Burks was born on September 17, 1931, near Greenwood, Mississippi, the 14th and youngest child in a family of sharecroppers.[1] When he was a child one of his brothers was lynched by the Ku Klux Klan.[2]
After moving to Chicago in 1946 he worked in a steel mill. While he did not perform blues because of his religious beliefs, he often attended clubs on the West Side of Chicago.[1] In addition to his steel mill job, Burks was a minister in the Apostolic faith and had a storefront church, but he switched to playing blues full-time after the riots precipitated by the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968.[2]
He played so often on Maxwell Street Market in the late 1960s and 1970s that he became known as "Jewtown Eddie", after the local name for the area.[1] During this period he also worked as a sideman with the likes of Eddie Shaw and Jimmy Dawkins.[2] He released his first single, "Lowdown Dog", in 1977, and this was followed up by two further releases.[1] However, Burks remained largely unknown outside Chicago until 1990 when he released his debut album Vampire Woman on Rising Son Records (later renamed Rising Son Blues), a label he founded with his wife Maureen Walker.[1] Following this, his solo career took off, and he released further albums, toured frequently, and gained steady work on the festival circuit.[2] In 1994 he appeared in the Academy Award nominated documentary Blues Highway.[1]
After his 70th birthday his health declined as a result of diabetes,[2] but he continued to play in the Chicago clubs until his death in a car accident near Miller, Indiana on January 27, 2005.[1]
