Level: 2
Tuning: Standard

Not all blues from the 1920s and 1930s were fingerpicked. Jim Jackson was a popular Memphis songster who basically strummed his guitar. He was a very popular blues and hokum singer, songster, and guitarist, whose recordings in the late 1920s were popular and influential on later artists. Jackson was born in Hernando, Mississippi and was raised on a farm, where he learned to play guitar. Around 1905 he started working as a singer, dancer, and musician in medicine shows, playing dances and parties often with other local musicians such as Gus Cannon, Frank Stokes and Robert Wilkins. He soon began traveling with the Rabbit Foot Minstrels, featuring Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, and other minstrel shows. In his last years he ran the Red Rose Minstrels, a traveling medicine show which toured Mississippi, Arkansas and Alabama.