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By Roger Wood
Published in Living Blues Magazine (#131 January – February, 1997)
While the Texas blues legacy is dominated by guitar slingers, the state has contributed its share of creative piano masters too. Robert Shaw, Amos Milbum, and Charles Brown are three ready examples from the Houston area alone. Yet with the possible exception of the late Roosevelt "Grey Ghost" Williams, no keyboard man has cultivated a public persona quite as unique as that of Walter Price, better known as Big Walter "The Thunderbird."
Like his one-time roommate Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Big Walter blends various musical influences, blurring the genres to define his sound. His style ranges from cotton field moans to the barrelhouse rhythms popular along the railroad lines he once worked, from Texas honky-tonk ballads to big band jump-tunes, from traditional gospel to New Orleans rhumba boogie, from popular R&B to soulful ranchero. For over half a century, Big Walter has been mixing it all together, sometimes jarringly, making music to suit his unpredictable moods.
Now in his 80s, Big Walter has made his home in Houston since he followed Gatemouth Brown to Peacock Records in the 1950s. Brown recalls, "I lived in his aunt's house for a long time [before] I left San Antonio and came to Houston and first began working at Don Robey's club. That was back in '46. Walter Price is the only guy I ever knew who could eat a dozen eggs in the morning for breakfast. We were good friends and still are." Indeed, in April 1996, Gatemouth hosted Big Walter back-stage at a concert for several hours of reminiscing, interspersed with the type of teasing insults that could only be tolerated by old buddies.
Some of Big Walter's original recordings have resurfaced in the past few years on compilations such as Texas Music, Vol. 1: Postwar Blues Combos (Rhino) and Duke-Peacock's Greatest Hits (MCA), as well as on Vintage Thunderbird (Home Cooking), a CD that Price says he has not received a cent for, subject to ongoing litigation. The majority of his material can be found only on rare vinyl on small labels like TNT, Goldband, Jet Stream, and Tear Drop. Recently, Houston's Jerry Lightfoot coaxed Big Walter into the studio to record a new song. The Preacher Talks and Sings the Blues, as a bonus track on Lightfoot's Burning Desire CD (Connor Ray).
In both songs and interviews Big Walter combines humor and outrage in addressing variations on the theme of justice—as in his best known composition, Pack Fair and Square. From memories of a childhood picking cotton under the eye of an abusive aunt to angry accounts of club owners and producers who have cheated him out of money, Big Walter holds forth about how the world has done him wrong. Yet beyond his bitterness he maintains a joyful soul, a quality apparent not only in the laughter that frequently spices his discourse but also in his playful interaction with friends and in the utter delight he still derives from making music.
These days, most concerts featuring Big Walter The Thunderbird are performed in the privacy of his home in northeast Houston (an apartment he refers to as "the dugout") and are exclusively for the pleasure of family and friends. He seems perpetually fascinated with the creative possibilities of his Yamaha keyboard, a newfangled machine that can synthesize any sound, from gospel-flavored organ to the lonesome wail of a train, from the rhythmic creeping of a string bass to his classic piano tones. Whenever Big Walter sits down to perform, the Thunderbird flies high again.
The following interview is compiled from a series of conversations with Big Walter Price from November 1995 through May 1996.
Roger Wood
Where did you get the name Thunderbird?
When I found out about the Thunderbird is when Henry Ford came out with the Thunderbird, and I said I sure would like to use that on my song. Yeah... so from then, I wrote a slogan behind it:
The Thunderbird, The Bird That Flies So Swift From Coast To Coast—no matter where you may go, no matter where you may be, you can always find Big Walter. If you're in Kingston, Jamaica; Norway; Czechoslovakia; France; Australia; or Belgium; Holland; Hobbs, New Mexico; England; China; USA; Houston; Pasadena; Mobile, Alabama; Nashville, Tennessee; New York; Hollywood or Japan—it is Big Walter The Thunderbird!
Have you ever billed yourself as Big Walter Price?
