Chasing the Blues

Dennis Walker has been "chasing the blues" for a lifetime, starting with his first producing credit in 1965. He is a three-time Grammy Award-winning Blues producer and songwriter for Robert Cray's Strong Persuader, The Robert Cray Band's Don't Be Afraid of The Dark, and B.B. King's Blues Summit. In a career spanning over 40 years, he won more than 20 Blues Music Association Awards and created a discography that shows the depth of his love and respect for the blues. How did a small-town Oregon boy end up writing for and working with the most important blues musicians of our time? This book tells the story of Dennis' musicial journey and the amazing artists that he met and worked with along the way, told with an idiosyncratic voice that is the essence of what "chasing the blues" means.

This memoir covers the early part of Dennis Walker's life and musical work through his last album with Robert Cray, I Was Warned, which was released in 1992. This documentation of music history includes working with Bruce Bromberg, Phillip Walker, Lowell Fulson, Robert Cray, B.B. King, Frankie Lee, George "Harmonica Smith, Joe Louis Walker, Ted Hawkins, The Delgado Brothers, John Campbell, John McVie, BB Chung King a.k.a. Alan Mirikitani, Kimono Mari, and Philipp Fankauser. In addition, there are all the other characters like Richard Cousins, Margie Evans, Alain Schuster, Bill Dashiell, Nat Dove, Big Mama Thornton, Toni Mathews, Eddie Cleanhead Vinson, Johnny Tucker, David Ii, Lonesome Sundown, Bea Walker, Hollis Gilmore, Dale Wilson, Eddie Ahern, Bernie Grundman, Doug MacLeod, Eric Ajai, Llew Matthews, Wayne Jackson & Andrew Love, Peter Lubin, Joe Delgado, Bob Delgado, Steve Delgado, Larry Sloven, Peter Boe, Dave Olsen, Mike Kappas, Fontaine Brown, Marshall Chapman, Dave Nice, Dave Plenn, Lee Spath, Stu Yahm, Jim Pugh, Etta James, John Anderson, Denny Diante, Teenie Hodges, John Hampton, and Boz Scaggs. "What a ride, what a ride," as Dennis would say.