Walter Vinson wrote Sitting on Top of the World, a song inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and covered by folk, blues and rock legends, yet for more than 30 years after his death he lay in an unmarked grave in Alsip, Illinois. This episode of musical archaeology traces the Bolton, Mississippi native born in 1901 from early collaborations with Son Spand, Rubin Lacy and Papa Charlie McCoy to the 1928 partnership with Lonnie Chatmon that became the Mississippi Sheiks.

We explore why Vinson recorded under aliases like Walter Jacobs to escape exploitative race-record contracts, the physical reality of cutting roughly 100 sides direct to disc during the Great Depression, and why the Sheiks broke up in 1933 despite being guaranteed sellers. The conversation covers the origin of Sitting on Top of the World after a white dance in Greenwood, topic ...