biography
| name: |
Little Walter
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popular name of Marion Walter Jacobs
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1931–68)
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| biography:
| Musician, born in Marksville, Louisiana, USA. He is widely regarded as the most influential harmonica player in blues history, and as a major innovator of 1950s Chicago blues. As a teenage runaway, he began playing on the streets of New Orleans and made his first appearance on the King Biscuit Time radio program in Helena, AR (1944). He settled in Chicago (1946), where he played with leading musicians Big Bill Broonzy and Memphis Slim. He made his first recordings in 1947, and for the next five years he was a sideman with Muddy Waters' pioneering electric blues band. In 1952 he formed his own group, the Jukes, and began a 14-year association with Chess Records, for which he recorded many blues hits. He toured with rhythm-and-blues package shows throughout the 1950s, and worked (1962–7) with the annual American Folk Blues Festival tours of England and Europe. He died at age 37 from head injuries sustained in a street fight, although alcoholism had severely hampered his career for at least 10 years before his death. |
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