Walkers influence on postwar blues is so profound as to be almost incalculable. His most significant musical contribution was the invention of the electric blues style. Walker was also a noted composer of blues tunes, his single most famous being "Stormy Monday," although "T-bone Shuffle" and "Im Still in Love with You" are also seminal recordings from the late 40's. All of this talent was promoted by a dynamic stage presence, T-Bone being one of the first postwar artists to methodically employ a routine including splits, duck walking with his guitar and playing it above his head. A sharp-dressing man he was the epitome of new style blues and was the role model for all who meant to follow.

Walker was born in Linden, Texas, but moved when still in infancy with his family to Dallas. During his teens he became a companion of Blind Lemmon Jefferson, who was known to his family and was a man used to having helpful acolytes around. This left something of a mark on Walker in the way he used classic Jefferson and Texas call-and-response patterns between his voice and guitar. As he grew older, T-Bone joined traveling medicine shows, mostly playing banjo and developing his stage antics and showmanship. He attracted sufficient attention to cut his first record, as Oak Cliff T-Bone, for Columbia in December 1929. In 1935 he went on the road with a vaudiville act: while on this tour he met Charlie Christian in Oklahom City and was amazed by the jazz players genius.

Walker continued west ending up in L.A. in 36 and fitting into the very beginnings of small-group blues which emerged from the jump-music scene of the close of the decade. By then Walker was a singer with the Les Hite band a group freely combining boogie shuffles with big band riffs and vocals. His "T-Bone Blues" was recorded in 1940, though he was not the guitar soloist. By Now he had been woodshedding with Gibsons electric guitar package long enough to unveil it to unsuspecting LA audiences late in 1940. Running his own small group, he quickly established a following during 1941 and eventually signed a recording deal with Capital in 1942, cutting just one session before the Petrillo recording ban kept him out of the studios for another year.

A move to Chicago, where he played to packed houses for an extended season at the Rhumboogie Club and recorded for the fledgling Rhumboogie label in 1945, saw the recording of "T-Bone Boogie," but by the fall of 1946 he was back in L.A. and recording for the Black & White label. Within a year "Stormy Monday" had been released and become a massive hit. Of the millions who were powerfully influenced by the songs style, and T-Bones singing and playing on it, was a young BB King. During the 1950s he keprt very busy, touring America and abroad. One greart album. T-Bone Blues, made for Atlantic, placed him with both Jazz and Blues groups and found him equally at ease in both contexts, but after the final sessions for Atlantic he went unrecorded for five years.

By this time his relentless touring, fast lifestyle, and love of the bottle were wearing him down. His career on the back burner, he retired from performing in owing to health problems and died the next year.