Tom Walker and Terry Lee were longtime buddies who liked to ride go-carts throughout their Catalina Vista neighborhood, and play ball.
When Lee got a guitar after seeing a band at a school sock hop, Walker convinced his parents to get one for him.
"Tommy and I really went obsessively into guitar playing for that whole year, maybe even closer to two years," Lee says.
Walker turned out to be a gifted musician. He taught himself to play that guitar by fumbling along to records with Lee.
In 1963, the pair formed the band that later became The Dearly Beloved.
After that band split not long after the 1967 accident that killed its lead singer, Walker started playing the blues at Tucson bars, including Berky's, with his Boogieman Blues Band.
"He got to be a borderline brilliant electric blues guitar player," says former Dearly Beloved bandmate Walter "Shep" Cooke, who saw him in one of those performances.
Walker, who had a daughter, Jula, was inducted into the Arizona Blues Hall of Fame in 1997.
In July 2005, he died of a heart attack at the age of 58. He was inducted into the Tucson Musicians Museum later that year.
