Dennis Walker

Dennis Walker has been "chasing the blues" for a lifetime, starting with his first producing credit in 1965. He is a three-time Grammy Award-winning Blues producer and songwriter for Robert Cray's Strong Persuader, The Robert Cray Band's Don't Be Afraid of The Dark, and B.B. King's Blues Summit. In a career spanning over 40 years, he won more than 20 Blues Music Association Awards and created a discography that shows the depth of his love and respect for the blues. How did a small-town Oregon boy end up writing for and working with the most important blues musicians of our time? This book tells the story of Dennis' musicial journey and the amazing artists that he met and worked with along the way, told with an idiosyncratic voice that is the essence of what "chasing the blues" means.This memoir covers the early part of Dennis Walker's life and musical work through his last album with Robert Cray, I Was Warned, which was released in 1992. This documentation of music history includes working with Bruce Bromberg, Phillip Walker, Lowell Fulson, Robert Cray, B.B. King, Frankie Lee, George "Harmonica Smith, Joe Louis Walker, Ted Hawkins, The Delgado Brothers, John Campbell, John McVie, BB Chung King a.k.a. Alan Mirikitani, Kimono Mari, and Philipp Fankauser. In addition, there are all the other characters like Richard Cousins, Margie Evans, Alain Schuster, Bill Dashiell, Nat Dove, Big Mama Thornton, Toni Mathews, Eddie Cleanhead Vinson, Johnny Tucker, David Ii, Lonesome Sundown, Bea Walker, Hollis Gilmore, Dale Wilson, Eddie Ahern, Bernie Grundman, Doug MacLeod, Eric Ajai, Llew Matthews, Wayne Jackson & Andrew Love, Peter Lubin, Joe Delgado, Bob Delgado, Steve Delgado, Larry Sloven, Peter Boe, Dave Olsen, Mike Kappas, Fontaine Brown, Marshall Chapman, Dave Nice, Dave Plenn, Lee Spath, Stu Yahm, Jim Pugh, Etta James, John Anderson, Denny Diante, Teenie Hodges, John Hampton, and Boz Scaggs. "What a ride, what a ride," as Dennis would say.

The day after attending a Holy-Spirit soaked conference in Kelowna, Canada, Dennis and a team from the church he pastored were supernaturally led by God through Canadian wilderness roads to a beautiful location of meadows, mountains, and lakes. There on that day, God spoke clearly to each one about their lives and future events. For Dennis, it was one of the most vivid experiences with God where His presence was powerfully present. Among other instructions, God told Dennis, "Get a tent and meet me in it." When Dennis traveled back home to Las Vegas, Nevada, he was obedient to the divine instructions and began having powerfully anointed meetings with God in a one-man tent that he set up in his living room. It was there that God spoke clearly to Dennis many times about who he would meet and how to minister a miracle to them. He would speak to Dennis new things to teach, such as the vital importance of intimacy and friendship with God when pursuing a life of operating in miracles. God would even take Dennis on fun experiences in heavenly places, sharing how much He loved him, filling his emotions, and delighting his intellect.Do you need a tent to do the same? No. Dennis and Lynnie Walker have traveled the globe teaching thousands of believers how to live a life of daily supernatural experiences through principles Dennis learned in the tent. The overwhelming testimony of those who receive this teaching is how easy it is to do miracles Both new and mature Christians experience a new ease of operating in the gifts of the Spirit, which Dennis and Lynnie teach is a normal lifestyle, in keeping with the way Jesus himself lived. The key is close, loving communication with God, catching the initiatives the Father relates to us, and obedience to those usually very simple instructions. Jesus modeled this when He said, "I do only those things I see the Father doing," such as making mud for a blind man's eyes or rebuking a fever. In this method, miracles are performed as an adventure with Father God; the fear of failure goes away and there is a new joy in following His leading.

The presence of Islam in America is as long-standing as the arrival of the first captive Muslims from Africa, making Islam one of America's formative religions. But the long-suppressed indigenous Islam didn't resurface in organized form until the 1930s, when it infused the politico-spiritual drive by the Noble Drew 'Ali and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad to address the appalling social conditions of the ghettoized black masses of the North. Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam would prove to be the most extensive, influential and durable of African-American self-generated organizations. Combining black cooperative entrepreneurship with indigenous Islam-tinged culture and spirituality, the NOI pursued a collectivist nationalist agenda which sought to advance the black masses' cause--within America or without it. At its collectivist height, the NOI achieved a $95 million empire of interlocking black Muslim small businesses and farms--providing a model for "bootstrap self-development" by the marginalized and dispossessed, worldwide. Bourgeois elements developed within, or engaged by, the NOI sought to weld a united African-American nation out of a range of classes. Outstanding second generation leaders--Warith Muhammad, Louis Farrakhan and Malcolm X--would further imbed Islam in Black America, and extend its relations into the international community. Their media offered an informed and critical outlook on both domestic and international affairs that often paralleled progressive analysts. What seems clear, after two monumental marches in 1995 and 2005 to the nation's capital, is that the NOI and African-American Muslims will have substantial input into the future direction of the African-American struggle. But it remains ambiguous whether the developing African-American nation will pursue its still-unfulfilled promise through secession, autonomy or long-term integration. To date, indigenous American Islam has been made a bogey by various white elites in order to regiment their own and other ethnic groups. "Dr. Walker has drawn a portrait of this movement that deserves the attention of scholars. I strongly recommend it to teachers and students studying or writing about Islam and the African American experience." - Dr. Sulayman S. Nyang, Howard University "It is not very often books of substance on African Americans, Islam and the Nation of Islam are written to set the record straight, or to reveal the truth about an historical legacy in the making. However, Islam and the search for African American, and the Nation of Islam, by Dr. Dennis Walker is an exception to the rule... ...Dr. Walker's book sets the record straight for an Islamic, African American and an Arab historical connection, the influences and impacting maze of geographical history, as well as the search for African American nationhood in the 21st century. This well documented book offers several defining points of views coupled with the elements of societies' Black History, The Nation of Islam, race, class, and culture. Dr. Walker's book also strengthens and confirms the longstanding relevance of media knowledge and networks within the African American communities and its impact on domestic and international relations. Islam and the search for African American Nationhood is an extensive scholarly treasure trove of African, Arab and Islamic history. This timely study on Islam and the African American movement and its leaders is worthy reading, yet goes beyond the expansion of the African American experience and its search for Nationhood." - Leila Diab in Muslim Journal