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Walter’s musical spirit achieved an unparalleled breadth of knowledge and creative expression. Exposed to all manners of music, father’s big band and jazz, mother’s opera and symphonies, music of the church, popular AM radio and eventually the pop music of his teen years, Walter took all that he heard, gave it the attention for which he’s famous, and made it into a sound all his own. “He’s had very few equals as an all around music person,” says Tommy Goldsmith, a friend, music writer and former Contenders band-mate.
Walter started seriously playing guitar at 13, aided by a Vespa scooter accident one summer that lay him up to let a mangled foot heal. Encouraged by his parents of any creative endeavor, Hyatt got the Mel Bay chord book and learned all the chords. By his mid-teens he had formed his first band, and by 20 had formed a trio with fellow Spartanburgians Champ Hood and David Ball, named Uncle Walt’s Band.
In 1972, the boys moved to Nashville where they were “discovered” by the revered Texas singer/songwriter Willis Allen Ramsey. Ramsey lured them to Austin to record in his studio. Walter’s distinctive style of playing guitar, his rich baritone voice and boundless musical spirit embodied in the songs he wrote and performed, had won the band’s first noted fan.
In Texas, Uncle Walt’s Band added to their musical eclecticism the Texas swing sound and there they began to wow crowds with their talents on guitar, vocals and in songwriting. With gentle humor and quick minds… along with their warm southern charm and southern drawls, Uncle Walt’s Band became a tour-de-force in the Austin music scene, and was the go-to band for other musicians in town. “We all would try to cut our last set short and get out early,” says Jimmie Dale Gilmore, “so we could make the last set of Uncle Walt’s Band wherever they were playing.” “We all” included Gilmore, Nanci Griffith, Lyle Lovett, Jerry Jeff Walker, Marcia Ball and more. Even in those early days, Uncle Walt was a musician’s musician.
In 1974, Uncle Walt’s Band went back to the Carolinas and recorded their first record, Blame It On The Bossanova at Arthur Smith Studios in Charlotte, NC, a record Jimmie Dale Gilmore says is still “among my favorite records in the world.” Selling them from the stage, Uncle Walt’s Band started the independent record trend which later swept Austin bands into making their own releases.
Uncle Walt’s Band parted in1975 and Walter moved back to Nashville forming the Contenders, with Hood and other Nashville musicians. This electric folk-rock quintet played gigs from New York City to West Texas. But an Uncle Walt’s Band reunion gig in ‘78 took Hyatt and Hood back to Austin, and the intense success they experienced all over the south and at colleges from Berkley to Moscow University (Russia) kept them together for several more years. Their albums had taken on a life of their own giving the band a cult status all over the globe.
In the next years, UWB performed on Austin City Limits, released An American in Texas on their own Lespedeza Records label in 1980, and recorded Uncle Walt’s Band Live at Austin’s famed Waterloo Icehouse in 1982. Walter and wife Heidi left Austin for Nashville in 1987, where Walter took the opportunity to get caught up with his daughter from a prior marriage and where Walter embarked on his first solo work. Work that would be artistically fruitful and critically acclaimed, yet not a commercial success in a time where an artist had no real radio format. His music was an amalgam of his deep and wide musical knowledge: swing, pop, folk, country blues and jazz and not just one peg-able genera. That’s who he was, that’s who he remained.
In 1990, famed Nashville producer Tony Brown recognized Walter’s talent and enlisted Walter to record for MCA’s Master Series as the label’s first vocalist —a pointed, critical honor. Produced by old friend Lyle Lovett, King Tears highlighted the jazzier side of Walter’s music and he toured as the opening act for Lovett and His Large Band. King Tears was an enormous critical success —one Philadelphia critic described Walter’s voice and guitar as “a diamond ring in a velvet box.” Unfortunately, King Tears failed to find a large commercial success. Still Walter knew that his music had a depth and in his growth as both an artist and a human being, made a conscious choice to do what he believed in, himself, rather than try and be anything else. In 1991, Sugar Hill, reissued original songs from the Uncle Walt’s Band releases and supported Walter in a new solo recording, Music Town, 1993. Along the way Walter’s kind persona and his brilliant, mind-boggling talent, continued to win the heart of fans, from musical connoisseurs and musicians alike, one fan at a time.
He formed his solo band, King Tears, in 1995 playing at Nashville’s historic “The Sutler” on Monday nights while he committed himself to making yet another push to get his music heard by the greater public. By Spring of 1996, Walter began selecting material and recording demos for his next album his next Sugar Hill project when a longtime fan, who now owned a bar in Key West, Florida, begged him to come and play there but Walt couldn’t do it. His oldest daughter Haley, whom Walter loved dearly, was graduating from college in Virginia and that’s where he would need to be. But the club owner, determined to have his favorite artist play, offered good money for the entire band to come and even moved the dates so Walter could make the graduation dinner on that Saturday night. Upon leaving Florida, Walter was an hour late to catch his flight in Miami to the graduation, but the plane was an hour late, too. Then ten minutes out, the plane began experiencing difficulties and turned back for the airport. It was too late. Valujet flight 592 plunged into the swamps of the Florida Everglades, taking with it the best man and the best musician we ever knew.
To this day, grown men still cry when they talk about Walter. Those who only knew him for a short while still mourn because Walter Hyatt was truly the best among us. “His insights into human beings and life and how thoughtful he was of other people was sort of infectious,” says his friend and King Tears bass player Rick Plant. “You always thought you were around someone who had a bigger picture of the world than you did. I think that’s why it was such a big loss—because your window shrunk when he died.” Walter Hyatt’s legacy, his great gift to us all, is in the music he left behind.
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