Today’s Music: Big Walter Horton Two-Fer

I met Big Walter Horton years ago at a North Side Chicago blues bar. Although his playing was loose, almost to the point of kidding, with his band, he told them to stop playing at one point and then, just him alone on the harmonica, he ended the set by riffing on “Tea For Two” and expanding that standard into one of the most incredible blues harp performances I’ve ever heard, full of improvisation and musical quotations from a number of other tunes. In short — the man could play. At the end of the night, his manager at the time asked me if I could drive Walter to his home on the South Side. I did, and some comedy confusion ensued. Both of us had had one too many shots, and Walter confused me with some cat from the bar who had wanted harp lessons. I protested that I played guitar, but half the way there he kept telling me he ‘wasn’t gonna give me no damn harp lessons.’ We straightened it out, laughed about it, and parted on good terms. I meant to check in on Walter again, but other things got in the way and then he died in 1981. R.I.P., Walter, you were one of a kind. A legend who deserves the term, here he is doing what he did best: