City leaders review local legacy of T-Bone Walker

Linden Economic Development leaders Lee Elliott and Meagan Kirkland spent a recent working lunch hour with Russell Wright, listening and viewing the music of Linden native T-Bone Walker.

T-Bone Walker was born in Linden in 1910. He and his family later moved to Dallas, where he grew up and learned his musical style.

In 2006 and 2007, Linden put on T-Bone Walker festivals that drew 10 blues performers the first year and more the second. After years of initial success for blues music in honor of Walker, the festival was moved to Longview. In recent years, the festival has not been held.

Wright, as director of the Linden Economic Development Corporation at the time, had been a driving force in the organization and presentation of the T-Bone Walker Blues Festival.

Wright displayed video productions both of T-Bone as produced by the Canadian Broadcast System and the first two T-Bone festivals in Linden which were produced locally.

“I wanted to take a moment of Lee’s and Meagan’s time and bring them up to speed on another of Linden’s outstanding contributions to music — T-Bone Walker,” Wright said.

T-Bone not only played the guitar behind his head and did splits in time with the music, he also composed memorable blues lyrics, one of which is the classic, “Stormy Monday.” Here are its main lines:

“They call it stormy Monday But Tuesday’s just as bad Lord, and Wednesday’s worse And Thursday’s all so bad The eagle flies on Friday Saturday I go out to play Sunday I go to church, yeah, Gonna kneel down and pray.”

(“The eagle flies on Friday” means that’s when he gets paid.)

Wright added that T-Bone’s style when arranged by Chuck Berry became rock ’n roll guitar licks. So in essence, T-Bone was not only the first electric blues guitar player but also the first electric rock ’n roll guitar player.

“That’s shown in that he was elected not only to the Blues Hall of Fame but also the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,” Wright said. “He inspired B.B. King, Freddie and Albert King, Eric Clapton, Duane Allman and Stevie Ray Vaughan.”

T-Bone continued to play almost to his end, but a lifetime of ill health led to a stroke in 1974. He died at 64 on March 16, 1975.

After the meeting, Kirkland and Elliott agreed that T-Bone Walker and such history of music in Linden and Cass County is so amazing that it should carry weight in complementing Linden’s culture, its past, present and future.

Staff photos by Neil Abeles ■ ABOVE: Meagan Kirkland, left, assistant director, and Lee Elliott, director of the Linden Economic Development Corporation, watch a presentation by Russell Wright, former director of the LEDC and lead organizer of T-Bone Walker festivals.

■ BELOW LEFT: This is Linden’s outstanding public art of T-Bone Walker as created by the late muralist Brad Attaway (1954-2016).

■ LEFT: James Pappas is tickled to have found two official souvenir programs of the T-Bone Walker Blues Fests in Linden at Music City Texas Theater for 2010 and 2012. They were on tables at the recent Atlanta Public Library book sale.

■ BELOW RIGHT: The computer screen tells it all. This is T-Bone Walker (1910-1975) with his signature leg-splitting dance and behind-the-back playing of a blues guitar. T-Bone was elected into both the Blues Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.