemble, The Spiritual Corinthians. “I got my blues from my Dad, and my gospel from my grandmother. She lived with us, but her head was still in Arkansas, so that’s very much part of my heritage too.”

By 1985, Walker was ready to move back into blues territory. “There’s no contradiction between blues and gospel. They are the two faces of the same coin, with soul music somewhere in between,” he says. At the head of his Bosstalkers, Joe rapidly worked his way to the top of the profession with a series of stellar albums, produced by such luminaries as Steve Cropper and Scotty Moore (Elvis’s original guitar player) that radically changed the blues landscape of the late 20th Century.

Considered one of the last of the great blues guitar heroes, alongside B.B. King, Buddy Guy and Otis Rush, Joe gives more than a hundred fiery performances on all continents every year, appearing at major festivals from the US and Canada to Australia, Europe to Japan, the Far East to Southern America, while collecting awards like others collect pennies.

“Glowing like a blue beacon”—in the words of noted blues critic Bill Dahl—Walker is certainly the most brilliantly innovative guitarist on the contemporary blues scene today. A fact that owes him the unbridled admiration of certified fans like Sir Mick Jagger, Herbie Hancock, The Edge, Bono, and B.B. King, who show up at his concerts whenever the occasion arises.