Little Walter's microphones
 
 
Who knew?
 
 
Little Walter's microphones are a slightly different story. There is a photo (actually, a sequence of photos) of Little Walter playing on stage at the Apollo Theater in New York in the autumn of 1952, in which he is seen playing his harp through an Astatic JT-30 microphone. Although there are no other known photos of Little Walter onstage or in the studio with his own band during his heyday in the 1950s that show his equipment, most of the his fellow musicians who were asked about it described a microphone that matches the description of the Astatic JT-30 as his regular mic at the time. In the same interview quoted above, Little Walter himself referred to a mic he favored in the early days as a "biscuit" - a description that could be used to describe a JT-30, but might also describe another similar mic also made by Astatic.
 
        
              Astatic JT-30                           Astatic 'biscuit" (no model number)
 
There are also several performance photos of Little Walter that show the microphones he used on various live gigs in Chicago in the 1960s. (It should be noted here that although there are also a good number of photos of Little Walter performing in Europe in '64 and '67 that show the microphones he's singing and playing through, he did not bring his own equipment along on those tours; he ended up playing and singing through whatever vocal microphone was supplied with the house P.A. system at each local venue he played. Since he had no choice in the matter, none of these can really be considered a "Little Walter mic".) One also has to remember that Little Walter did precious little recording in the 1960s, so any of the '60s era mics he used can't really be considered integral to any of the versions of the "LW sound" heard on any of his classic records.
 
 
Among the mostly widely seen performance photos of Little Walter, which have been used in many books and magazines as well as on T-shirts and album covers over the last four decades, were shot by the late, great blues photographer Ray Flerlage at a single Little Walter performance at the University of Chicago in 1966. These are among the only known photos of Little Walter in which he is using (presumably) his own equipment. So first we'll attempt to answer the question:
 
What type of mic was Little Walter using at his gig at the University of Chicago on May 20th, 1966?
 
 
It's been suggested by various people that he used:

For comparison, here are the "contenders".
 

Shure Slim-X 777
 
 

Monarch MC-24
(One of the several brands of cheap copies of the Shure 777 Slim-X available in the 1960s)
Shure 535

 
 
Here are blow-ups of some of the photos of Little Walter from the gig:
 
Here you can see that the mic cord looped back and taped with black electrical tape to body of mic, presumably to prevent it from being easily pulled out of the mic. (This extra loop of wire, and the shadow of the mic and cord seen in the background in this shot, seem to be what led some to believe that he was using two microphones taped together. But as can be seen in the following photos, this is clearly not the case.)
 
 
 
Note smooth chrome "head" of mic, with no visible notches around the top edge like on the Monarch.
 
 
Compare shape of head of mic to Slim-X.
 
 
 
Note overall shape, size and color of mic, compare to Slim-X. Also note the the body of the mic does not appear to taper from wider to narrower between the head of the mic and the connector, as the Monarch does.
 
 
 

Note mic cord looped back and secured to body of mic with black tape, also the 'spring base' connector. Compare to Slim-X, and note that it is unlike the longer, conical connector on the Shure 535.
 
 
 

Compare the screw on the side of the "head" of mic to Slim-X, also note Switchcraft-type screw on, spring base cord connector. Also note that the concentric circles around the "head" of the 535 are not present on this mic. For the purpose of scale, compare size of mic to size of the Hohner Marine Band harmonica LW is holding, which is slightly under 4 inches in length. Note that the Shure 535 measures 7 23/32 inches in length not including the cable connector, which appears to add at least another inch, making it approximately 8 3/4 inches long.  
 
My conclusion - on this gig, Little Walter was using a Shure 777 Slim-X, or a cheap Japanese-made copy of one.
 
In the only known interview in which he was asked about his microphones (the same interview referred to above, where he talks about his amps) he described a "finger mic" (as opposed to the bullet-shaped Astatic JT-30 mic he used in the '50s), and I think it's safe to assume that the Shure Slim-X is the type of mic he was talking about.
 
By the way, Little Walter's performance documented in the photos above was recorded, and portions of it have been released on a CD which is available here. It's not a great performance - his voice sounds like he's been gargling razor blades, and the thrown-together backing band sounds pretty raggedy, but if you can get past that, there's actually some pretty interesting harp playing there. And it's also the only example I know of where we know what mic Little Walter was using and we can hear exactly what it sounded like when he used it.
 
 
 
 
In another widely circulated photo (used as a publicity poster for Hohner harmonicas at one point) Little Walter is holding a microphone that is similar, but not quite the same, as the Shure Slim-X mic seen in the performance photos above. This appears to be one of the inexpensive Japanese imitations of the Slim-X, in this case a Monarch brand, that were widely available in the 1960s. Compare the mic he's holding in the photo below to the photo of the Monarch MC-24 next to it:
 
Compare the notches around the top edge of the mic 'head', the on/off switch on the side, and the placement of the little screw that holds head onto the body, and it's position relative to the on/off switch. I think it's safe to conclude that the mic Little Walter is holding in this photo is a Monarch MC-24.
 
 
 
Finally, a photo of Little Walter performing in a Chicago nightclub in 1963 (first published in the Little Walter biography "Blues With A Feeling - The Little Walter Story"):
 
 
What kind of mic is this? Good question. It's been suggested that Little Walter was using a Shure 535 (see the example of the 535 above), but the very unusual connector on the mic he's holding makes me think otherwise. It's also been suggested that Little Walter is playing a Shure Slim-X (or one of the various cheap knock-off versions) with a Switchcraft in-line volume control attached to it. Below, compare the blown-up photo of the mic LW is holding above, vs. my own photo of a Shure Slim-X with a Switchcraft in-line volume control attached:
 
 
Note 1., the barrel-shaped connector at the base of the mic in my photo, vs. the connector in the LW photo that appears to be wider at the top than the bottom, with sides that curve from being flush with bottom of the mic to the point where it is connected to 2. Also note that the barrel-shapped housing of the volume control in my photo appears to be of a different shape compared to the piece it corresponds to in the LW photo, which tapers from smaller at the top to larger at the bottom (sort of thimble-shaped), and also appears to be of a different material or texture than the shiny metal parts on either end. Finally note that 3., the standard sized screw-on mic cord connector in my photo is of a much smaller diameter relative to the Switchcraft in-line volume control than the corresponding pieces in the Little Walter photo.
 
My conclusion on this is one: who the hell knows?
 
And frankly, for all the time I've spent analyzing this stuff, I've also come to the conclusion that it all doesn't really matter one way or the other. Every indication is that Little Walter simply didn't pay much attention to his equipment anyway, beyond whether or not it worked when he turned it on, and was loud enough to fill the room. He was able to get 'his sound' with whatever equipment was available, as virtually everyone who was around him at the time has testified. So while it's fun in a weird way to investigate all of this stuff, and to find the answers to some of these questions, the real answer is that this stuff doesn't really matter in the long run. Little Walter's genius wasn't in choosing the right equipment or having some secret mic/amplifier combination - his real genius was in the way he thought about and played his music, not his equipment.
 
Comments always welcome...
 
Scott Dirks
 
 
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