Jimmy McCracklin, a blues singer and pianist who by his count composed nearly a thousand songs and recorded hundreds, including the 1950s hit “The Walk,” died on Thursday in San Pablo, Calif. He was 91.
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Jimmy McCracklin performing in 1981 in London.
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His daughter, Sue McCracklin, confirmed his death.
Mr. McCracklin’s music spanned decades and eras of rhythm and blues, from up-tempo jump blues of the 1940s to soul of the 1960s and ’70s. Though his music eventually reached a national audience, he was most identified with the West Coast blues scene — so much so that his obituary appeared on the front page of The San Francisco Chronicle on Friday.
His best-known record is probably “The Walk,” a jubilant dance number he recorded for Checker Records while he and his band, the Blues Blasters, were in Chicago. The song was his first national hit after more than a decade of recording. He performed the song on Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand” television show, and it reached No. 7 on the Billboard pop chart in 1958.
Considered a rock ’n’ roll classic, “The Walk” has been recorded by a number of musicians, including the Beatles, whose brief, unreleased version was made during the sessions in early 1969 that eventually yielded the “Let It Be” album.
Mr. McCracklin was not a one-hit wonder, though. He released more than 20 albums and wrote and recorded popular tunes like “Think,” “Just Got to Know,” “Shame, Shame, Shame” and “My Answer.”
But he never recorded his most lucrative song, “Tramp.” The song cracked the pop charts in 1967 when it was recorded by Otis Redding and Carla Thomas. A guitar riff that anchors it has been sampled by many artists, including the hip-hop trio Salt-n-Pepa in 1986.
Mr. McCracklin shared songwriting credit on “Tramp” with Lowell Fulson, another West Coast blues figure, though he later denied that Mr. Fulson had written a word of it. Mr. Fulson recorded it in 1967 as well.
Mr. McCracklin did not feel it was a songwriter’s place to complain about different interpretations of his work.
“The writer don’t have anything to do with no song — it’s up to the artist that takes the song and perform it,” Mr. McCracklin said in an interview in 2010. “If he perform it and sing it and put the right feeling in it, and someone else can feel the same way about it as he do, so that’s what, that’s what makes records big.”
He was born James David Walker on Aug. 13, 1921, in Helena, Ark., and was given the name McCracklin when his stepfather, Berry McCracklin, adopted him. His family soon moved to St. Louis, where the blues performer Walter Davis taught him to sing and to play the piano.
Mr. McCracklin enlisted in the Navy in 1941 and took up competitive boxing while in the service. Honorably discharged in 1944, he moved to Los Angeles and boxed semiprofessionally for a time.
Mr. McCracklin cut his first record, the single “Miss Mattie Left Me,” in 1945. In 1947 he moved to Richmond, Calif., in the Bay Area and began recording with the producer Bob Geddins. Mr. McCracklin founded a short-lived label, Art-Tone, in the 1960s.
In the late 1950s he married Beulah Fayson, who died in 2008. He lived in Richmond before moving to a nursing facility in San Pablo.
Besides his daughter, he is survived by a stepdaughter, Patricia Croner; four stepsons, Larry and Mike Collins, Willie Trader and Walter McAlpine; and two grandchildren.
Mr. McCracklin’s last album, “Hey Baby,” was released in 2010.
Jimmy McCracklin (August 13, 1921 – December 20, 2012) was an American pianist, vocalist, and songwriter. His style contained West Coast blues, Jump blues, and R&B.[1] Over a career that spanned seven decades, he said he had written almost a thousand songs and had recorded hundreds of them.[2] McCracklin recorded over 30 albums, and earned four gold records. Tom Mazzolini of the San Francisco Blues Festival said of him, "He was probably the most important musician to come out of the Bay Area in the post-World War II years."[3]
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[edit]Biography
McCracklin was born James David Walker on 13 August 1921. Sources differ as to whether he was born in Helena, Arkansas[3] or St. Louis, Missouri.[4] He joined the United States Navyin 1938, later settled in Richmond, California, and began playing at the local Club Savoy owned by his sister-in-law Willie Mae "Granny" Johnson.[5] The room-length bar served beer and wine, and Granny Johnson served home-cooked meals of greens, ribs, chicken, and other southern cuisine. A house band composed of Bay Area based musicians alternated with and frequently backed performers such as B. B. King, Charles Brown, and L. C. Robinson. Later in 1963 he would write and record a song "Club Savoy" on his I Just Gotta Know album.