Ain't no Big Walter Price, because nobody don't know nothing about no Big Walter Price... Big Walter Price has never made a record in his whole natural life. It always has been Big Walter The Thunderbird... And the reason I use The Thunderbird is because when I first started recording, Big Walter Horton had a record out called Hard Headed Woman. And I didn't want them to get me mixed up with Big Walter Horton, so I said Big Walter The Thunderbird... it's been real successful because it separated my name from my real name. If you go to say Big Walter Price, you might as well call my middle name too [Travis].
When were you born?
My birth date is actually August 2, 1914, I though there is a birth certificate that says I 1917. It's wrong 'cause the doctor didn’t get around to doing the paperwork the way, he was supposed to. I was born in Gonzales, Texas, east of San Antonio.
What do you remember about your childhood in Gonzales?
That was a horrible thing... When I was picking cotton, if I didn't pick a certain amount of cotton a day, my auntie would beat me, man, just like if I was a prisoner. My mother didn't raise me. My auntie raised me... She would beat me unmerciful, man... That's something you don’t forget... I don't want no part of it, those cotton fields and beatings. I got out when we moved to San Antonio. We moved to San Antonio when I was about 11 years old. I've lived in cities ever since then. I never have fooled with cotton no more... She also beat me like hell if I'd mess up and wet the bed, you know, which I was prone to do back then, especially if I drank iced tea. You know, she once got pregnant, had a child by another man... nobody wasn't supposed to know about it. Well, that baby was born dead, I guess... And she put it in a package on the front porch of our little house and made me go bury the package in the far corner of the yard. She watched me the whole time I was digging that hole and burying that package. She never said it was the baby, but I knew... [I was] about seven or eight, I guess. She raised me like that!
How long did you live with her?
When I was about 17, I met my daddy for the first time. He lived up in Fort Worth, and he asked me to come stay with him. My auntie forbid it; said if I went I would never have a home with her again. But I took that chance. I left San Antonio and went up to Fort Worth. She told me to never come back... Then two years later she was in a car wreck and hurt her leg, so she needed someone to come take care of her for a while. So after all that, guess who she called….
Did you go take care of her?
Yes I did. But I will never be able to really forgive her for the way she treated me. Nobody should have to be beat like that.
Where did you hear music when you were growing up? At your auntie's house?
No... I ain't never known nobody to sing at the house really. The only time they would sing was when they went to church. And I didn't have any idea, or never had no thoughts or anything about to become a singer until I had done got grown and married. That's when this all came about... Now, when I was a kid, my family had a piano, one of them old upright pianos, and I couldn't never understand why the piano was sitting outside with an old wagon sheet over it... I never did see nobody play it. I poked at it a few times myself but wasn't supposed to mess with it.
Did your auntie send you to school?
This is how high I went in school [shows] n old textbook he keeps with other memorabilia. I want to show you my first-grade book... Now when we moved from Gonzales to San Antonio, they moved you to grades depending upon age or how big you were... So they moved me up to the fifth grade. But I didn't know nothing about no fifth grade... First grade is as far as I ever went.
You've told me that later on Gatemouth Brown lived at your auntie's house.
Yeah, Gatemouth and I were close back then. It had to be in the '40s because Don Robey [owner of Duke/Peacock Records] sent for him, and he left my auntie's house with an old raggedy guitar and a pair of overalls. And when Robey heard how he could play, Robey took him to the tailor. I'm pretty sure he took him to Caldwell [long-time African-American tailor in the Third-ward]. He bought him about a thousand dollars worth of suits. He put him in a yellow one, and another snow white one, and he tore the house down... This was at the Bronze Peacock club in Houston back then.
What did you do to earn a living before you started your career in music?
Well, various things... I worked for the railroad, two different railroads. That was one of my main jobs before getting in the music business... I was hired on as a cook, but after they found out I couldn't cook they made me wash dishes. But eventually I learned... It was the Katy railway, from San Antonio to Kansas [the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad]... I worked for Texas-Pacific, we was cleaning the coaches. I didn't ride the rail with them. I was living in Fort Worth... I used to work up in Michigan. And I had to work where they was pouring that hot iron... Don't let nobody kid you, it is hot! I lived in Chicago for a while. I stayed there about seven or eight weeks... then I moved to Evanston, Illinois. I was there about four or five years... Anyway, my public singing actually began up north. I sang gospel with the Northern Wonders out of Michigan, amateur stuff really...
