An American blues guitarist and vocalist, he was one of the most popular of the Piedmont blues artists that also included Reverend Gary Davis, Blind Willie McTell and Blind Blake.

He was born in Wadesboro, North Carolina, one of a family of 10 children, but after his mother's death he moved with his father to Rockingham. As a boy he learned to play the guitar and also learned from older singers the field hollers, country rags and traditional songs and blues popular in poor, rural areas.

He married young and worked as a labourer, but began to lose his eyesight in his mid-teens (variously reported as ulcers behind the eyes as a result of snow-blindness or having chemicals thrown in his face by an ex-girlfriend).

By 1928 he was completely blind, and turned to whatever employment he could find as a singer and entertainer. By studying the records of country blues players like Blind Blake, he became a formidable guitarist, and played on street corners and at house parties in North Carolina. While playing around the tobacco warehouses, he developed a local following which included guitarist Gary Davis and harmonica player Saunders Terrell, better known as Sonny Terry, who were both also blind, and washboard player George Washington.

In 1935, Burlington record store manager and talent scout James Baxter Long got him a recording session with the American Recording Company (ARC). With Davis and Washington, he recorded several tracks in New York, including the traditional Rag, Mama, Rag. To promote the material, Long decided to rename Allen as Blind Boy Fuller.

Over the next 5 years, Fuller made over 120 recordings, which appeared on several labels. His style of singing was rough and direct, and his lyrics explicit and uninhibited as he drew from every aspect of his experience as an underprivileged person on the streets - pawnshops, jailhouses, sickness, death - with an honesty that lacked sentimentality. Although he was not sophisticated, his artistry as a folk singer lay in the honesty and integrity of his self-expression. His songs contained desire, love, jealousy, disappointment, menace and humor.

In April 1936, Fuller recorded 10 solo performances, and also recorded with guitarist Floyd Council. The following year, he recorded for the Decca label, but then reverted to ARC. Later in 1937, he made his first recordings with Sonny Terry. In 1938 Fuller, who was described as having a fiery temper, was imprisoned for shooting a pistol at his wife, wounding her in the leg, but was soon released. Fuller's last two recording sessions took place in New York during 1940.

Fuller's repertoire included a number of popular double entendre 'hokum' songs such as Truckin' My Blues Away (the origin of the phrase 'keep on truckin'), and Get Your Yas Yas Out (the origin of a later Rolling Stones album title). Though much of his material was culled from traditional folk and blues numbers, he possessed a formidable finger-picking guitar style, using a steel National resonator guitar.

Fuller underwent a suprapubic cystostomy in July 1940 (probably an outcome of excessive drinking) but continued to require medical treatment. He died in Durham, North Carolina in 1941.