Real Music: Robert Walker 
"Just a Country Boy"  

From the album Robert "Bilbo" 
Walker: Promised Album, used by
permission of Rooster Blues Records 
http://www.roosterblues.com

When Bakersfield, CA blues man Robert Walker would return to his home in Bobo, MS, he always played a gig at Thompson grocery, where he started playing music in the 1950's. Walker would set up his equipment in the back of the store between the poker machines and shelves of groceries and the little shotgun-shack store would be transformed into a rollicking juke joint, often until the pre-dawn hours, in much the same way rural homes and businesses became the social centers of plantation life throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.  

Until the store burned in December of 1996, Bobo resident Debra Hooks (shown here dancing) never missed one of Walker's impromptu shows. Hooks, who says her love of music comes from her late blues-musician father, goes out dancing every weekend. "Everybody else acts like they're scared to get up. I'm sorry, I ain't fixing to sit down," says Hooks. "I hear some music, I got to get up. Ain't nobody got to dance with me. That's what you go out for, to have fun." