[2][3] He taught himself to play the guitar and fronted a blues band in Greenville, Mississippi.
[2] He played on Maxwell Street and later was a regular fixture for over three decades in local clubs, particularly on the South Side.
[1][2] In the early 1990s, Banks acted as mentor to the then-teenaged blues musician Marty Sammon.
[5] Banks's debut album, Let Me Be Your Teddy Bear, was released in June 1998 on the Austrian label Wolf.
[7] He died of heart failure in the South Shore Hospital, in Chicago, in May 2011, aged 78.