There’s nothing wee about Wee Willie Walker’s talent
Over the past five decades Rick Estrin has performed with many of the nation’s most renowned blues and soul singers, and he doesn’t mince any words when it comes to Wee Willie Walker.
According to the award-winning harmonica ace, the Memphis-born Walker “is the greatest, deepest soul singer in the world today, period! His artistry is on the same level as legends like Johnnie Taylor, Sam Cooke, O.V. Wright and Otis Redding.”
Estrin put his ardent belief in Walker’s talent to the test by producing the singer’s 2015 album “If Nothing Ever Changes” at San Jose’s Greaseland Studios. The inaugural release on blues keyboardist Jim Pugh’s invaluable Little Village Foundation label, the album ended Walker’s long musical flight under the radar, earning nominations in three major Blues Foundation Awards categories last year, including album of the year.
Estrin isn’t the only veteran Northern California blues artist who’s eager to champion Walker. Napa guitarist Anthony Paule ran into the vocalist on the European blues circuit a few years ago and when his Soul Orchestra landed a plum gig as the house band at Italy’s Porretta Soul Festival, he requested Walker as the featured singer.
“We just kind of hit it off,” says Walker, 76, a soft-spoken man not given to blowing his own horn. “They decided I was easy to work with, and asked if I’d be interested in recording some of their material.”
Walker’s collaboration with the Anthony Paule Soul Orchestra, “After a While” (Blue Dot Records) has a strong claim as the year’s best soul album. Paule’s talent-packed nine-piece band celebrates the album’s release at the Blue Note Napa on Nov. 24 with Walker and special guest Terri Odabi, the powerhouse Oakland blues singer. Walker and the orchestra also close out the year with a Dec. 30 gig at the Smoking Pig in Fremont and a New Year’s Eve celebration at Oakland Sound Room.
Like most of soul music’s foundational singers, Walker got his start in a gospel quartet. In the 1940s and 1950s, groups like Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers earned large, devoted followings in African-American communities. Walker was on the gospel circuit by the age of 15.
“It was a great, blessed experience, and I grew up fast,” Walker says. “We played in churches throughout the South and as far north as Minnesota. Every summer we just kind of toured, riding around in a car whenever they would have us.”
On one of those trips north in the early 1960s he decided to stay in Minneapolis, and he’s been there ever since, cultivating an avid local following. He made the transition to singing R&B with local bands, including the ValDons, who found a niche playing Jewish Community Centers around the Twin Cities.
Walker maintained connections in Memphis, which was establishing itself as a hotbed of Southern soul. He recorded numerous demo tracks and several singles for Goldwax Records, mostly songs by his friend George Jackson, a prolific pop and R&B composer who wrote Bob Seger’s signature “Old Time Rock & Roll,” Johnnie Taylor’s “Who’s Makin’ Love,” and the Osmonds’ chart-topping “One Bad Apple,”
a tune he intended for the Jackson 5 (no relation).
While music was Walker’s passion, he kept his Minneapolis day gig as a machine operator in a corrugated box factory. “I was happy with my job,” Walker says. “I had a family, and I wasn’t going to take a chance to pursue life on the road.”
After 60 years in the music business, Walker found something new with the Anthony Paule Soul Orchestra. For the first time, he took a measure of creative control, and the results can be heard on “After a While.”
“Before, I’d just go in and record and go home,” Walker says. “It was very different and nice to be part of the whole process. It’s my adventure in producing, listening to everything. Oh God, yes, I enjoyed that.”
For Paule, a veteran guitarist whose credits include stints with heavyweights like Boz Scaggs, Charlie Musselwhite and Johnny Adams, working with undersung soul greats like Frank Bey and Walker has provided a new sense of mission. He not only encouraged Walker to participate in production decisions, he created the space to collaborate on new material.
“To not listen to him and not use his experience would be a crime,” Paule says. “One of my favorite tracks is ‘Cannot Be Denied.’ We’d written most of the lyric. I told him the story, strummed a chord and he came up with a beautiful melody. Melodies just come out of that guy. He’s greatest singer I’ve ever worked with. Just a brilliant talent.”