Bluesman Walter Trout was barely out of school when he was learning his trade from the greats like John Lee Hooker, Big Mama Thornton and Percy Mayfield.
Percy Mayfield was known for ‘Please Send Me Someone To Love’ and ‘Hit The Road Jack’. “Percy was a trip man,” Walter Trout tells Noise11.com. “I played with Bo Diddley and Lowell Fulson and Eddie ‘Cleanhead’ Vinson. Those guys were an education but not just music. How to be sociable, and how to be on the road and how to survive, how to live your life as a musician. When I was with him he had already had a career for 60 or 70 years. These guys just had an aura about them”.
Walter Trout was the guitarist for Big Mama Thornton in the 70s. “There is a story I like to tell about Big Mama,” he says. “I had just moved out here to LA. I was (I think) 22. I got the gig ‘hey you want to go and play with Big Mama Thornton?’ Oh course I did. I had just come from a little farm town in New Jersey. I show up. We are not going to rehearse. I am the only ‘vanilla fella’. I am the only guy under 60 years old in the dressing room. I am kind of nervous and I am trying to make conversation. I said “hey Mama. What are we going to play tonight? We’re not rehearsing. I’ve just got to play so what are we playing? ‘. And she says to me, ‘all you got to do is play like B.B. King.” Then she says, ‘I don’t want to hear no rock and roll”.
Walter got the shock of his life at the show. “We were out on stage and we are playing a slow blues and she says “ladies and gentlemen, the boy over here is going to try and play like B.B. King”.
Watch the Noise11 Walter Trout interview:
Walter Trout’s remaining dates in Australia are:
January 30, Canberra, Harmonie German Club
January 31 and February 1, Melbourne, Memo Music Hall
February 2, Adelaide, The Gov
February 3, Fremantle, Freo Social
Walter’s latest song ‘Broken’ features Beth Hart. The new album ‘Broken’ will be released on 1 March 2024. Watch the title track:
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