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Notes: Littlefield was born in El Campo, Texas, and grew up in Houston with his mother. By 1947, at the age of sixteen, Littlefield was already a local attraction on many of Houston's Dowling Street clubs and was recording for local record shop proprietor Eddie Henry who ran his own label, "Eddie's". He formed his first band with saxophonist Don Wilkerson, a school friend.
Littlefield was strongly influenced by boogie-woogie pianist Albert Ammons. A particular favourite of his was Ammons' Swanee River Boogie, which he later recorded for Eddie's Records. Other major influences on Littlefield's style were Texas musicians Charles Brown and Amos Milburn Littlefield learned most of their "chops" and soon developed his own distinctive "triplet style", which, by the early 1950s, was widely copied in the R&B field, particularly by Fats Domino who incorporated it into his successful New Orleans rhythms.
His first recording, "Little Willie’s Boogie" was a hit in Texas in 1949, and brought him to the attention of Jules Bihari, one of the Bihari brothers of Modern Records in Los Angeles, California, who were searching for a performer to rival the success of Amos Milburn. Bihari flew to Houston in July 1949 to investigate the city's black entertainment venues and heard of a "teenage wonder boy pianist" who was causing a stir at the Eldorado Ballroom. Bihari went to hear Littlefield and soon arranged for an audition at a local studio. The session was captured on acetate disc, with Bihari, clearly audible in the background, calling for Littlefield to play the popular R&B tunes of the day. More