Armand and Bluesology will serve as host band for the Triangle Blues Society’s Third Sunday Blues Jam on May 18, 2025 – and they have special plans.
The jam, held from 4-7 p.m. at the Speakeasy in Carrboro, will feature a set inspired by the late Piedmont bluesman Walter “Lightnin’ Bug” Rhodes. The Hamlet, North Carolina, bluesman died in 1990 just as his dormant career was in the midst of a long-hoped-for comeback.
“Walter was gonna be big,” argues Chapel Hill’s Armand Lenchek, who served as his later-era guitar player and manager. “We all felt it. His untimely death broke a lot of hearts.”
A child prodigy, Rhodes also recorded as the Blonde Bomber and Little Red Walter. He memorably worked as a sideman with Wilson Pickett. The Greensboro News and Record also reported collaborations with B.B. King, Otis Redding and Joe Tex over the years.
“Walter had his first hit in 1960 as Little Red Walter with ‘Aw Shucks Baby,'” Lenchek remembers. “That little hit put him on the ‘chitlin’ circuit,’ where he met and played with all the blues and R&B stars of the day. He spent some time as Wilson Pickett’s lead guitarist during Pickett’s heyday. But by the late ’60s, that world had changed and Walter, who was living in New Jersey at the time, decided to come back home to North Carolina.”
Rhodes only recorded sporadically until the late ’80s. Giving You the Blues signaled his return in 1989, featuring the originals “Dance Hobo Dance” and “Pickin’ Cotton” and updates of the traditional songs “Bull in a Pasture” and “Mean Little Woman.” (Armand and Bluesology later covered “Pickin’ Cotton” on 1998’s Everything I Need.)
“He did record a number of albums for independent blues enthusiast record label owners but nothing really big happened to him until that brief time in the late ’80s,” Lenchek adds. “With the help of my good buddy Gary Erwin from Charleston, South Carolina, I was able to revive his career in 1988. So much so that we ended up playing the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Fest in 1990, playing on a Sunday on the big stage, opening for the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Irma Thomas, Dr. John and the Neville Brothers – seriously! That’s how much they thought of Walter.”
There was also a new LP in the works. “My buddy Johnny Sansone produced an album of Walter’s music that was set to be released on Rounder Records’ brand new blues-focused label, Bullseye Blues,” Lenchek says. “Unfortunately, Walter’s untimely death kept that album in the can.”
Rhodes tragically drowned in a motel swimming pool in Rockingham just weeks after his triumphant May 1990 performance in New Orleans. He’d reportedly been scheduled to appear at a July 4th festival in Durham and then at New York City’s Lincoln Center in September 1990.