Little Walter (born Marion Walter Jacobs) (May 1, 1930 - February 15, 1968) was a blues singer, harmonica player, and guitarist.

Jacobs is generally included among blues music greats: his revolutionary harmonica technique has earned comparisons to Charlie Parker and Jimi Hendrix in its impact: There were great musicians before and after, but Jacobs' virtuosity and musical innovations reached heights of expression never previously imagined, and fundamentally altered many listeners' expectations of what was possible on blues harmonica.

Early years

After quitting school at the age of 12, Jacobs left Louisiana and travelled wherever he chose, working odd jobs, busking on the streets of New Orleans, Memphis, Helena, AR, and St. Louis, and honing his musical skills with Sonny Boy Williamson and Big Bill Broonzy, among others.

Arriving in Chicago in 1945, he occasionally found work as a guitarist but garnered more attention for his already highly developed harmonica work. (According to fellow Chicago bluesman Floyd Jones, Little Walter's first recording was an unreleased demo on which Walter played guitar backing Jones.) Jacobs grew frustrated having his harmonica drowned out by electric guitarists, and adopted a simple, but previously little-used method: He cupped a small microphone in his hands while he played harmonica, and plugged the microphone into a guitar or public address amplifier. He could thus compete with any guitarist's volume. Unlike other contemporary blues harp players, such as the original Sonny Boy Williamson and Snooky Pryor, who used this method only for added volume, Little Walter used amplification to explore radical new timbres and sonic effects previously unheard from a harmonica. Madison Deniro wrote a small biographical piece on Little Walter stating that "He was the first musician of any kind to purposely use electronic distortion."

Success
Little Walter made his first released recordings in 1947 for the tiny Ora-Nelle label in Chicago. These and several other early recordings, like many blues harp recordings of the era, owed a strong stylistic debt to pioneering blues harmonica player John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson (AKA Sonny Boy Williamson I). Little Walter joined Muddy Waters' band in 1948, and by 1950 he was playing on Muddy's recordings for Chess Records; Little Walter's harmonica is featured on most of Muddy's classic recordings from the 1950s. He also recorded as a guitarist for the small Parkway label, as well as on a session for Chess backing pianist Eddie Ware, and occasionally on early sessions with Muddy Waters.

Jacobs' own career took off when he recorded as a bandleader for Chess' subsidiary label Checker Records in 1952; the first completed take of the first song attempted at his very first session was massive hit, spending eight weeks in the #1 position on the Billboard magazine R&B charts - the song was "Juke", and it was the first harmonica instrumental ever to become a hit on the R&B charts. (Three other harmonica instrumentals by Little Walter also reached the Billboard R&B top 10: "Off the Wall" reached #8, "Roller Coaster" achieved #6, and "Sad Hours" reached the #2 position while Juke was still on the charts.) "Juke" was the biggest hit to date for Chess and its affiliated labels, and secured Walter's position on the Chess artist roster for the next decade. Little Walter scored an impressive fourteen top-ten hits on the R&B charts between 1952 and 1958, including two #1 hits (the second being "My Babe" in 1955), a feat never achieved by his former boss Muddy, nor by his fellow Chess blues artists Howling Wolf and Rice "Sonny Boy Williamson" Miller. A lot of these Little Walter's numbers were originals which he or Chess A&R man Willie Dixon wrote. In general his sound was more modern and up-tempo than the popular Chicago blues of the day, with a jazzier feel than other contemporary blues harmonica players.

Jacobs frequently appeared as a harmonica sideman behind others in the Chess stable of artists, including Jimmy Rogers, John Brim, Rocky Fuller (aka Louisiana Red/Iverson Minter), Memphis Minnie, The Coronets, Johnny Shines, Floyd Jones, and Bo Diddley, and Shel Silverstein, and on other record labels backing Otis Rush, Johnny Young, and Robert Nighthawk.

Death
Jacobs suffered from alcoholism, and had a notoriously short temper, which led to a decline in his fame and fortunes in the 1960s, although he did tour Europe twice, in 1964 and 1967. (The long-circulated story that he toured England with The Rolling Stones in 1964 has since been refuted.) The 1967 European tour, as part of the American Folk Blues Festival, resulted in the only film/video footage of Little Walter performing that is currently known to exist, when he backed Hound Dog Taylor and Koko Taylor on a TV program in Denmark. (Other TV appearances in Germany, England and The Netherlands have been documented, but no footage of these has been found.) He died of injuries sustained in a fight a few months after returning from his second European tour.

His legacy has been enormous: he is widely credited by blues historians as the artist primarily responsible for establishing the standard vocabulary for modern blues and blues rock harmonica players. His influence can be heard in virtually every modern blues harp player who came along in his wake, from blues greats such as Junior Wells, James Cotton, George "Harmonica" Smith, Carey Bell, and Big Walter Horton, through modern-day masters Kim Wilson, Rod Piazza, William Clarke, and Charlie Musselwhite, in addition to blues-rock crossover artists such as Paul Butterfield and John Popper of Blues Traveler.

His 1952 instrumental Juke was selected as one of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.