Joe Louis Walker, Free-Ranging Blues Explorer, Is Dead at 75

Joe Louis Walker, a blues master and musical omnivore whose snarling guitar work, gritty vocals and introspective songwriting earned him the praise of Herbie Hancock, Mick Jagger and many others over a six-decade career, died on April 30 in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. He was 75.

His wife, Robin Poritzky-Walker, said his death, in a hospital, was from a cardiac-related illness.

Mr. Walker recorded more than 30 albums for a variety of labels, starting with “Cold Is the Night” in 1986. He toured extensively and was a staple of blues festivals around the world. He won the Blues Music Award (formerly the W.C. Handy Award) multiple times and was nominated for a Grammy Award for his 2015 album, “Everybody Wants a Piece.” He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2013.

Mr. Walker was nominated for a Grammy Award for his 2015 album, “Everybody Wants a Piece.”Credit…Provogue

Along the way he traded riffs with blues powerhouses like B.B. King, Buddy Guy and Otis Rush.

The keyboard innovator Herbie Hancock deemed him “a singular force” with a “remarkable gift for instantly electrifying a room.” Mick Jagger called him “a magnificent guitar player and singer.” The jazz pianist and composer Chick Corea playfully anointed him “the Chick Corea of blues.”

Critics, too, felt Mr. Walker’s power. “His voice is weather-beaten but ready for more; his guitar solos are fast, wiry and incisive,” Jon Pareles wrote in a 1989 review in The New York Times, “often starting out with impetuous squiggles before moaning with bluesy despair.”

Mr. Walker in performance in 1995. One reviewer called him “a fluttering blues guitarist” whose “lines seem blown by the wind.”Credit…Simon Ritter/Redferns, via Getty Images