His recorded a debut single for Globe Records, "Miss Mattie Left Me", in 1945, and recorded "Street Loafin' Woman in 1946. McCracklin recorded for a number of labels in Los Angeles andOakland, prior to joining Modern Records in 1949-1950. He formed a group called Jimmy McCracklin and his Blues Blasters in 1946, with guitarist Lafayette Thomas who remained with group until the early 1960s.[6]
His popularity increased after appearing on the TV pop Dick Clark's American Bandstand in support of his self written single "The Walk" (1957),[7] subsequently released by Checker Records in 1958. It went to No. 5 on the Billboard R&B chart and No. 7 on the pop chart,[8] after more than 10 years of McCracklin selling records in the black community on a series of small labels. Jimmy McCracklin Sings, his first solo album, was released in 1962, in the West Coast blues style. In 1962, McCracklin recorded "Just Got to Know" for his own Art-Tone label in Oakland, after the record made No. 2 on the R&B chart. For a brief period in the early 1970s McCracklin ran the Continental Club in San Francisco. He booked blues acts such asT-Bone Walker, Irma Thomas, Big Joe Turner, Big Mama Thornton, and Etta James.[9] In 1967, Otis Redding and Carla Thomas had success with "Tramp", a song credited to McCracklin and Lowell Fulson. Salt-n-Pepa made a hip-hop hit out of the song in 1987. Oakland Blues (1986) was an album arranged and directed by McCracklin, and produced by World Pacific. The California rock-n-roll "roots music" band The Blasters named themselves after McCracklin's backing band The Blues Blasters. Blasters' lead singer Phil Alvin explained the origin of the band's name: "I thought Joe Turner’s backup band on Atlantic records – I had these 78s – I thought they were the Blues Blasters. It ends up it was Jimmy McCracklin's. I just took the 'Blues' off and Joe finally told me, that’s Jimmy McCracklin’s name, but you tell ‘im I gave you permission to steal it."[1]
McCracklin continued to tour and produce new albums in the 1980s and 1990s.[10] Bob Dylan has cited McCracklin as a favorite.[11] He played at the San Francisco Blues Festival in 1973, 1977, 1980, 1981, 1984 and 2007. He was given a Pioneer Award by the Rhythm and Blues Foundation in 1990, and the Living Legend and Hall of Fame award at the Bay Area Black Music Awards, in 2007.[12] McCracklin continued to write, record, and perform into the 21st century.
He died in San Pablo, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area, on December 20, 2012, after a long illness, aged 91.[3]
[edit]Selected discography
| Year | Title | Genre | Label |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2007 | 1951-1954 | West Coast blues | Classics |
| 2004 | 1948-1951 | West Coast blues | Classics |
| 2003 | 1945-1948 | West Coast blues | Classics |
| 2003 | Jumpin Bay Area 1948-1955 | West Coast blues | P-Vine Japan |
| 1999 | Tell It to the Judge! | West Coast blues | Gunsmoke |
| 1997 | The Walk: Jimmy McCracklin at His Best | West Coast blues, Soul-Blues | Razor & Tie |
| 1994 | A Taste of the Blues | West Coast blues | Bullseye Blues |
| 1992 | The Mercury Recordings | West Coast blues, Soul-Blues | Bear Family |
| 1991 | Jimmy McCracklin: My Story | West Coast blues | Rounder |
| 1991 | My Story | West Coast blues | Rounder |
| 1981 | All His Bluesblasters | West Coast blues | Ace |
| 1978 | Rockin' Man | West Coast blues | Stax |
| 1972 | Yesterday Is Gone | West Coast blues | Stax |
| 1971 | High on the Blues | West Coast blues | Stax |
| 1969 | Stinger Man | Soul-Blues | Minit |
| 1968 | Let's Get Together | West Coast blues | Minit |
| 1966 | New Soul of Jimmy McCracklin | West Coast blues | Imperial |
| 1966 | My Answer | West Coast blues | Imperial |
| 1965 | Think | West Coast blues | Imperial |
| 1965 | Every Night, Every Day | West Coast blues | Imperial |
| 1963 | My Rockin' Soul | West Coast blues | United |
| 1963 | I Just Gotta Know | West Coast blues | Imperial |
| 1962 | Jimmy McCracklin Sings | West Coast blues | Chess |
[edit]Quotation
"I can watch a guy work, listen to how he pronounce his words" said McCracklin, "and I can tell just how to fit that guy with a song".[13]
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