Jim Jackson
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Promotional photo of Jim Jackson published in the American Epic companion booklet. |

Jim Jackson and Robert Wilkins later moved to Memphis as well, and all of them played in the gambling halls along Beale, at parties and Sunday suppers given by white folks, and on the medicine show platforms. These shows toured all the rural areas of the south, setting up tents and dispensing concoctions based on alcohol, with a few additions to give them a medicinal flavor.
Jim Jackson travelled extensively with different medicine shows from about 1915 until the early 'thirties. He started with Silas Green's and Abbey Sutton's shows; then for a long time travelled with the Rabbit Foot Minstrels, one of the largest groups. Apart from singing, he danced and told jokes, helping to sell the medicine that was 'guaranteed' to do you good. He is also recalled as having toured with the Red Rose Minstrel Show, all over the south, in 1928; he was joined by Speckled Red, with whom, on one occasion, he recorded.
Furry Lewis: "used to hear about him down in Greenville. He used to travel with the medicine shows, you know. I played with Jim Jackson. You know, he could pick a guitar just like I did. Sometimes just us two was playing together. Jim Jackson's been dead about thirty years ago. I couldn't tell you if he was two or three years older or younger than I. We was about the same age."
Gus Cannon: "I was at the same recording session as Jim Jackson when he cut Kansas City Blues. We used to play together in Memphis in the streets and, in medicine shows. Sometimes he would play with Frank Stokes too. The people who recorded Jim didn't allow me to play with him on the records. He was from Hernando."
Willie Borum : 'When I was a little kid in the early 'twenties Jim Jackson stayed on 1150 Grant in North Memphis. He would play on the streets around there for his neighbors. I learned playing some guitar from him. He recorded the Kansas City Blues. They carried him to Chicago to record it. He'd been singing it for a long time then. He used to play where I was living, you know. He left Memphis and never came back. He was a boy living on Beale. He was taught guitar by his father.'
Most folks remember "Kansas City Blues." It was very popular. He used to go around playing on the streets all over Memphis. Sometimes he was with Frank Stokes.' Jim Jackson died on February 18, 1933 in Memphis, but he was buried in his home town of Hernando.