Virtuoso blues guitarist Joe Louis Walker dead at 75

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By ( Louder ) published

Joe Louis Walker was a member of the Blues Hall of Fame and was hailed as a musician's musician by his peers

Joe Louis Walker appears in a portrait taken with his Gibson Les Paul Goldtop guitar at Rhino's Den Studio on May 23, 2008 in Brooklyn, New York.
(Image credit: Al Pereira/Getty Images/Michael Ochs Archives)

Blues guitarist and singer Joe Louis Walker has died at the age of 75.

Walker’s family confirmed he had died in April 2025 of a cardiac-related illness, according to Rolling Stone.

He passed away in the company of his wife Robin and two daughters, Leena and Bernice.

Walker was hailed as a musician's musician by many of his peers, with Aretha Franklin affectionately calling him “The Bluesman".

His work saw him inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame and honoured with a string of other awards.

His 2015 album Everybody Wants a Piece. was nominated for a 2016 Grammy in the Best Contemporary Blues Album category, losing out to The Last Days of Oakland by serial Grammy winner Fantastic Negrito.

Classic Rock's review of Everybody Wants a Piece hailed it as "a record that has Walker’s trademark electric blues-meets-gospel soul sound stamped right the way through it, like a particularly tooth-destroying stick of Blackpool rock."

Born in San Francisco, California, Walker learned to play the guitar around the age of eight and was a known name on the Bay Area scene by the time he was 16.

He performed with greats including John Lee Hooker, Thelonious Monk, Steve Miller, Muddy Waters, Jimi Hendrix, Mike Bloomfield, Bonnie Raitt, Taj Mahal and Mark Knopfler.

Announcing the upcoming release of Everybody Wants a Piece in 2015, Walker said: “I’d like to be known for the credibility of a lifetime of being true to my music and the blues.

"Sometimes I feel I’ve learned more from my failures than from my success. But that’s made me stronger and more adventurous. And helped me create my own style.

"I’d like to think that when someone puts on one of my records they would know from the first notes, ‘That’s Joe Louis Walker.’"

Stef Lach

Stef wrote close to 5,000 stories during his time as assistant online news editor and later as online news editor between 2014-2016. An accomplished reporter and journalist, Stef has written extensively for a number of UK newspapers and also played bass with UK rock favourites Logan. His favourite bands are Pixies and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Stef left the world of rock'n'roll news behind when he moved to his beloved Canada in 2016, but he started on his next 5000 stories in 2022.