Bassist Walter Savage has returned to the Bay Area — living now up in Vallejo — after a too-lengthy sojourn in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Walter grew up in Watts, where his father was a preacher and where he couldn’t imagine not singing– which he still does plenty. Walter picked up the bass while serving in the military in the 1960s, taken with the work of the great Paul Chambers with Miles Davis. Once back in Los Angeles, he bought a bass and took lessons from legendary musicians of two generations, Al McKibbon and Leroy Vinnegar, and played in the rhythm sections of Bobby Hutcherson, at Howard Rumsey’s Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach, as well as Horace Tapscott, Arthur Blythe, Gerald Wilson, Taj Mahal, Gloria Lynn and plenty of others. Walter eventually made his way up to San Francisco and environs, where he was heard regularly at Yoshi’s, Jazz at Pearl’s, Enrico’s, Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society and other jazz spots.  Walter has long been unsatisfied with restricting himself to the bass, and he doubles with alacrity as singer, pianist and composer.

Since first moving to the Bay Area, Walter has worked with David (Fathead) Newman, John Handy, Pharaoh Sanders and others on bandstands far and wide, and on jazz cruises with Richie Cole, Harold Jones, Donald Bailey and Mary Stallings, wonderful players all!

Today, Walter brings along to Bird & Beckett the wonderful pianist Grant Levin and the beautiful drummer Renzell Merritt, father to at least two young prodigies we know… Happy Father’s Day to all.