s so often happens, too soon. Joe Louis Walker has died at the age of 75. A bluesman of his stature still had so many songs to write, so many songs to sing, and so many strings to keep him going. Unexpectedly, Joe's death has put an end to a career marked by passion and musical brilliance. There had been no signs of this outcome, the blues world—fans, promoters, managers, the industry, and the media, we are all mourning his loss. Born in San Francisco, Walker was one of the essential blues artists of the 1980s who, along with Robert Cray, Kenny Neal, Lil' Ed Williams, Duke Robillard, Michael Coleman, Maurice John Vaughan, Lucky Peterson, Valerie Wellington, Ronnie Earl, Walter "Wolfman" Washington, Zora Young, Sugar Blue, Melvin Taylor, and Big Time Sarah, among others, gave that decade a much-needed boost. Their energy brought fresh blood into the blues scene, revitalizing a genre that was showing signs of stagnation. Walker stood out among them. His first two albums, "Cold Is The Night" (1986) and "The Gift" (1988), both released by HighTone Records, were true musical gems of that era and marked the beginning of a new way of interpreting blues music. A close friend of Michael Bloomfield, after his death in 1981, Walker fully immersed himself in the blues. He formed the Boss Talkers and, under the production of Bruce Bromberg and Dennis Walker, released his debut album. Since then, his presence in clubs and festivals around the world has been a testament to his power and virtuosity as a guitarist, composer, and blues singer, an artist with few equals, and without a doubt, already an icon of the past fifty years of music.