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Episode 5 - Living Legends
Joe Louis Walker welcomes two close friends and living legends Otis Rush and Matt "Guitar" Murphy to the Blues Express® stage and looks at the life of Albert Collins.
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Joe Louis Walker represents the next generation of bluesmen. Eschewing traditional paths to blues superstardom, Walker began playing guitar in his hometown of San Francisco during the tumultuous 60's. With his roommate Mike Bloomfield, Walker jammed with the Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix and other stalwarts of the San Francisco scene. Walker made brief forays to Chicago and the Pacific Northwest to absorb the music scenes there before returning to California in 1975. Burned out on blues, Walker adopted spiritual music, singing with the gospel group New Corinthians for the next decade. Twenty years after his start, Walker went back to his blues roots and released his first album Cold is the Night, a stunning example of Walker's talent as both guitarist and singer. Walker stands today as one of the best all around blues artists performing.
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Otis Rush is one of many Mississippi musicians to migrate north to Chicago -- but few had the impact that Otis Rush's guitar playing or singing had. Visiting Chicago in the late 1940's a young Rush heard Muddy Waters perform and knew what path his life would take. His unorthodox guitar playing (the left handed musician plays his guitar upside down) and plaintive singing helped shape what came to be known as the West Side blues sound of Chicago. Willie Dixon helped secure him a recording contract in 1956 and his first single, the haunting and beautiful "I Can't Quit You, Baby" was a top-10 hit for him and proved to be a huge hit years later for Led Zeppelin. Despite Rush's enormous influence on other musicians, he's proven to be one of blues' most under-recorded and under-appreciated artists. His album 'Any Place I'm Going' (House of Blues label) won Rush his first Grammy in 1999 and some long overdue recognition from the music buying public at large.
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Matt "Guitar" Murphy is probably best known for his role in the 'Blues Brothers' movies and albums (he played Aretha Franklin's husband) but his contributions to blues began long before the Belushi/Aykroyd projects. Born in the Mississippi Delta and raised in Memphis, Murphy is one of blues' most respected sidemen. Although he recorded frequently with Howlin' Wolf, James Cotton, Memphis Slim and others during the 1950's, 60's and 70's his own recorded work wouldn't surface for decades. His first record as bandleader was released in 1990 and has since emerged from the relative anonymity of sideman as he tours and continues to record with his own group.
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