The Soundtrack Of My Life
Walter Trout has rebounded from near-fatal liver disease in 2013 with still fierier purpose, continued with his new covers album, Survivor Blues. Spells with Johns Mayall and Lee Hooker preceded 90s stardom with his own band, interspersed with self-destructive wildness following childhood damage from his parents’ disastrous remarriages. Sober for three decades, his well-earned blues are leavened by his lust for life, and great taste in music. Here he picks some highlights.
THE RECORD THAT INTRODUCED ME TO MUSICIANS
My parents’ big-band jazz records were pretty much always blazing in our living room. One that stood. On the song , the sax player Paul Gonsalves played a twenty-seven-chorus solo and started a riot. When I was ten I told Gonsalves: “Man, I love that solo,” and he took me into the dressing-room and I spent the day with Duke and his orchestra. I remember walking out with my mom and going: “God, if being a musician makes you like those guys, I wanna do that.” They seemed to have a secret that the rest of the world was not privy to.
