I'm glad to say I've heard a lot of Joe Louis Walker on the radio lately, cuts from his new album -- especially the duet with Bonnie Raitt. I haven't heard the entire album, but what I have heard is hot.

The following first was published Nov. 8, 1991

In September, B.B. King was laughing -- with affection -- about Joe Louis Walker, and how Walker demanded, and got, Lucille No. 14, the Gibson ES 355 King had played at the Concord Pavilion in June.

''But I'll get him back," King said. "I'll wait until he has a guitar someday that he really likes, then I'll make him give it to me. It'll be a trade."

On the phone recently, Walker laughed -- with affection -- about King. "I gave him one already," Walker protested, "three and a half, four years ago. A 1956 blond Gibson 225.

''But that B.B., he has to be a little ahead. He'll still want another guitar from me. Giving me that guitar, that's not even to him."

Walker won't mind letting King get one guitar up on him, because he's fully aware what rarefied air he breathes when in the position to trade guitars with B.B. King.

Walker is 41, not that old by blues standards, and although he hasn't had a major hit, as King had at the same age, he's a star on the blues circuit. He just toured as the opening act for Huey Lewis and the News, and was the first name King mentioned when asked, "Who's coming up in the blues?"

Walker started as a musician in 1966 in San Francisco, in a blues and soul band called the Brougham Brothers. "Funky soul blues. We played the original Fillmore, the Avalon Ballroom out by the beach . . . jam nights, the Casbah Club, after-hours clubs."

''In those days, the Fillmore was an all-black neighborhood, sort of like Harlem -- a whole different atmosphere."

His blues career was sidetracked starting in the '70s, with a 10-year gig with Spiritual Corinthians, a gospel group. Since 1985, when he toured Europe with the Mississippi Delta Blues Band, his focus has been on doing the hard, slow work of building a blues following.

These days his band, Joe Louis Walker and the Boss Talkers, is one of the hottest and most respected blues bands in the Bay Area. People have been paying attention -- he was named Contemporary Blues Artist of the Year this year and in 1988 at the W.C. Handy Awards, and has been honored around the nation and in France for his albums, which include "Cold as the Night," "The Gift," "Blue Soul" and "Live At Slims."

His playing owes a touch to King, a touch to Albert Collins -- you can hear King's wonderful one-string screams in Walker's tunes, and you can hear a lot of Collins' ice-cold funkiness -- sometimes in the same tune. And the mix works, especially in conjunction with Walker's songwriting, which ranges from traditional and gospel influences to modern angst.

In the title tune of "The Gift," he hints of the old days for blacks in America, but there's an echo of modern fears:

It was a dream my mother's mother had which came true. She said, "Someone will always be watching over you. All you got to do is just be true. Don't you listen to the politicians who don't speak right. Don't be reaching for the preachers who don't preach right. This one thing I want to leave with you: if you live long enough, there's a higher power out there. You'd better find it, before it finds you."

Walker is respectful of people who have helped keep the blues alive (he has gone into Oakland schools to teach the blues to children raised on rap). He's especially respectful of Dick Waterman, who has managed many artists (he recently brought long-time expatriate blues pianist "Champion" Jack Dupree back to the United States); and Bonnie Raitt, who helped revive Charles Brown's career. And, of course, King.

''B.B.'s like my stepfather. He helps me out, gives me advice. He puts me in line -- he and Albert Collins, Johnny Copeland.

''Man, some guys these days think they have it hard, trying to make in the music business, but geez, those guys really had it hard, in the Jim Crow days. They'd be touring, and they couldn't get gas, couldn't get food . . .

''The majority of these guys are not bitter, just grateful they outlived it, lived to see it changed."