Alan Christie Wilson was born to John Wilson and Shirley Brigham in the Boston suburb of Arlington, MA on July 4 1943. Wilson was highly sensitive, introverted, and intelligent, which set him apart from his peers. He became engrossed in music as a child after his step mother bought him a jazz record. Some of Wilson's first efforts at performing music publicly came during his teen years when he learned trombone, teaching himself the instrumental parts from the aforementioned jazz record. Later he formed a jazz ensemble with other musically oriented friends from school called Crescent City Hot Five. At this time, Wilson was into traditional New Orleans music, and later, Classical European and Indian music. Wilson developed a fascination with blues music after a friend played a Muddy Waters record for him, The Best of Muddy Waters. Inspired by Little Walker, he took up harmonica, and soon after, the acoustic guitar after hearing a John Lee Hooker record. After graduating from Arlington High School in 1961, he majored in music at Boston University. His academics earned him a National Merit Scholarship and the F.E. Thompson Scholarship Fund from the Town of Arlington. Wilson developed into a dedicated student of early blues, writing a number of articles for the Broadside of Boston newspaper and the folk-revival magazine Little Sandy Review, including a piece on bluesman Robert Pete Williams.

Wilson met Harvard student and fellow blues enthusiast David Evans in a record store, and the two began playing as a team around the Cambridge coffeehouse folk-blues circuit. With Evans on vocals and guitar, Wilson on harmonica and occasionally second guitar. The two played a repertoire of mostly classic-era blues covers. The early 1960's saw a "rediscovery" of pre-war blues artists by young, white blues enthusiasts, including Mississippi John Hurt, Booker White, Skip James and Son House. After Son House's "rediscovery" in 1964, it was evident that House had forgotten his songs due to his long absence from music. Wilson showed him how to play again the songs House had recorded in 1930 and 1942. Wilson played House's old recordings for him and demonstrated them on guitar to revive House's memory. House recorded Father of Folk Blues for Columbia Records in 1965. Two of the selections on the set featured Wilson on harmonica and guitar. In a letter to Jazz Journal published in the September 1965 issue, Son House's manager Dick Waterman remarked the following about the project and Wilson: "It is a solo album, except for backing on two cuts by a 21-year-old White boy from Cambridge by the name of Al Wilson. Al plays second guitar on Empire State Express and harp on Levee Camp Moan."

Due to Wilson's extreme near sidedness, and scholarly nature, his friend, John Fahey, "Father of the American Fingerstyle Guitar" gave him the nickname "The Blind Owl." After moving to California, Wilson met fellow blues enthusiast Bob Hite at a record store and together founded Canned Heat in 1965. Named after Tommy Johnson's 1928 song "Canned Heat Blues," about an alcoholic who turned to drinking the cooking fuel Sterno. Originally beginning as a jug band, Canned Heat initially comprised of Hite on vocals and Wilson on bottleneck guitar. The band started recording for Liberty Records in 1967, releasing their first album Canned Heat featuring reworkings of older blues songs. Their first big live performance was at the Monterey Pop Festival on June 17, 1967 where they performed renditions of "Rollin and Tumblin," "Bullfrog Blues," and "Dust My Broom."

Heavily influenced by Skip James, Wilson began singing similar to James' high pitch. Some of his first singing attempts took place behind a closed bedroom door; and when a family member overheard him, he was embarrassed. Wilson eventually perfected the high tenor for which he would become known. Wilson wrote and sang the band's break out hit "On the Road Again,' an updated version of a 1950's composition by Floyd Jones, on the band's second release, Boogie With Canned Heat. In an interview with Down Beat magazine he remarked, "... on 'On The Road Again' I appear in six different capacities - three tamboura parts, harmonica, vocal, and guitar, all recorded at different times." "On The Road Again" peaked at number 16 on the Billboard Hot 100, and at number 8 on the UK singles charts earning the band immense popularity in Europe.

Canned Heat's third album included the band's best-known song, also sung by Wilson, "Going Up the Country." The song, an incarnation of Henry Thomas' "Bull-Doze Blues" was rewritten by Wilson and caught the "back to nature" attitude of the late 1960's. The tune was a hit in numerous countries around the world, peaking at number 11 in the US. The "rural hippie anthem" became the unofficial theme song for the Woodstock Festival where Canned Heat performed at sunset on August 16, 1969.

In May 1970, Canned Heat teamed up with John Lee Hooker, fulfilling a dream for Wilson of recording with one of his musical idols. It would be his last recording. The resulting double album "Hooker 'N' Heat" was the first in Hooker's career to make the charts. On the album, Hooker is heard wondering how Wilson was capable of following his guitar playing so well. Hooker was known to be a difficult performer to accompany, partly because of his disregard of song form, yet Wilson seemed to have no trouble at all following him on this album. Hooker states that "you [Wilson] musta been listenin' to my records all your life" and also stated that Wilson was the "greatest harmonica player ever."

On September 3, 1970, Wilson was found dead in his sleeping bag on the hillside behind Bob Hite's Topanga Canyon home where he often slept. He was 27 years old. An autopsy identified his manner and cause of death as accidental acute barbiturate intoxication. Wilson's death came just two weeks before the death of Jimi Hendrix, four weeks before the death of Janis Joplin, and ten months before the death of Jim Morrison, three artists who also died at the same age.

Besides being a gifted musician, Wilson was a passionate conservationist who loved reading books on botany and ecology. He often slept outdoors to be closer to nature, and amassed a large collection of pinecones, leaves and soil samples. Wilson communicated with trees and plants better than he did with people. In 1970 Wilson established a conservation fund called Music Mountain in the Skunk Cabbage Creek area of California to purchase a grove to be added to Redwood National Park. The purpose of this organization was to raise money for the preservation of the coastal redwood, which Wilson saw increasingly endangered by pollution, and urban sprawl. He wrote an essay called 'Grim Harvest', expressing his concern for the logging of redwoods, which was printed as the liner notes to Canned Heat's 1969 album Future Blues. It begins, "The redwoods of California are the tallest living things on Earth, nearly the oldest, and among the most beautiful to boot." In order to support his dream, Wilson's family purchased a "grove naming" in his memory through the Save the Redwoods League of California. The money donated to create this memorial will be used by the League to support redwood reforestation, research, education, and land acquisition of both new and old growth redwoods. Wilson was cremated and his ashes were later scattered in Sequoia National Park amongst the giant redwoods he passionately loved.