Sammy Walker

This article is about an American singer-songwriter. For the American football player, see Sammy Walker (American football).

Sammy Walker (born July 7, 1952[1] near Atlanta, Georgia) is an American singer-songwriter. Influenced by the folk and country sounds of Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie and Hank Williams, Walker emerged in the mid-1970s with two albums for the Folkways label and two albums for Warner Brothers. While appearing on Bob Fass's radio show in 1975, he caught the ear of Phil Ochs, who was impressed by the young songwriter and agreed to produce his first album with Folkways. Walker recorded two albums for Warner Brothers under the tutelage of producer Nick Venet, and toured Europe in 1978 and again in 1986. After recording an album of Woody Guthrie songs in 1979, he did not record again until 1989.

Walker, who at least once downplayed his own success by claiming he has "only 50 fans, one in each state", performed a memorable opening set for Ochs at Gerde's Folk City in late 1975, when Ochs drunkenly staged what Ochs billed as the final Phil Ochs concert and the first John Train performance. At midnight was when Ochs was supposedly changing his stage name to Train, but his inebriated behavior incurred the wrath of the Gerde's staff to the point where the waitress was no longer serving Ochs, amid the soon-to-be-suicidal folksinger's rambling tirades against, among other musings, "Johnny Cash, BEFORE amphetamines". Having finished his formidably-rendered set including his signature tune "Closing Time", Walker watched Ochs with apparent embarrassment from the wings. (An uncirculated monochrome videotape exists memorializing the remarkable evening.)

"Misfit Scarecrow" - the first album released by Sammy Walker in over twelve years - was released on July 22, 2008.

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Notes

  1. ↑ The Best of Broadside 1962-1988, 2002
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