Original Rolling Stone

Original Rolling Stone

• music

Among the most unsung of Delta blues greats is Robert Wilkins. A Mississippian who staked his claim to American musical history out of Memphis, Wilkins's plaintive voice and innovative songwriting produced a breadth of material unmatched by all but a few recorded bluesmen. This essential collection represents sessions from 1928 through 1935, when Wilkins enjoyed his greatest popularity, giving the world such finery as "I Do Blues," "Rollin' Stone (Parts 1 and 2)," "Jailhouse Blues," and "I'll Go with Her." His poignantly confessional "That's No Way to Get Along" from 1929 was recreated some 35 years later by the Reverend Robert Wilkins as "Prodigal Son," and covered by the Rolling Stones on <i>Beggars Banquet</i>. Another unusual number is the scandalous "Old Jim Canan's," the subject of which is a notorious Memphis barrelhouse run by bootlegger Jim Kinane, where blues-loving patrons were "drinkin' whiskey and sniffin' cocaine" until the cops came in 1916. <i>--Alan Greenberg</i>