Wally Badarou - Volume 2: Solo

The previous post focused on Wally Badarou’s work as a session musician, but not many people are aware that he had already released a solo album in Paris!
This was Back To Scales To-Night (1980) on which Wally not only played various keyboards, but also handled some of the vocals. 

Two singles were released: the cod-reggae “She Turns Me On” and the more funky “He Was A Rasta In London Town”, but neither did much…

Consequently, Wally spent more time in studios doing session work like before.
Luckily for him, the move to Nassau and working for Island Records’ boss Chris Blackwell proved very fruitful, not only as a member of the Compass Point All Stars, but also as a solo artist.
It started with small instrumental contributions to soundtracks like Country Man and They Call That An Accident, but eventually led to his probably most well-known 1984 kind of groove album: Echoes.
It still is a very enjoyable album, which Wally recommends listening to from beginning to end!
Key tracks include “Chief Inspector”, here presented in 3 different Paul “Groucho” Smykle remixes, and “Mambo”, which was sampled by Massive Attack for their hit “Daydreaming”.

Another soundtrack followed a year later, Kiss Of The Spider Woman, which was well received.
His last album of the eighties was Words of a Mountain, which was almost ambient, more melodically-based, which brings us to the end of this post.
Nowadays, Wally is still active musically and has released new material from time to time.