Blues harmonica virtuoso Big Walter Horton was renowned for innovative contributions to the music of Memphis and Chicago. Born in Horn Lake, usually cited as April 6, 1918, though some sources give 1917 or 1921, he began as a child playing for tips on the streets of Memphis after growing up near this site, where he first made sounds by blowing into tin cans. Nicknamed “Shakey” because of nystagmus, he quit school in the first grade, supported himself with odd jobs, and played with local veterans including Jack Kelly, Garfield Akers, and Little Buddy Doyle, as well as young friends Johnny Shines, Floyd Jones, and Honeyboy Edwards, performing in parks, hotel lobbies, and nearby areas of Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri, and Tennessee. He began recording for Sam Phillips in 1951, and although the first record assigned to Phillips’s Sun label in 1952, credited to “Jackie Boy and Little Walter,” was never officially released, other tracks from Phillips’s studio appeared on the Modern and RPM labels under the name “Mumbles.” Later billed as “Shakey Horton” or “Big Walter,” he joined Muddy Waters’s band in Chicago in 1953. Willie Dixon, who called him the greatest harmonica player in the world, recorded him for labels including States, Cobra, and Argo, hired him for sessions by Otis Rush, Koko Taylor, Jimmy Rogers, Sunnyland Slim, and others, and Horton also toured and recorded with Willie Dixon’s Chicago Blues All Stars. He performed and recorded with Muddy Waters, Jimmy Rogers, Willie Dixon, Fleetwood Mac, Johnny Winter, and many others, including playing on Fleetwood Mac’s Blues Jam in Chicago, while full albums of his work appeared on labels such as Alligator, Chess, and Blind Pig. Though he toured internationally, much of his work in Chicago was in small clubs, and he also returned to playing for tips at Maxwell Street market. Celebrated as one of the most brilliant and creative harmonica musicians, he influenced players including Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson No. 2, and his technique and tone continue to be studied and emulated around the world. He died of heart failure on December 8, 1981; his death certificate also cited acute alcoholism. He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1982.