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A minor correction: the footage of him backing Hound Dog Taylor and Koko Taylor isn't from Germany; it was shot in Copenhagen, Denmark, by Danish TV early in the day before their evening concert there.

I actually think Little Walter plays great on this footage! Swinging, creative, playing stuff neither he nor anyone else had ever played before - who else was doing that in 1967? As far as playing in the background, that's not exactly true - he's the only one who solos on the Hound Dog Taylor song. The only part I don't like (aside from the fact that he doesn't get a chance to front the band himself) is that he was not allowed to play through an amplifier, or cup the mic, so he was forced to play acoustically, which he expressed his displeasure about when he was interviewed shortly after he returned from the tour. I think if he'd been allowed to do it the way he wanted, people would have a whole other opinion of his abilities in the 1960s.

As mentioned elsewhere, the live recordings from the University of Chicago concert in 1966, which have been paired with unrelated live Otis Rush recordings on countless cheap LP and CD packages over the years, don't show Little Walter in his best light, but if you can get past the raggedy backing and his gargling-razor blades vocals, he's still playing some very good harp. Nothing comparble to his heyday, but it's more interesting than what most of the other blues harp players were doing in 1966.

The live Sam Lay recordings featuring Little Walter that Delta Roots mentions elsewhere came out originally on a couple of bootleg LPs out of Sweden if I recall correctly. I think there are actually four songs that feature LW, and some or maybe all of them have turned up on CD in recent times on a Little Walter compilation on the Blues Encore label. On these, I think LW plays his ass off.

There are also some tapes of live radio broadcasts LW did while he was in Europe in 1967, which have been circulating among collectors for years.

Several other TV appearances have been documented, three in England in 1964, and programs in Germany and The Netherlands, but the only one that has ever been found and released is the one from Copenhagen.

BTW, Bob Koester tells an interesting story about a TV film crew coming to a club on the south side of Chicago (I think it was either Theresa's or Peppers) to film a feature on Junior Wells for some TV program shortly after his "Hoodoo Man Blues" LP came out. They had the lights, cameras and sound equipment set up, and apparently Jr. didn't show up (or maybe he had played earlier), and Little Walter was fronting the band instead. Bob said the crew began packing up the equipment, and he tried to stop them, saying "You're trying to get the Jr. Wells story, why don't you film a little bit of the guy who influenced him?", and said he even offered to pay them out of his pocket to stay and shoot some of LW's performance. But they insisted that they had orders to shoot Jr. Wells, period, end of story, and they packed up and left as Walter played.

Scott

Agreed - that's always been curious to me. During his heyday, approximately 1952 to 1956, Little Walter was one of the biggest stars in R&B music, constantly touring all over the country, a bunch of national hits including two that reached #1 on the Billboard R&B charts. He toured as part of an early Alan Freed package tour, played all the big venues of the day, etc. How did he escape being filmed, until he got to Europe in the '60s when he was really no longer a star?

A couple more intriguing things:

A friend of mine who is a major LW fanatic has sworn up and down for years that he saw a classified ad in the back of Goldmine magazine in late '70s or early '80s from someone who was selling a bunch of films that were shot for promotional purposes at the Paramount Theater in New York in the '50s. All the usual artists were listed, early rock & rollers and doo-woppers, and in the middle of the list was Little Walter. I've tried to research this and never had any luck, and never seen the ad myself so I can't even attest that it existed. But it's an interesting and plausible piece of information.

Also, there's a guy who lived in Atlanta, I can't remember his name now but I think it was Fats-something, who was apparently some sort of music promoter down there in the heyday of the Royal Peacock Theater (a main venue for black artists in the '50s), and supposedly he ended up with a bunch of short promotional films that were shot down there, among them clips of Little Walter and Elmore James. He died 10 or 15 years ago, and several people who knew him supposedly rescued some of his stuff from the dumpster when his place was being cleaned out, but as far as I know none of the alleged films were among the items rescued.

Anyway, the two examples above are not really "documented", they're just rumors, so they may not actually be true, unlike the ones I mentioned ealrier in the thread that are documented and verified.

If there IS other Little Walter (or any Elmore James, for that matter) footage out there, I can't imagine any legal reasons someone would continue to sit on it at this point. With the diminishing audience for blues these days, the value would be going down, not up, so capitalizing on it ASAP would seem to be of the utmost importance, even if whoever had it had to pay out royalties to different people and entities (or sell it to a firm like Reelin' In The Years) in order to get it "out there" while it still has SOME value.

Scott