Early years Jacobs' date of birth is usually given as May 1, 1930, in
Marksville, Louisiana. He was born without a birth certificate and when he applied for a Social Security card in 1940, his birthdate was listed as May 1, 1923. Over the years he often gave different years, but May 1 was constant. In some other documents he filled out before reaching the age of the majority, he indicated birth years of 1925 and 1928, probably to appear to be of legal age to sign contracts for recordings and club work. After reaching the age of majority based on a birth year of 1930, he consistently gave his birth year as 1930. He was raised in
Rapides Parish, Louisiana, where he learned to play the harmonica. He quit school, and by the age of 12 had left rural Louisiana and travelled, working odd jobs and busking on the streets of New Orleans, Memphis, Helena and West Helena, Arkansas, and St. Louis. He honed his musical skills on harmonica and guitar, performing with older
bluesmen including
Sonny Boy Williamson II,
Sunnyland Slim,
Honeyboy Edwards, and others. Arriving in Chicago in 1946, he occasionally found work as a guitarist but garnered more attention for his already highly developed harmonica playing. According to Chicago bluesman
Floyd Jones, Little Walter's first recording was an unreleased demo recorded soon after he arrived in Chicago, on which Walter played guitar backing Jones. Reportedly frustrated with having his harmonica drowned out by electric guitars, Walter adopted a simple but previously little-used method: He cupped a small microphone in his hands along with his harmonica and plugged the microphone into a public address system or guitar amplifier. He could thus compete with any guitarist's volume. However, unlike other contemporary blues harp players, such as
Sonny Boy Williamson I and
Snooky Pryor, who had also started using the newly available amplifier technology around the same time solely for added volume, Walter purposely pushed his amplifiers beyond their intended technical limitations, using the amplification to explore and develop radical new timbres and sonic effects previously unheard from a harmonica or any other instrument. which operated out of the back room of Abrams' Maxwell Radio and Records store, in the heart of the
Maxwell Street district in Chicago. These and several other of his early recordings, like many blues harp recordings of the era, owed a strong stylistic debt to the pioneering blues harmonica player
Sonny Boy Williamson I (John Lee Williamson). Walter joined
Muddy Waters' band in 1948, and by 1950 he was playing acoustic (unamplified) harmonica on Waters's recordings for
Chess Records. The first appearance on record of Little Walter's amplified harmonica was on Waters' "Country Boy" (Chess 1952), recorded on July 11, 1951. For years after his departure from Waters' band in 1952, Chess continued to hire him to play on Waters' recording sessions, and as a result his harmonica is featured on most of Waters' classic recordings of the 1950s. As a guitarist, Little Walter recorded three songs for the small Parkway label with Waters and
Baby Face Leroy Foster (reissued on CD by
Delmark Records as
The Blues World of Little Walter in 1993) and on a session for Chess backing pianist Eddie Ware. His guitar playing was also occasionally featured on early Chess sessions with Waters and
Jimmy Rogers. Jacobs had put his career as a bandleader on hold when he joined Waters' band, but he stepped out front again when he recorded under his own name for Chess' subsidiary label
Checker Records on May 12, 1952. The first completed take of the first song attempted at his debut session became his first number one hit, spending eight weeks at the top of the
Billboard R&B chart. The song was "
Juke", and it is still the only harmonica instrumental ever to be a number one hit on the
Billboard R&B chart. The original title of the track file was "Your Cat Will Play", but was renamed at Leonard Chess' suggestion. (Three of his other harmonica instrumentals also made the Billboard R&B top 10 while "Juke" was still on the charts.: "Off the Wall" reached number eight, "Roller Coaster" reached number six, and "Sad Hours" reached number two.) "Juke" was the biggest hit to date for any artist on Chess and its affiliated labels and one of the biggest national R&B hits of 1952 securing Walter's position on the Chess artist roster for the next decade. Following the pattern of "Juke", most of Little Walter's singles released in the 1950s featured a vocal performance on one side and a harmonica instrumental on the other. Walter or Chess A&R man
Willie Dixon wrote many of his vocal numbers or they adapted them from earlier blues themes. In general, his sound was more modern and up tempo than the popular Chicago blues of the day. His harmonica phrasing was influenced by popular swing and saxophone players, rhythmically freer and less rigid than that of other, contemporary blues harmonica players. and no external injuries were noted on the death certificate. His body was buried at St. Mary's Cemetery, in
Evergreen Park, Illinois, on February 22, 1968. ==Legacy==