After 50 Years in L.A. Clubs, Singer Troy Walker Still Going Strong

It's the early '60s. It’s a Saturday night on the pre-hippie Sunset Strip. It’s a swinging scene, men in sharp suits, women in cocktail dresses. Everybody smokes. In a lounge called The Interlude, they’re squeezing in to see Troy Walker.

"I’d never imagined myself even having that much talent,” admits Walker. “I was just a singer and I liked showing off.”

That inclination paid off for Walker, who was raised in Arizona. As a young boy, he first realized his divine gift of song during a Christmas worship service in his hometown of Phoenix.

“I remember on a Christmas cantata in church, our choir director Mr. Beasley had me sing ‘O Holy Night,’” Walker says. “I had a very high soprano voice. I sang it and I looked at my mother and she was crying and Mr. Beasley stood up and said, ‘God has sent us an angel.'"

He moved to Hollywood in 1958, “just to come out to Hollywood. I understood I could be a little freer, especially in my personal life, so I came out to Hollywood to see if that could happen."

"I walked into a bar on Hollywood Boulevard, and the young man behind the piano asked me if I could sing. I’d sing in school, so I said, ‘Yep,’ and he gave me the microphone and I sang a song. I was only 19. And the owner came over and asked me if I could come in every night and sing a couple songs and he’d give me 10 bucks."

“At the time I was downright broke, and I asked if I could get an advance because my rent was due. At that time it was nine bucks a week. He said, ‘Don’t try and con me, kid.’ I told him I’d be back the next night. That’s how it started, and it’s been that way ever since.”

Walker was, to put it mildly, a very pretty boy, something that he learned to use to his advantage onstage. “My first line was, ‘My name’s Troy Walker and whatever you’re thinking, you’re right.’ It just worked for me,” he says. “‘Mommy wanted a girl, Daddy wanted a boy, now they’re both happy.’ I played with it rather than let it bring me down. And it worked fine because I was never out of work, never have been.”

Flamboyant young Walker developed a set of current hits and standards recorded by artists he admired like Judy Garland, Johnny Ray and Johnny Mathis. His chops were formidable; his ability to sell a song and give his all to the crowd was immense. He released his first album in 1962. His second -- and last -- record came out two years later, and while neither took off, his reputation as a must-see live act flourished.

He was on fire, packing rooms and drawing names like Ricky Nelson, Natalie Wood, Ronald Reagan and Elvis himself. He shared the stage with everyone from Ella Fitzgerald to Pat Collins the Hip Hypnotist. He joked, he trash talked, he worked risque but never mean.

He was a dazzling, flamboyant attraction, meaning he was as openly gay as an act could be in those closeted times. But it wasn’t really camp, it was just who he was. And that was something that may have hindered his professional growth.

“I often wondered why the big [career] push wasn’t made and I just kind of decided, well, nobody wanted at that time to affiliate themselves with a somewhat effete, somewhat maybe feminine man. It was that age.”

Walker survived, playing all manner of nightspots. For years he was an attraction at the legendary Palomino Club in North Hollywood. “I became the headliner at the Palomino,” he states. “[Owner] Tommy Thomas called me and asked me to come and I said, ‘They’ll stone me,’ 'cause it was very country. But I wound up there for 17 years every Tuesday night.”

And so it was that five years ago he began singing at Cody Bryant’s Viva Cantina, a Mexican restaurant in Burbank that’s become the singer’s monthly gig, backed by guitarist Bryant’s house band for the last five years.

“So who does he draw?” asks Bryant. “For some people it’s a freak show, [there’s] some intelligentsia, some hipsters. He cuts a funny path across a lot of personality types. But he’s infinitely human, and that’s what translates to everybody.”

That includes people like Jan Damiano, who go way back with Walker.

“He taught me to do the twist on Sunset Strip at the Interlude,” she says after a recent Walker set at the Cantina. “My husband and I went there and we learned the twist, and we were twisting everywhere, Miami and everywhere, but I learned from him. It’s a long time ago! He loves his audience. And that’s why people come back.”

“I let them know I was there for them,” says Walker of his audience. “A lot of performers don’t project that. They don’t have that thing about letting them know you really are grateful they’re there, and that’s a feeling you have to have to be a good performer.”

Tom Kenny, the actor/comedian and voice of SpongeBob SquarePants, has been a Walker follower for years, catching him whenever he can. Like snowflakes and fingerprints, Walker’s sets are never the same.

“You really never know what you’re going to get with Troy,” offers Kenny. “A lot of it seems to depend on what mood he’s in and what he’s going through and what songs are resonating with him on a given night, so the shows are kind of like a really long medley mash-up of the American songbook, with dirty jokes peppered in between. What’s not to like?”

Walker uses no set list, but moves from song to song seemingly on a whim, rarely finishing anything. You might hear a chorus, a couple verses, and then it’s on to something else.

“The music follows him,” says Damiano. “He goes where he wants, he segues on a word. He sails. He floats.”

“You have to kind of guess,” offers Bryant. “You have to listen, you have to make your ears go out 3 feet on the side of your head to figure out where in the hell he’s going to go. And to make him look good. You want him to look good.”

And really, that’s the thing. Everybody’s rooting for Troy. He’s lovable. He’s impish. He’s a pussycat who’s had a lot of lives but no grand strategy for success. His 50-year career vision has never extended beyond the last set of the night.

“I can’t say that I had a real plan,” Walker admits. “I just came to Hollywood and people asked me what I did and I said, ‘I’m a singer.’”

And he does it all for the nice people out there in the dark who have been filling the seats—or most of them—for this unique act that never ends.

“They give a meaning to my life,” Walker says of his loyal followers. “They want me, even if nobody else does, and I guess that’s the way I qualify what I do. People have no idea, they lay things out like ego and selfishness, but it’s not that at all. If every night you get 20 or 30 minutes of this [he claps] and standing ovations periodically, and you say, “Wow. I’m worth something.' ”

On this Wednesday night in Burbank, for a handful of hipsters, drinkers and gray-haired women he’s turned briefly back into 25-year-olds, he’s worth a lot.