What made you turn to the blues?
Later, when I was working up in Fort Worth cleaning out them railroad cars, this fellow told me I really ought to sing the blues. He loved my voice. This old guy, we used to call him Loose Wig... That was in the '40s.
Did you know how to play an instrument then?
Not really, but I'd go to people's houses and play on the piano. I never could play but just in one key back then, and that was C-natural... And my cousin, he showed me how to play a song in C-sharp. He didn't know nothing else but C-sharp... So I learned that one from him, but other than that I had to teach myself... Joel Simmons helped a little. I think he's passed now. He told me, if you will listen to the records you'll get your time and your meter right. He was out of Fort Worth, a guitar player. And this guy I been talking about, Loose Wig, he was a drummer. We played in a club out in Fort Worth, I think they called it Stop Six... I used to like to go to nightclubs and listen to bands. And I went to a nightclub in Fort Worth called the Zanzibar. I asked the fellows, could I sit in? Yeah, they said, and they figured I could really play, you know... I was sitting in on piano and singing, but the catch was I couldn't play in but one key...
When they got ready to play something else, I couldn't play it. So the lady that owned the club, she come up there and told them, "Y'all don't be playing. Walter, you play that thing you just played while ago." So I just played that thing, practically all night. [Laughs] The band really got mad at me... So this developed until I first got ready to have my own band. I let them listen to the records. Then when I get down to the piano, they say, "Man, I thought you told me to learn it by the record." I say, "All I wanted you to do is learn your time and your meter. You've got to watch me now." [Laughs] Watch me now, because your record is playing it one way, but I play it my own jumping around. One of them Lightnin' Hopkins deals, you know.
When did you start writing songs?
The first thing that I ever wrote was when I was living back in San Antonio. I used to go to this place called the Avalon Grill, which was on Commerce Street. That's the place that most all the blacks went, like when we were here in Houston and most of the people went to the Club Matinee and the Eldorado Ballroom. So out in San Antonio it was the
Avalon Grill. And at that time they had a band there that played called Boots and His Buddies. This guy that used to sing there—I hope I'm right, but if I'm wrong they told me wrong—was Al Hibbler... And I was sitting in there, in the club, and decided I ought to write a song... I wrote this song All I Seen Was Just a Shadow. You know, like you didn't see the person itself, you just saw the shadow. And I give it to him [Hibbler]... because I wanted the guy that was singing and doing such a beautiful job, I wanted him to sing it. And I never did hear no more about that... I wrote a lot of songs that I never recorded, like that one.
When did you start to make blues records?
My first recording was Calling Margie on TNT [TNT 8005]... Back in '55 they tried to ban Calling Margie because there were very few Negro [telephone] operators and I was calling the operator "honey" [in the song]... They didn't like the idea of me calling a white woman "honey," so they banned me... That was number one across the charts, and they cut me down real quick. They did Cab Calloway the same way when he speeded up Star Spangled Banner. You know, the national anthem. Well, he made a rocker out of it, and they pulled him down... Then about a few years later [Paramount] come out with a movie, also called Calling Margie. A few years later after that, Paramount wrote me that letter saying that they liked [the song] but they didn't use enough of it [in the film] to give me credit for it, to where I could get royalties... They never did send no money.
How did you get with TNT?
