Little Arthur Duncan biography

(1934-2008)

Little Arthur Duncan was born in Indianola, Mississippi, in 1934. He was raised on the Woodburn Plantation, where B.B. King grew up. Duncan began his musical career as a drummer, but after he moved to Chicago in 1950, he met Little Walter and took up the harmonica. For a while during the 1950s, Duncan shared a house with Little Walter and Jimmy Reed. During these years Duncan sang and played in blues clubs all over Chicago. Most of the time he had his own band, but often he would work with artists such as Hip Linkchain, John Brim, and Floyd Jones. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s Little Arthur Duncan worked construction jobs during the week, and played blues around Chicago on weekends. By the 1989s he was working regularly as some of Chicago’s premier blues clubs, including Kingston Mines, Rosa’s, B.L.U.E.S. on Halstead, and Lilly’s. In 1989 he recorded an album called Bad Reputation for Blues King Records. Problems with Little Arthur Duncan’s teeth kept him from performing during the early 1990s. But in 1998 he acquired a whole new set of pearly whites, and he has returned to the blues scene with a vengeance. Duncan passed away August 20, 2008 at Kindred Hospital in Northlake, after spending several months in the hospital as the result of a stroke.

Little Arthur Duncan photo gallery