A mainstay of the Memphis blues, R&B and soul scenes from the mid-1940s until his death in 2001, the sometime DJ who billed himself on radio as ‘the world’s oldest teenager’ was the only man to record for the Bluff City’s three major independent record labels (Sun, Stax and Hi) and a lot more besides. With daughter Carla, Rufus Thomas more or less started the Stax label on its road to success, being one of the first and indeed also the last people to have a 45 issued by the label. Prior to that he’d built a career that began as a tap dancer in the 1930 to a point where he made his first records in the late 1940s. In this collection you can hear just about everything Rufus cut between our title track – his first release – up to his first Stax solo hit ‘The Dog’ in 1962. Rufus’ musical journey up to that point and beyond mirrors the evolution of the black American music scene in the south across the same time frame. Only a few of these records were anything more than local hits, but they all contribute significantly to a much bigger catalogue that is one of the most consistent of any artist whose career stretched across eight decades! If you want to find out where The Memphis Sound (of soul, anyway) began, this is a very good place to start looking.