Junior Walker — the Motown saxophonist who grew up here

1931 – 1995 · raised in South Bend

The fame: Junior Walker & the All Stars were one of Motown's great hit acts: "Shotgun" (1965), an R&B number one and a top-five pop record built on Walker's honking tenor saxophone and his own shouted vocal; "What Does It Take (To Win Your Love)" (1969), another R&B number one; and a run of roadhouse R&B — "These Eyes," "Hip City," "Road Runner" — that made Walker the rawest sound on the Hitsville roster. His saxophone later turned up far from Detroit, including the solo on Foreigner's "Urgent" (1981).

The tie, exactly: Walker was born Autry DeWalt Mixon Jr. on June 14, 1931, in Blytheville, Arkansas — and grew up in South Bend. The South Bend chapter is the growing-up itself, at full documented size: an uncle gave the South Bend teenager his first saxophone; he played in his high school band here; he formed his first band, the Jumping Jacks, in his teens here; and he played in South Bend with Billy "Stix" Nicks's Rhythm Rockers, a band with a local television residency. The precision this section owes the reader is the other half: Jr. Walker & the All Stars, the act the nation knows, were assembled in Battle Creek, Michigan, in the late 1950s, and it was from Battle Creek that Walker signed with Harvey Fuqua's Harvey label (1961) and passed into Motown. South Bend raised the musician; Battle Creek built the band.

A conflict in the record: Motown's publicity machine gave Walker a false birth year — 1942 — and reference works that copy the label's biography (encyclopedia.com and last.fm among them) repeat it, which also corrupts derivative timelines that have him forming a band "at fourteen" in the mid-1950s. The documented year is 1931, and that is the year printed here.

The end: Walker died on November 23, 1995, at Battle Creek.

Sources:

1. Encyclopedia and Motown reference accounts of Walker — the Blytheville birth, the South Bend upbringing, the uncle's saxophone, the Jumping Jacks, the Battle Creek assembly of the All Stars, the Harvey and Motown signings, the chart record of "Shotgun" and "What Does It Take."
2. Motown publicity biography as repeated at encyclopedia.com and last.fm — the false 1942 birth year, carried here as a conflict, not a fact.