If you really want to hear what Little Walter sounded like in his pre-amplified days and early stages of development with the Muddy Waters band, this is the one to get. The title is a bit of a misnomer as Walter is featured more as a sideman to Baby Face Leroy, Muddy Waters and others on early Parkway, Regal and Savoy sides, but it's clear that Walter at this stage of the game should have been paying royalties to both Sonny Boys and Walter Horton in particular. One of the high points fe   [ read more ]

CD $12.33

Although he sang on occasion, and played guitar, too, Little Walter will always be revered for his harmonica skills, and in his own way he was the John Coltrane of the instrument, creating and shaping the sound of the "Mississippi saxophone" into the very template of the Chicago blues style, and any short list of blues harp players starts with this amazing musician. This three-disc, 60-track set provides a balanced overview of Little Walter's career, and includes solo sides as well as samples   [ read more ]

CD $23.73

This 24-track compilation from the French Classics label focuses on Little Walter's crucial early sessions for Parkway, Ora-Nelle, and Checker. At the time of these recordings, the distorted amplified sound of Walter Jacobs' harmonica was helping map out the postwar blues idiom as an important presence in Muddy Waters' band, while under his own name Walter released such electric Chicago blues classics as "I Just Keep Loving Her," "Tell Me Mama," "Lights Out," {&"Blues    [ read more ]

CD $20.88

CD $20.88

It is no exaggeration to call Little Walter the Jimi Hendrix of the electric harp: he redefined what the instrument was and what it could do, pushing the instrument so far into the future that his music still sounds modern decades after it was recorded. Little Walter wasn't the first musician to amplify the harmonica but he arguably was the first to make the harp sound electric, twisting twitching, vibrant runs out of his instrument; nearly stealing the show from Muddy Waters on his earliest {@C   [ read more ]

CD $75.98

As MCA reconfigures their Chess catalog, this 20-track single-disc compilation now takes the place of their original 12-track Best of Little Walter collection, a landmark blues album which had remained in print for over three decades. His Best (Chess 50th Anniversary Collection) reprises ten of those seminal tracks (leaving off the echoey "Blue Light" and "You Better Watch Yourself," the latter being available on the two-disc anthology The Essential Little Walter) and brings ten othe   [ read more ]

CD $9.48

CD $10.43

If there's a blues harmonica player alive today who doesn't have this landmark album in their collection, they're either lying or had their copy stolen by another harmonica player. This 12-song collection is the one that every harmonica player across the board cut their teeth on. All the hits are here: "My Babe," "Blues With a Feeling," "You Better Watch Yourself," "Off the Wall," "Mean Old World," and the instrumental that catapulted him from the sideman chair in Muddy Waters' band   [ read more ]

CD $31.33

CD $43.68

Louisiana-born Chicago blues harp legend Little Walter and British playwright Joe Orton had one nasty thing in common. Each was beaten to death with a hammer -- Orton at the age of 34 in London on August 9, 1967 and Walter at the age of 37 in Chicago on February 14, 1968. Two very different lives were both abruptly terminated with grisly violence. Both were mavericks in their field, difficult to contain, posthumously idolized. Little Walter came up working with Bluebird recording artist   [ read more ]

CD $18.03

CD $10.43

Many blues fans identify this album by the scar on its front cover, and this doesn't mean that their copy got damaged lying around in the used-record pile. A larger than life black-and-white photograph of Little Walter fills the front cover with a visual impact that just cannot be matched in the petite world of compact discs. A jewel case would also be too much protection against the scar in the middle of Little Walter's forehead. Biographical information on this artist no doubt provides the explan   [ read more ]

CD $31.33