Moose Tour

Rip It Up, Issue 63, 1 October 1982, Page 8

Moose Tour

checking are his work as an accompanist to Otis Rush on the traumatic Cold Day In Hell album on Delmark, with Junior Wells on On Tap (Delmark) and on Son Seals' first Alligator album. As Earl Hooker's pianist he backed Earl on Don't Have To Worry. He also contributes a couple of vocals, notably on the bizarrely titled 'ls You Ever Seen A OneEyed Woman Cry?' Indian blood and long, flowing hair ran in Walker's family. He acquired the nickname Moose as a youngster hanging around his local pool hall. "I wore my hair so long maybe I looked like a moose," says Walker. He made his first music on a church organ, later played guitar in the cottonfields (yes, Virginia,

that really happened), took tuba (!) lessons, and once had visions of becoming a famous blues vibes player (now that is a wide open field). During the 50s he became known as a pianist and bass player as he roamed through the Mississippi Delta and beyond. He joined Ike Turner's King of Rhythm in Clarksdale and sat in with the fabled King Biscuit Boys in Helena, Arkansas. He worked juke joints across Mississippi with Elmore James and Sonny Boy Williamson. He switched to guitar for gigs with Boyd Gilmore and Eddie Snow and lived with bandleader Tuff Green in Memphis and with pianist Pinetop Perkins in East St Louis. He played with Lowell Fulson, as well as driving the Fulson band on the road. He travelled even more extensively with the master of the slide guitar, Earl Hooker. At a drunken party in St Louis, Moose won a SSO bet with Ike Turner by jumping off the third floor of a building it was just enough to cover the hospital bill. Clearly a man who covered a lot of ground, Moose also joined the army and went to Korea. In the 50s he recorded with Elmore James and Sonny Boy Williamson for the Jackson, Mississippi, Trumpet label. In 1955 drinking buddy Ike Turner taped Moose in a Greenville (or Stoneville) club. Years later two of the songs appeared on Kent credited to J. W. Walker. The same year he recorded his first 45, as Moose John, for Johnny Otis in Los Angeles. Brought to Chicago by fellow pianist Sunnyland Slim, Walker recorded with Earl Hooker and others, then went to New Orleans to record with Elmore James. As a front man, he recorded several singles, but did not make a big impression on the buying market (plenty of good artists fit the same bill). A close partner to the late Earl Hooker, Walker has, since Hooker's death in 1970, played with several other Chicago bands, including those of Jimmy Dawkins, Mighty Joe Young, Eddie Shaw and Louis Myers. When he plays solo, Moose usually works with just a drummer. Watch for The Moose. As one of his compositions attests, "Moose is on the loose." Ken Williams