Wade Walton, Blues Barber of Clarksdale

It's somewhat traditional for bloggers to take a break from posting, then apologize for it. But this is kind of ridiculous. Oh, well - on to Wade Walton.... 

I met Wade Walton twice. The first time was during one of my first two visits to Clarksdale, Mississippi, in 1994 and 1995; I'm not sure which. At the Delta Blues Museum, I had bought a wonderful cassette of Clarksdale-area blues on the Rooster Blues label. The first three tracks were by Wade Walton, whom I knew was a talented blues musician who made his living as a barber in town. I asked the clerk who sold me the tape if he thought it would be okay to go by Walton's barbershop and have him autograph the tape. The reply was something like, "Well, he's pretty serious about cutting hair. But it would probably be okay if you are polite and don't take up too much of his time."

That was pretty good advice. As I walked into the shop, the guy in the barber chair and the couple of guys waiting to get their hair cut seemed to have expressions on their face indicating, "Here we go again;" visits by blues fans were probably fairly common occurences at the barbershop on Issequena Avenue. But I pulled out the cassette and a pen and asked Wade if he would sign the cover. He seemed pleased to do so, and I told him that I had enjoyed driving around the Delta listening to his tracks. I got the impression that he would have been willing to talk a bit longer, but I thanked him and left quickly.

Wade Walton's barbershop, 1994

I went back to Walton's barbershop two or three years later, when I had an excuse. I had found a copy of his only full-length album, The Blues of Wade Walton: Shake 'em On Down, recorded in 1962 and released the next year. Once again, I walked in warily and explained that I would like an autograph on the album. Wade became pretty animated when he saw the album, which is rare and hard to find. I said that I had found it in Atlanta, where I was a public school music teacher. He said that his daughter was also a teacher in Atlanta. Once again, he was very warm and friendly, and seemed as if he wanted to talk for a bit. But there was a guy in his chair with half a haircut, and I didn't want to impose and inconvenience anyone, so I cut the conversation short, thanked Wade profusely, and left. 

So who was this guy? Wade Walton (1919-2000) was indeed serious about barbering. According to the liner notes of his Prestige/Bluesville album, he took his scissors and barber tools on the 1962 trip to Rudy Van Gelder's New Jersey studio, just in case he found an opportunity to cut some hair. And one of his three songs on the Rooster Blues tape is "Leaving Fourth Street." It's about being evicted from his original barbershop and having to find a new location. The last line is, "But if you come to 317 Issaquena, I can still cut your hair."

He was also a crusader for civil rights at a time and place when that was a dangerous thing to be. Walton was active in the Clarksdale chapter of the NAACP in the 1960s, when racism and white supremacy were the order of the day in Mississippi. On his Bluesville album, there is a song called "Parchman Farm." It's not the well-known Mose Allison composition - it's a stark account of a harrowing 1958 incident at the notorious Mississippi prison farm. Two blues enthusists - young and white - visited Clarksdale and related their plan to visit Parchman to do some field recording. Wade had grown up near Parchman, so he offered to accompany them. The racially mixed trio was not welcomed by the Parchman authorities; they were ejected with threats and with no recordings.

The rest of that 1962 album reveals Walton to be an accomplished, although not spectacular, blues performer. He is solid on both guitar and harmonica, and sings in a pleasant, light tenor voice. Most of the selections are "covers" of standard blues classics like "Kansas City Blues" and "Rock Me, Mamma." Somewhat unusually for a (mostly) solo blues album, four of the ten tracks are instrumentals - two guitar solos and two on harmonica. (Dave Mangurian, one of the young men involved in the Parchman incident, accompanies one of the harp solos with his guitar.) The two guitar solos are particularly intriguing. "Forty-Four" is usually a piano feature in the blues canon; here Wade adapts it to the guitar with impressive skill. The other guitar solo is "Big Six," named after Walton's barbershop at the time. It's a fascinating concoction, full of changing meters, beginning with two measures of seven. Not that Wade was counting - he was just playing. The album ends with a slinky (and pretty racy) version of the blues standard "Shake 'Em on Down."

I'm not sure how legal it is to share a YouTube upload of Shake 'em On Down, but since the LP is long out of print and seemingly not readily available on streaming services, the only way most folks will ever hear this album is here. 

Besides his one album, there are a few scattered Wade Walton tracks on various anthologies. I've already mentioned the Rooster Blues cassette Clarksdale, Mississippi: Coahoma the Blues, so named because Clarksdale is in Coahoma County. That one is going to be hard to find these days. Probably the most accessible Walton tracks are on an Arhoolie anthology called I Have to Paint My Face. One of the Arhoolie tracks features Wade playing a razor and leather strop in rhythm; there is a similar track on the Rooster Blues cassette. Of course someone talented in both music and barbering featured that sound! In any case, Stefan Wirz has compiled a complete discography of Walton's recordings, which can be found here. It looks like a lot of recordings, it's mostly the same few tracks recycled for different issues.

In 1997, after my two visits to Walton's shop, I went to the then-pretty-small Sunflower River Blues Festival in Clarksdale, where Wade played an afternoon set. I don't remember much about his set, except that when he wanted to play a harmonica feature, he called for Big Jack Johnson from the stage. He wanted Big Jack to accompany him, but Johnson wasn't there. But I do remember that I thoroughly enjoyed Wade's short set, which featured him playing guitar behind his head at one point. He had apparently been doing that bit of show biz long before rock guitarists tried it. 

I'm glad that I got to meet Wade Walton, glad that I got to see him perform, and glad that I have a copy of his wonderful album.

Program cover from the 1997 Sunflower River Blues Festival

Blurb from the 1997 Sunflower River Blues Festival program.

Wade Walton at the Sunflower River Blues Festival, August, 1997