It’s a tough time to be a musician in New Orleans. Fortunately, New Orleans musicians are tough and there aren’t many tougher than Walter “Wolfman” Washington.
Photo: Greg Miles
Washington, an ambassador of New Orleans funk and R&B and one of the city’s most celebrated entertainers, first made a name for himself in the city’s hugely influential music scene before he turned 20. That was more than 50 years ago. Throughout the ensuing half century, he’s seen New Orleans through good times and bad.
Since COVID-19 hit, it’s been pretty bad.
“It’s a ghost town now,” said Washington. “There’s no one walking on the street. The bars are closed and the clubs are closed. Some of the bars that also serve food are open and there are a few people sitting outside but no one can get close to each other. You see some people driving through but no one’s walking.”
COVID-19 hit early and hard in New Orleans. Washington said he’d never imagined so many people would get sick and hospitalized and would die in his hometown. Then the shutdown of the clubs and bars left everyone without work in a town whose economy depends on nightlife and tourism.
“This is the longest I’ve been without playing music,” Washington said. “I still play alone; I try to stay in tune so I don’t lose it and I play some videos for clubs and a couple small engagements: I did a wedding not long ago. But it’s the longest I’ve been without really playing. I feel bad for the cats who don’t have anywhere to play at all.”
Playing online gigs keeps him in practice and gives him an outlet for expression, Washington said. “It’s not the same, but I’ve been in the field for such a long time, it just comes natural to be able to play and know that people are going to be listening even if you can’t see them.”
Washington’s next major virtual performance will be right here in Richmond – kind of. This year’s Richmond Folk Festival will be a virtual event; Washington will be one of the featured performers who will provide exclusive new video performances online. Festival performances can be viewed throughout the weekend of October 9-11 on the festival’s various social media channels as well as VPM PBS Plus Channel 57.1, while recordings of past festival performances will air on VPM Music (107.3 FM & 93.1 FM).
“Playing videos or virtual is a different thing; you don’t have the same energy but it’s still there,” Washington explained. “And you’ve got to keep playing. You’ve got to keep up your chops.”
A meteoric rise
Right now, times are hard but the 76-year-old guitar player has been playing music for long enough to have seen a lot of ups and downs in the local music scene. Washington’s earliest musical experiences were singing gospel in church and with friends. He made his first guitar from a cigar box as a teenager; it wasn’t long after that his uncle gave him an acoustic guitar. Later, his cousin, local R&B icon Ernie K-Doe, gave him an electric.
He started playing with a spiritual group, the True Love and Gospel Singers, because no one wanted to play the guitar. “So I volunteered,” Washington recalled.
“I played with one finger and then I saw a guitar player who was playing with all of his fingers and I went home and I tried that. The first time I played with all my fingers, I was so excited. But I had it tuned all wrong – I didn’t know how to tune it so someone showed me how to tune it right and then I kept playing all the time.
“Since then, I’ve just been doing the best I can,” he said.
The “best” he could was pretty good. “My first big gig was at the Apollo Theater with Lee Dorsey. I got to see New York City with all the lights and things. It was exciting,” Washington said.
He was 19 years old. Only a few short years had passed from the time Walter “Wolfman” Washington built a cigar box guitar to the day he took the stage at the Apollo in Harlem, after a nonstop road trip from New Orleans in a red Cadillac, with one of the biggest names in R&B.
“Yeah, it didn’t take me long,” he said. “It happened fast.”
What’s in a name
That was almost 60 years ago but one thing hasn’t changed: Washington still has to instruct people on how to make out his checks.
“My given name was Edward,” he said. “‘Walter’ is really just my stage name so I have to tell people to write ‘Edward’ on the checks so I can cash them.”
There are a number of different stories about how Washington got the names “Walter” and “Wolfman.” No matter the telling, there is always one constant: Washington was a small kid who got pushed around and ended up getting in a lot of fights. As the story sometimes goes, his nickname became “War-War” for his willingness to fight. That evolved into “Walter.” In other tellings, one of his fights ended when most of his teeth were knocked out. The teenager with incisors and no front teeth came to be known as “Wolfman.”
That’s not how he tells it now though.
“Being a small guy, I wasn’t really built and they would pick on me when I was young,” he said. “I fought a lot but when I started playing music, I started fighting with my guitar. That’s how musicians fight is making music with their instruments. They called me ‘Wolfman’ cause I fought, but with a guitar. Then when I was playing with a band called the Tick Tocks, they said to me ‘Edward isn’t a name for a musician. You need a musician name’ so I became ‘Walter.’”
That was in the early ’60s – and however he got the name, it stuck.
Washington never learned to read music, he explained, but he eventually learned how to play chords by ear and developed the idiosyncratic, singular style for which he’s known. He formed the All Fools Band in the 1960s and in the ’70s, he joined Johnny Adams’ band after spending several years backing soul legend Irma Thomas. Washington also began working as a solo artist, forming his own band, the Roadmasters, touring Europe and cutting records. After backing a “who’s who” of New Orleans soul and R&B artists, he began to garner attention as a major figure in New Orleans music in his own right. He’s been playing and touring with the Roadmasters ever since; they will join him for his virtual performance for the Richmond Folk Festival.
Through all the good times and bad, not to mention all the touring, Washington has never really left New Orleans.
“We were the first band to play music in New Orleans after Katrina,” he said.
In August 2005, after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city, New Orleans shut down. Even after things started to reopen slightly, a curfew was instituted: no one from outside was allowed to enter the city after 6 p.m.
“We were staying in Memphis and Hank at the Maple Leaf Bar got permission to open and he called us,” Washington said. “We barely got into the city in time. It was funny watching everyone scramble to get in before curfew. Then the first night, the police shut us down but then Hank called someone and we got to play after that. We were the first ones to play in the city after Katrina.”
There wasn’t any electricity in the wake of the hurricane so they powered their instruments with a diesel generator, playing to crowds who braved the dark, partially-destroyed city for a bit of New Orleans normalcy. But it was the beginning of New Orleans’ post-Katrina revival.
“It was dark,” Washington said. “That was the first time I’ve seen New Orleans being a ghost town. Now there’s this and it’s a ghost town again. But New Orleans will be okay. You can’t keep ’em down. You’ll never keep ’em down.”
At the end of the day, Washington added, communities get through hard times together. That goes for New Orleans and Richmond as well as for communities of musicians and music-lovers.
“We always need each other if we’re going to be okay,” he said. “Now more than ever, we need each other.”
Walter “Wolfman” Washington & the Roadmasters will be one of the new musical performances live-streaming during the Festival, October 9-11 at RichmondFolkFesitval.org, the Richmond Folk Festival’s Facebook page, and the Richmond Folk Festival on YouTube