Freedom Train: The Texas Blues Of Lil Son Jackson

Although the term "Texas Blues" is rather more synonymous with electric guitar slingers like T-Bone Walker and Albert Collins, acoustic Country Blues performers like Lightning Hopkins and MELVIN "LIL' SON" JACKSON were equally popular on their home patch. Jackson emerged in the late 1940s and made the R&B Top 10 with his first release, 'Freedom Train Blues', for the Gold Star label, on which he was billed as "Little Son" Jackson, in 1948. Although none showed up on the national R&B charts, his later Gold Star 78s were all massive regional "hits", selling in their tens of thousands to local jukebox operators. He subsequently recorded extensively for Imperial, for whom his most notable release was 'Rockin' And Rollin' (1950), a disc which proved influential beyond all reasonable expectations, providing the template for Muddy Waters' 'Rock Me' (1956) and B. B. King's 'Rock Me Baby' (1964), and going on to become a major Blues standard.