Gloria Walker

Like Nancy Butts, Gloria Walker recorded several strong 45s for Eugene Davis' Flaming Arrow label which had both Detroit and Georgia locations. The first of these was a lengthy rap over a riff taken from "I'd rather go blind" entitled "Talking About My Baby". This slow burner was followed by an even better side the lovely melodic “Please Don’t Desert My Baby”. This is a wonderful piece of deep soul, sung with real heartfelt passion by Gloria, accompanied by the Muscle Shoals crew. Her final Flaming Arrow release "Walking With My New Love" is another very strong 12/8 southern ballad  with some more excellent vocals - without perhaps having the musical quality of the previous 45.

Gloria then went on to cut for the Macon, GA music man Bobby Smith who, in his usual way leased the resulting product out. The funk favourite “Papa’s Got The Wagon” which I like a lot, coupled with a rather routine ballad “My Precious Love” (not the old Impressions evergreen) appeared first on for Brother James’ People label. This also came out on Federal, and she subsequently cut two more singles for the label. The excellent deep ballad “When My Baby Cries” is the pick of the bunch as sadly both "Love Is In The Air" and "Gift Of Love" are somewhat dull ballads.

There is a strong Georgia thread in Gloria's recording career - could that have been her home?

UPDATE ~ Pete Nickols has written to say that "it's worth noting that her "Talking About My Baby" spent 9 weeks on the R&B chart and made No.7 (as well as No.60 on the Pop Hot 100)." Pete has also sent the excellent ad featured on this page - as always I'm very grateful to him for his research and info.

 

 

Note ~ "Papa's got the wagon" can be found on the Ace UK CD "King Funk" and "When my baby cries is on the Ace UK CD "KIng Serious Soul Vol 1".

 

 

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