Junior Walker & The All Stars – Shotgun

1st September 2021 · 1960s, 1965, Music, Soul

I was going to post the gorgeous instrumental Walk In The Night, the only tune I knew growing up by Junior Walker & The All Stars. Then I stumbled upon Shotgun.

This video is just fantastic. The band, the podium dancers, the couples striking poses on the dancefloor – especially the girl who stops dead, mid-move, at the word “shotgun.”

The song is fantastic too, featuring The Funk Brothers’ James Jamerson on bass and Benny Benjamin on drums behind Walker’s wailing sax and those insistent organ runs by Johnny Griffith.

Motown made its name with polished pop-soul but sax man Walker’s rough-and-ready R&B was a very different beast with his raspy voice and a squealing gutbucket style inspired by jump blues and early R&B.

Junior Walker – born Autry DeWalt II in Arkansas according to most records, or Oscar G. Mixon by some accounts – was already in his mid-thirties when Shotgun gave him his first hit. Not so very junior at all.

Formed in the late Fifties from the ashes of a previous group called The Jumping Jacks, they were discovered by Johnny Bristol and signed by Harvey Fuqua, making their Motown debut in 1964.

Shotgun was Walker’s first crack at singing – and that was only because his hired vocalist didn’t show up for the session. Berry Gordy, who produced the song, went ahead and released it anyway and it topped the R&B charts and hit the pop top five.

Walker followed it with a stream of instrumental tunes like the jazzy instrumental ballad Walk In The Night, which reached my ears in 1972.

POP FACT: Jimi Hendrix made his TV debut playing guitar on a version of Shotgun by Buddy & Stacy on the Night Train show in 1965.