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Big Walter Smith honored at Hall of Fame

NEW ULM, Minn. -- The Minnesota Music Hall of Fame honored Big Walter Smith last Thursday to open its three-day Blues Extravaganza.

The Hall of Fame held the event Sept. 10-12 at 27 N. Broadway St. Thursday was Big Walter Smith Day. Friday was nominee blues singer Lisa Wenger. Saturday was a music jam held due to a postponement.

Shirley Smith, 80, of Crystal, widow and former manager of Smith, and Joe Sherohman, original bass player for the Lamont Cranston Band, spoke Thursday about Smith’s career.

The Hall of Fame inducted Big Smith in 1998 as the first blues musician inducted. Heis one of three featured inductees for September 2026, along with Arne Fogel, inducted in 2018, and Sherwin Linton, inducted in 2001.

Board member Neal Bond said the Hall is considering 17 blues artists for induction this year. He showed a video introducing the nominees and asked attendees to submit suggestions on pink slips in the back of the hall for the board to review.

Smith was born in Oklahoma and raised in Kansas City. He began in show business in the 1950s in a vaudeville show. In the 1960s, he shared stages with B.B. King and Bobby “Blue” Bland and performed at parties with Albert King.

In 1970, his friend and former bandmate Damon Lee invited him to Minneapolis. Smith began singing with Lee’s band at Papa Joe’s Northern Supper Club on Broadway in North Minneapolis.

Sherohman was playing bass on stage that night with Lee and Donald “Highpockets” Robertson. Shirley Smith said she walked into Papa Joe’s on May 5, 1970, and met Walter that night. She was 25. He was 39.

“We were married 42, together 50,” Shirley Smith said.

She said she had not heard blues before that night. She said the two had a blended family. Walter had two sons from a previous marriage. She had two children. She said Walter never drank or smoked.

Sherohman said the Lamont Cranston Band started in 1969 when he and drummer Danny Webb went to Eddie Lovejoy’s house looking for a place to jam. 

Lovejoy took them to the West Bank on Cedar Avenue, where they met brothers Pat and Larry Hayes.

The band, based in Hamel, continues with Pat Hayes as frontman. It opened for the Rolling Stones in 1981. 

Its song “Excusez Moi, Mon Cheri,” written by Larry Hayes, was recorded by the Blues Brothers as the B-side to “Soul Man.”

Sherohman said he also played in the Charlie Clark Orchestra in 1968, a 17-piece band with four horns and four singers, when Cornbread Harris was on piano. 

Harris, 99, was inducted into the Hall of Fame last year and still plays every Sunday.

Shirley Smith said she became Big Walter Smith’s manager after a medical incident at a club. She said a bass player called her and said an ambulance had been called for him.

“He goes to the hospital. It was a stress attack,” she said. “Because the musicians were arguing all the time.”

She said hetook a year off. She said he then told her he wanted to return to music but could not do it alone.

“I said, ‘What do you want me to do?'” she said.

She said she had an accounting degree and had previously reviewed books for another band. She said that band paid $35 for a show in Duluth and she found $3,000 in errors in the books.

She said she began booking and managing the Groove Merchants. Smith formed Big Walter Smith and the Groove Merchants in 1985. 

The band became a mainstay of Twin Cities clubs and the only group to appear at every Bayfront Blues Festival in Duluth since its founding in 1989. Duluth Mayor Gary Doty proclaimed Aug. 8, 1997, as Big Walter Smith Day.

Shirley Smith said Big Water Smith encouraged young musicians.

She described a Sunday jam Smith held at the Cozy Bar in North Minneapolis from 2 to 6 p.m. 

She said a teenager walked more than a mile each Sunday to attend. Smith called him “the kid.”

“If the weather was bad, he would always say to me, ‘We’re going to give the kid a ride home,'” she said.

She said the teenager played every instrument on stage during breaks.

“Prince would get up and play every instrument on the stage while the band took a break,” she said.

She said the jam included a rule after the saxophone player objected to the teenager playing his mouthpiece.

“He said, ‘I don’t want nobody blowing through my mouthpiece,'” she said. “So Walt told Prince, ‘Don’t play the horns no more. Play everything else.'”

She said Prince contacted Smith in the 1990s and said he remembered the Cozy Bar.

The Hall of Fame displays a motorcycle that was Prince’s motorcycle. Bond pointed it out in the hall during the program. The bike has a vanity plate on it that reads “THE KID.”

The program included a film about Big Walter Smith produced by the Hall. It included footage from Famous Dave’s in 2010 and regional festivals including Fargo Blues Fest, Minnesota Blues Fest in New Ulm and Blues on the Range in Chisholm. 

The Hall’s biography of Big Walter Smith includes his philosophy: “You don’t have to be great musician. Just working with great musicians, you’ll come up to their standards. It’ll gel.”

Big Walter Smith died Tuesday, July 12, 2012, in Minneapolis at the age of 82.

Shirley Smith said she was with him when he died.

“I was sitting with him when he took his last breath at 3:16 in the morning,” she said. “He said to me, ‘I don’t want to go to a nursing home.’ I said, ‘I won’t do that.'”

She encouraged people to support live music and the Hall.

“Please continue to support music, support the hall,” she said.

Sherohman said the blues community is connected.

“The blues is a family,” he said.

One attendee, Patti Abbott, 70, of Chetek, Wisconsin, said Shirley Smith babysat her and six siblings in the 1970s in North Minneapolis when Abbott’s mother worked at Mickey’s sandwich shop on Broadway. 

Abbott said she drove from Wisconsin for the event and was given the title Whistler of the Bayfront at the festival for whistling in the crowd. 

Abbott said her nickname is Gabby.

“My nickname is Gabby, they all call me Gabby, because I talk a lot,” she said.

The Hall said its October programming will include daily films on 80 inductees from 1989 through 2026 who have died. The films are about an hour each.

Next up will be Arnie Fogel. 

Bond said Fogel will be featured Saturday at the Hall of Fame. Fogel, inducted in 2018, is a singer, broadcaster and historian of American popular song. 

He spent three years as a regular performer on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion, sang on nearly 1,500 recording sessions for jingles and film soundtracks, and performed as Rosemary Clooney’s opening act at Orchestra Hall. 

He has produced programs for Minnesota Public Radio and KBEM-FM Jazz 88 in the Twin Cities.

For a $30 membership, the Hall said visitors receive biographical books covering inductees from 1989 through 2014 plus a newly released book, a $50 value that includes Prince and Bob Dylan, a 12-by-18-inch poster of September’s featured inductees, a Hall of Fame pen and digital access to the Hall’s videos including the Big Walter Smith film.

The Minnesota Music Hall of Fame museum is at 27 N. Broadway St., New Ulm. It is open 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Thursday through Saturday from April 1 to Oct. 31. Admission is $7. It is free for members.