Okay, on West Commerce, across from the National Bank, was a record shop, but it was a Spanish record shop. I went there to ask him would he record me... And he says, "No, I would like to, but I only record Spanish records." He said, "Now I can send you to a place that probably would record you." So he sent me to Mr. Bob Tanner, TNT Records, 1422 West Poplar Street, San Antonio, Texas. My saxophone player was named Spot Barnett. And we recorded Calling Margie, plus Oh No, Six Weeks of Misery, You Make Loving So Easy, then Junior Jumped In back around 1955... They put me on television in San Antonio. At that time it was WOAI, channel four. I came on about three or four times a month. The sponsor was a company that handled farm equipment, they were responsible for me being on—and the record company. I used to play Calling Margie, standing there playing the piano with my back turned to it. [Laughs] They seemed to like it very well. I used to play my Christmas song like that too, with my back turned to [the piano]... And I was a big hit in San Antonio in those days.
When did you move to Houston?
Don Robey sent for me in '54. And I didn't go in '54 because I was still recording for TNT Records... Robey found out that I had this record out, so he sent for me. I came over in '55. Shirley Jean and Gambling Woman were released first [Peacock 1661]. Shirley Jean was the biggest one then, that's on Peacock. Shirley Jean opened the door. J. Geils came along later and picked up Pack Fair and Square [on Full House, Atlantic, 1972]. Of course, my original version of Pack Fair and Square [Peacock 1666] had already done pretty good anyway...
In Hello Maria [the flip side of Pack Fair and Square] I used an Italian accent with a Southern brogue. Instead of saying, "She tells me," saying, "She a-tella me." I used to listen to a program on the radio, Luigi and Pasquale, and I adopted that Southern accent with an Italian sense... That's where I came up with it in Gambling Woman. If you notice, Gambling Woman says, "She's a-tellin' me that she's a-losin' all the time." What was it like working for Peacock in those days?
It was pretty good, mainly because of the other good musicians that was there at that time. Like Bobby Bland. Bobby "Blue" Bland and I, we worked out of the same office. Him and Little Junior Parker... Joe Scott was the one that was the arranger. He was a wizard... They sent for him one time in New York to conduct a symphony band with a 100-piece band, and somebody made a mistake out there and he heard it. Can you imagine somebody that can hear that good? He says, "Yeah, I figured you were the one." [Laughs] A 100-piece band, and he can hear you playing your one part! [He] set up those horn charts for Pack Fair and Square with Grady [Gaines] on sax and Floyd Arceneaux on trumpet and all.
After Peacock you went to the Goldband label in Lake Charles [La.].
Yeah. Goldband Records, that's Eddie Shuler. Recorded for him [in 1957; Crazy Dream b/w San Antonio, Goldband 1080; Never Too Old b/w Oh Ramona, Goldband 1098]. It's just that I never received a royalty statement. I never received anything saying whether I did sell or didn't sell. That was the runaround... Then we left that label and we went to Myri Records out of Natchez, Mississippi [in 1961]. We got that Watusi Freeze on Myri Records [The Watusi-Freeze, Parts 1 & 2, Myri 409], and we also got Feeling a Little Worried [b/w It's How You Treat Me, Myri 406]... The president of that company, his name is Melvin Dodge. The record company was in Natchez, Mississippi, but he lived in Ferriday, Louisiana... When I got to Mississippi, they wanted to do a publicity line on me, and they had a white girl there, and he wanted her to take a picture with me, holding the record in my hand. I guess he was going to use her to publicize... I don't know what he had in mind. But anyway, she wouldn't do it because I was black.
What about the two songs that you recorded with Albert Collins on guitar in 1964?
William Hall out of Beaumont did that... [He] told me, "It sounds pretty good, Walter, but it's not good enough for me to release it." And he says, "I can't accept that right along about now. And maybe later on down the line we might be able to get together." Eight or ten years later, he dubbed over what me and Albert Collins did, and sent the album to California. [Nothing But The Blues and My Tears were released in England on Flyright P4700.]
How would you sum up your experiences with the recording industry?
We're really speaking on bad experiences. I've had a lot of fellows to come to me and say, "Man, I sure would like to play blues." I say, "Well, good, if that's what you want to do." He says, "Well, how do you like it?" I say, "Well, I like it all right. I have to like it in order to be able to play it like I do. But the only thing that I can tell you: if I had to start all over again from the beginning, I wouldn't even think about it. I wouldn't even have it on my mind." Because you'd be surprised at how many changes you have to go through with. You get your lights cut off. Gas cut off. [Laughs] It all gets cut off! He has a lot of problems until somebody comes along and says, "Hey, this guy, let me help this guy out here." You have to go through those kind of changes to sing good blues.
