Early Life
Walls was born in Middlesboro, Kentucky, and grew up in Charleston, West Virginia. His mother was a piano teacher. His stepfather was named Walls, so he took the name Van Walls (often written as Vann Walls). He left home as a teenager and toured the Southern United States with carnivals, circuses, and variety caravans. He returned to Charleston in his mid-20s and played as a solo pianist in local clubs and on WCHS (AM) radio.
In the early-1940s, he began playing in Cal Greer's band and later formed his own band based in Columbus, Ohio.
Read more about this topic: Van "Piano Man" Walls
Famous quotes related to early life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)