Mel Walker born 3 November 1929

Mel Wallker (November 3, 1929 – April 23, 1964) was an American R&B singer best known for his recordings in the early 1950s as lead male singer with the Johnny Otis Orchestra. 

Born Malvin Lightsey in Texas and moving to Los Angeles as a boy, he first gained recognition as a football star at Jefferson High School where his classmate was fellow Texas transplant, singer/pianist Floyd Dixon. Mel and his five brothers also sang together as the Lightsey Brothes. 

Changing his name to Mel Walker he drew Johnny Otis’s attention at The Barrelhouse Club amateur contest and was quickly drafted into the band’s growing stable of talent where he soon established himself as the principle male vocal lead after a succession of singers had failed to make much of an impression in that role. 

With Walker’s good looks, athletic physique and late night bedroom voice and dreamy delivery he gave Otis’s crew an effective way to off-set the band’s rousing instrumental performances while providing an ideal male counterpart to Little Esther on duets. Though he made his first appearance on record after her initial breakthrough, it was actually Walker who would go on to score more hits than his more famous vocal partner, with eleven nationally charted hits in just over two years including two sharing #1 smashes with Esther. Walker was credited as lead singer on many of Otis' earliest and biggest R&B hits, including "Mistrustin' Blues" and "Cupid’s Boogie", both of which reached #1 on the Billboard R&B chart in 1950, and "Rockin' Blues", an R&B #2 hit in 1951. 

                   

The loss of Esther to Federal Record wound up hurting both of their careers as each tried recording with other partners (though both still backed by Otis’s band) without the same success, Walker scored his final hit with a cover of his former classmate Dixon’s song, “Call Operator 210” in 1952. That same year, Walker declared bankruptcy, which was discharged on May 29. 

More responsible for their respective commercial slides however was their increasing drug use as Walker was arrested for possession while on tour with Otis in Baltimore. By the fall of 1953, Mel was replaced by Junior Ryder after which he recorded some more singles for Mercury with a band led by Melba Liston.. 

On January 23, 1954, Mel and Floyd Dixon appeared at the Elks Hall in Long Beach, California. On February 21, Mel was part of a "Battle Of Singers" at the Elks Hall, featuring the Flairs,  Lamplighters, and Linda Hayes. Also that year in April, Mercury issued the last Mel Walker record.

With rock facing increased scrutiny as it crossed over into the white teen mainstream and with his ballad-heavy laid-back style not as appealing to this new audience, Walker’s run as a star was over by the time he was 25 and he sank further into drug use over the next decade. Though his voice might’ve been ideal for the uptown soul style that became one of rock’s commercial cornerstones in the early 1960’s, Walker wasn’t in any condition to make a comeback and in early 1964 he died of an overdose, his body found in an alley in Los Angeles, the city he once helped to define musically when there were few singers who captivated listeners as he did.

(Edited from Spontaneous Lunacy, Wikipedia. With thanks to Marv Goldberg for photos.)