Then when you get somebody and you trust them, and they lead you off into where you have to end up mistrusting them, then people that come along that really want to help you, and really sincere about helping you, you don't want to trust them—because you've been burnt by it all. So I've had a lot of bad experience in the blues business, man. The whole reason I've been pulled back in my shell like a turtle is that I didn't have anybody out there to represent me, and so many people done me wrong... That's the reason why we're in court now [referring to the class-action suit Price and other Houston musicians have filed against producer Roy Ames of Home Cooking Records]. [Ames] put out a CD on me [Vintage Thunderbird] for which I have not received one red cent...
I hear a lot of people, they tell me, "Walter, man, you ought to be bigger than what you are." I say, well I made my share. But I don't worry about it because I don't want to be big like some of them guys are. I don't want to be rich. I want to go to heaven when I die. You understand where I'm coming from, man? I just want to make a decent living, have a decent family, and treat people like they ought to be treated, and make sure that they get the same decent life that I would like to live for myself. That's the bottom line.
Have you been in the music business exclusively for the past 50 years or so?
Oh, I've been playing and performing and recording since then, but I've also owned a record store and Dinosaur Publishing Company, a cafe and other stuff... I've been in movies and acting... I used to be a disc jockey at KCOH [once known as "Texas' First All Negro Station"] in the M&M Building. That's when GG [Gladys Hale] and Daddy Deepthroat [Perry Cain] were the big disc jockeys over there. Tell about your acting career.
There's a movie I did [in 1974], Sugar Hill, that's a horror picture [displays a newspaper ad that reads "Meet Sugar Hill and her zombie hit men"]... The world premiere was at the Majestic Theater in downtown Houston... I played the drunken preacher. And this here young lady [Sugar Hill] was looking for somebody who had killed her father... she put the zombies after him. Robert Quarry was in that movie. Don Pedro [Colley] was the one that played Nigger Charley. He's in there. And Marki Bey was the star... I had a small part in The Greatest with Muhammad Ali. I got a courtroom scene in that film. [Points to a framed photo on the wall] This is when I played at the Alley Theater [in Houston]. The play was called The Last Meeting of the Knights of the White Magnolia. That's about when they pulled out from the Ku Klux Klan and organized their own organization... But being in acting is just one part of Big Walter. I'm mainly a music man.
In the '60s you worked in a striptease club?
The Red Barn. That was Cindy... out on South Main. She was a stripper and she danced with a snake... Another thing was real exciting about this that I didn't like... but I didn't have no other choice. Any time the musician get through playing, he'd have to go in the back and have a seat... then they go up and do their strip dance... It wasn't but one dressing room and you couldn't get out that back door 'cause that back door locked 'cause they didn't want nobody to come through that back door. I couldn't stay up in the front. So I had to stay in the back. And none of them women had clothes on. It had to be in the early part of the '60s, I believe... and can you imagine me, the only black man back there with three or four white women, none of them ain't had no clothes on. They put me in a hell-of-a position! When I first walked in, I said, "Oh my God!" She said, "Come on in here, Walter." Hell, I went in. They was laughing and talking about something happening, blah-blah-blah, and there's one of them's putting on their little old skimpy uniforms, you know. But when she gets out there she's going to pull it all off anyway! And two of the other girls sitting up there ain't had on nothing. Cindy ain't had on nothing... They's just as naked as naked's going to get. But they were all sweet people to me. They didn't push their selves towards me, and I never said anything to them out of the way. In other words, they didn't think anything of it. So I had to pull myself together to let them know that I wasn't afraid to be back there with them because they didn't have on any clothes... We turned out to be real good friends.
You have a special relationship with the family of Sam Houston. [patriarch and first president of the Republic of Texas for whom the city of Houston is named].
