Written by harmonica player Stan Lewis it was recorded by another harmonica player, Little Walter on Chess Records. Marion Walter Jacobs (1930-68) was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame in 2008, the first and, to date, only artist to be inducted specifically as a harmonica player. Arriving in Chicago in 1946, he occasionally found work as a guitarist but garnered more attention for his already highly developed harmonica playing. Jacobs, reportedly frustrated with having his harmonica drowned out by electric guitars, adopted a simple but previously little-used method: He cupped a small microphone in his hands along with his harmonica and plugged the microphone into a public address system or guitar amplifier. He could thus compete with any guitarist's volume. However, unlike other contemporary blues harp players, such as Sonny Boy Williamson I and Snooky Pryor, who like many other harmonica players had also begun using the newly available amplifier technology around the same time solely for added volume, Little 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. After many years as a sideman, Walter stepped into the limelight and became his own bandleader for Chess’s subsidiary label, Checker Records in 1952. The first take of the first song he recorded at his initial recording session, [Juke](https://youtu.be/yKcC1-l2104) became his inaugural hit, spending eight weeks at number-one on the Billboard R&B chart. The song remains the only harmonica instrumental ever to hit number one on Billboard. To this day “Juke” is the most successful track of any artist on the Chess label. Walter had fourteen top-ten hits on the Billboard R&B charts between ’52 and ’58, including two number one hits, the later hit being “My Babe” in 1955. Jacobs suffered from alcoholism and had a notoriously short temper, which in late 1950s led to violent altercations, minor scrapes with the law, and increasingly irresponsible behavior. 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 early the following morning. While some claim that his death was the result of a blow to the head from the brother of one of Walter’s many female companions, others dispute this, saying that he was smacked across the head with a pipe over a bad gambling debt. The official cause of death stated on Little Walter's death certificate was coronary thrombosis (a blood clot in the heart); evidence of external injuries was so insignificant that the police reported that his death was due to "unknown or natural causes", and no external injuries were noted on the death certificate. While covered by many artists over the years the version most likely known was recorded by [Pat Travers](https://hooktube.com/watch?v=H6pnZh1_ExE).