Story of the Song: Feeling the blues with T-Bone Walker’s Stormy Monday

Elvis Costello told us we were, “Welcome To The Working Week”, and the Easybeats sang about the fellow who turned up for his dead-end job with Friday on his mind.

For T-Bone Walker, it was not just the job that had given him the blues: his girl had left him and now he could barely get out of bed.

“They call it Stormy Monday but Tuesday’s just as bad”, Walker wails, as he works his way through the worst week of his life. “Wednesday’s worse and Thursday’s also sad”.

On Friday, “the eagle flies”, (in other words, his pay in dollar bills brandishing the American eagle gets spent on something to cure his hangdog circumstance). On Sunday, he’s on his knees at church, praying for his baby to come home. How bad does it get?

Aaron Thibeaux “T-Bone” Walker, a Texan blues showman, wrote “Stormy Monday” in the early Forties. Composition is occasionally credited to Billy Eckstine, the baritone, and the pianist Earl Hines (sometimes with the inclusion of the arranger Bob Crowder), who recorded a version as early as 1942 and introduced it to the big-band fraternity.

Walker issued the first electric guitar arrangement in 1947 for the Black & White label, under the supervision of the arranger Ralph Bass. For most blues and rock performers his is the blueprint, all muted trumpet and fluttering piano, Walker’s guitar turning notes like a stormcock in a stiff breeze. Hardly a tempest but then this is the blues. Titled variously, “Call it Stormy Monday”, and “Stormy Monday Blues”, it’s been given a run through by countless players and singers for six decades.

Walker’s version prompted BB King to take out a loan on his first guitar but it was another bluesman, Bobby Bland, who brought the song to the mainstream. His take on “Stormy Monday”, for the 1962 album Here’s the Man, resurrects the big band sound in a line-up including Wayne Bennett, Hamp Simmons and John “Jabo” Starks.

“[It] was supposed to be a ‘throwaway’ tune,” recalled Starks. “We had already finished the album and Bobby said, ‘Hey, man, I want to do that tune. Let’s do that tune, just for me’.”

In two takes, the rhythm section had it taped. Bennett copied Walker’s guitar part and Bland makes it sound like no one could hate Mondays quite so much.