Liner
notes from Southern Soul Stocks Volume 1 - Kip Anderson and Willie
Walker (Greenline GCH 8113) a rare Italian LP featuring Willie
Walker's Goldwax recordings.
Sometimes
soul fans, sitting around 'chewing the fat' will talk all too glibly
of 'legendary' soul singers who, in reality, probably made one good
record and promptly disappeared from view. Willie Walker, while certainly
not prolific in his recording activities, does indeed fully justify
that 'legendary' tag. Soul from the southern States tends to have
a greater emotive content and perhaps a stronger ring of sincerity
than much of the product from further north, mixing as it does the
root influences of emotional gospel singing and the down-to-earth
but lyrically expressive aspects of country music. Willie Walker had
all this in abundance as is only too evident from the superb examples
of his work which, one way or another, found its way into the Checker
vaults of Leonard Chess' northern-based Chicago empire, though precious
little emerged at the time (the late 60's). Hence, we are indeed talking
about 'rare' southern soul here.
Willie
Walker's first appearance on Checker is certainly memorable. "A
Lucky Loser" (Checker 1211) is genuinely tough southern soul
and he attacks the lyric like a cross between Otis at his best and
Wilson Pickett. In complete contrast, "From Warm To Cool To Cold"
is Willie's all-time 'deep' classic (also Checker 1211) featuring
bent blue notes from the
guitar, a simmering organ backdrop, surging brass and terrific vocal
attack on a really tortured lyric. Walker essentially recorded all
his late-sixties material for the Memphis-based Goldwax concern and,
although Checker picked up rights to much of it, it all stemmed from
sessions either at Muscle Shoals in Alabama or Chips Moman's local
American Studios in Memphis, both undisputed 'meccas' of the southern
soul 'sound'. "You Name It, I've Had It" (Checker 1198)
shows Walker in lighter, slightly more restrained vein on another
'deep' track, sounding something between Clay Hammond and Sam Cooke.
The cross-influence of Goldwax label-mate James Carr can also be detected.
No bad recommendation! It's up with the tempo for the punchy "Nothing
Can Separate Us" (unreleased), a driving piece of organ and drum-propelled
soul with the brass punctuating things crisply throughout. How is
it soul of this quality was never issued at the time? The mind boggles!
Despite its title, "You're Running Too Fast" (also Checker
1198) is closer to mid-tempo and is the nearest Walker comes to sounding
really very like Sam Cooke; indeed one could almost say this is one
of that clutch of Cooke-soundalike recordings that emerged over the
years, but don't get the idea that that makes it in any way inferior:
far from it, this is still fine soul music, but smoother and less
'southern' than most of Walker's other work.
PETER NICKOLS September 1988
These
notes were edited to include only the parts pertaining to Willie Walker.
