T-Bone Walker: In Session 1940-1962 / Various

Spanning over twenty years from his post-war entrance as a singer with Les Hite's popular West Coast orchestra and his guitar-for-hire stint with Freddie Slack's swing band, through his early 1950s indie label session work backing California bluesmen Mercy Dee Walton and Roy Hawkins to his European rediscovery in the early 1960s, using his guitar and seldom-heard piano skills to back his fellow headliners Memphis Slim, Sonny & Brownie, Shakey Jake and John Lee Hooker, as well as performing in his own right at the American Folk Blues Festival in 1962. As adjectives, influential and peerless do not even come close to describing Aaron Thibeaux Walker. This compilation of his rare work as a session musician, peppered with eponymous songs and instrumentals from his own oeuvre readily demonstrates why he was held in such high regard... and continues to be so.