It's a long story how I got to be with the Sam Houston family, but the most important part [is] that his great-great-granddaughter, Mrs. Margaret... she wanted people to know what General Sam Houston did for the blacks... Whenever General Sam Houston had school for his family, he had it right along with his servants. He really did not believe in slavery. That's why they pulled him from office... He raised a young [black] man, Joshua, and all of Joshua's children turned out to be schoolteachers, principals, and so forth and whatnot... And we have a lot of blacks right today, they should recognize these things. We have come a long way, man. We have fought like I don't know what. And still fighting! The war is not over yet. And I think the Good Lord is going to have to come down and straighten the war out. But it's a hell-of-a lot better than what it was. Heck, when I first moved here to Houston they didn't have no black bus drivers.
What are some of your memories of the racism you have encountered as a black man in Texas?
Oh, I had a lot of experience out there. I remember one time... I decided to leave the Katy, and I wanted to work for Missouri-Pacific as a brakeman. So they sent me to Corpus Christi... down there on the train. They say, "We'll pay your way down there, but you'll have to pay your own way back." I got ready to come back on the bus. I had my ticket. By me knowing that [because of Jim Crow laws] I had to go all the way to the back, what I done, I got up there first before anybody got there... rather than me to have to pass by people and say, "Excuse me. Excuse me," I got [there first... that cotton-picking man, he... stood there until the bus was loaded! He loaded those white people from back to front. When he got to me, he says, "I ain't got no more room." I say, "Well, mister, I really need to get back to San Antonio." He say, "Well, the only way that I can see you to get back there, you'd have to ride back there on them baggage’s." All them suitcases and things... the way those buses was made, all that stuff was right over the motor. That's where I had to ride to get back home. The next time I had a pretty rough experience was when I was living in San Antonio. That's when my first baby was born. I got on the bus and the bus was crowded. I had to hold my baby in one arm, and hold up there [on the hand-grip] with the other one. And my baby, she couldn't be stopped from reaching out, like babies do... So she knocked my baby's hands off! That's what she did, this I white lady did... and I turned around, and I knocked fire from her. I didn't give a shit- Nobody never said a word. I got off the bus like ain't nothing happened. And I got to thinking, I say, "Lord have mercy, I done slapped a white woman. What the hell is going to happen next?" But oh, I was mad. That was my child, you know.
Have you enjoyed touring in Europe?
Oh yeah. They, the Europeans, they're more respectable towards the artists, to me at least, especially blues artists, than the USA... When I was in East Berlin, I got a standing ovation. They gave me a dozen red roses. Oh it was beautiful. They paid me right too... When you go to Germany and Switzerland, you have to have an organizer that knows where the places are that fix soul food. You just can't go anywhere. But I was perfectly satisfied, especially when I was in Zurich... They remember Big Walter over there, oh yeah…
How would you identify your music?
Well, you can't classify me as a blues singer exclusively, you know. The only thing, when you classify yourself as a blues singer, you're putting a label on yourself. You can't label me. I'm an artist. Because I not only play my blues... some of the stuff I play, you'd think that some other guy would be doing it, you know, that don't even play blues, period. I play western music. Blues, ballads, country, I'm across the board. You know why you can't label me as a bluesman? Listen to this [plays a cassette tape that features Big Walter playing piano and singing a Tejano song in Spanish].
So you speak Spanish?
Hablo poquito, no mucho. [Laughs] But I can sing it! [The tape plays on, featuring several gritos, the trademark yelp in much Mexican-American music.] Yeah, I heard a lot of Spanish music growing up; still hear a whole lot of it... [nodding to the tape] This is what happened when we went to Mexico one time. This is what it sound like when we done got drunk on that tequila and margarita and all that stuff [lets loose with a live grito, obviously enjoying hearing the tape again].
How do you define blues?
Blues is something that's already happened, positive it's going to happen again too... I mean, a lot of people don't want to hear the blues. I couldn't tell you why. But when it all boils down: Can a rich man play the blues? Can a rich man play the blues? Yeah, he can - if he gets broke, I guarantee he can!