He honed his musical skills on harmonica and guitar, performing with older bluesmen including Sonny Boy Williamson II, Sunnyland Slim, Honeyboy Edwards, and others.

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.

He based it on Louis Jordan's saxophone playing which was jazzier and swinging and rhythmically less rigid than that of other, contemporary blues harmonica players.

By 1955, the members of the Aces had each separately left Walter to pursue other opportunities and were initially replaced by the guitarists Robert "Junior" Lockwood and Luther Tucker and drummer Odie Payne.

By the late 1950s, Little Walter no longer employed a regular full-time band, instead hiring various players as needed from the large pool of blues musicians in Chicago.

[1] Jacobs often played the harmonica on records by others in the Chess stable of artists, including Jimmy Rogers, John Brim, Rocky Fuller, Memphis Minnie, the Coronets, Johnny Shines, Floyd Jones, Bo Diddley, and Shel Silverstein.

[1] Jacobs suffered from alcoholism and had a notoriously short temper, which in the late 1950s led to violent altercations, minor scrapes with the law, and increasingly irresponsible behavior.

Further video of another recently discovered television appearance in Germany during this same tour, showing Jacobs performing his songs "My Babe," "Mean Old World," and others, was released on DVD in Europe in January 2009; it is the only known footage of him singing.

[1] A few months after returning from his second European tour, Little Walter was involved in a fight while taking a break from a performance at a nightclub on the South Side of Chicago.

He apparently sustained only minor injuries in this altercation, but they aggravated the damage he had suffered in previous violent encounters, and he died in his sleep at the apartment of a girlfriend, at 209 East 54th Street in Chicago, early the following morning.

[13] The music journalist Bill Dahl described Little Walter as "king of all post-war blues harpists", who "took the humble mouth organ in dazzling amplified directions that were unimaginable prior to his ascendancy.

[1][2] Biographer Tony Glover notes Little Walter directly influenced Junior Wells, James Cotton, George "Harmonica" Smith, and Carey Bell.

[1] He includes Jerry Portnoy, Mark Hummel, Rick Estrin of Little Charlie & the Nightcats, Kim Wilson, Paul Butterfield, Brian Jones and Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones, Rod Piazza, Lester Butler of Red Devils fame, and William Clarke among those who later studied his technique and helped popularize it with younger players.