Big Walter Horton
| Big Walter Horton | |
|---|---|
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Walter Horton |
| Also known as | Shakey Horton, Mumbles Horton |
| Born |
April 6, 1921 Horn Lake, Mississippi, United States |
| Origin | Memphis, Tennessee |
| Died | December 8, 1981 (aged 60) Chicago, Illinois, United States |
| Genres | Blues |
| Occupation(s) | Musician |
| Instruments | Harmonica |
| Years active | Late 1920s–1981 |
| Labels | Okeh, Vocalion, States, Ace, Alligator, Blind Pig, among others |
Walter Horton, better known as Big Walter (Horton) or Walter "Shakey" Horton (April 6, 1921 – December 8, 1981), was an American blues harmonica player. A quiet, unassuming, shy man, he is remembered as one of the premier harmonica players in the history of blues.Willie Dixon once called Horton "the best harmonica player I ever heard."
Horton was born in Horn Lake, Mississippi. He was playing the harmonica by the time he was five years old. In his early teens, he lived in Memphis, Tennessee. He claimed that his earliest recordings were done there in the late 1920s with the Memphis Jug Band, but there is no documentation of them, and some blues researchers have stated that this story was likely to have been fabricated by Horton. (He also claimed to have taught some harmonica to Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson I, but these claims are unsubstantiated and, in the case of Williamson, who was older than Horton, suspect.)
Like many of his peers, he lived on a meager income during much of his career and endured racial discrimination in the racially segregated United States. In the 1930s he played with numerous blues performers in the Mississippi Delta region. It is generally accepted that his first recordings were made in Memphis, backing the guitarist Little Buddy Doyle on Doyle's recordings for Okeh Records and Vocalion Records in 1939. These recordings were in the acoustic duo format popularized by Sleepy John Estes and his harmonicist Hammie Nixon, among others. On these recordings, Horton's style was not yet fully realized, but there are clear hints of what was to come. He eventually stopped playing the harp for a living, because of poor health, and worked mainly outside the music industry in the 1940s. By the early 1950s, he was playing music again. He was among the first to record for Sam Phillips at Sun Records in Memphis, who later recorded Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash. His recordings for Sun include piano accompaniment by the young Phineas Newborn, Jr., who later gained fame as a jazz pianist. Horton's instrumental track recorded around this time, "Easy", was based on Ivory Joe Hunter's "I Almost Lost My Mind".
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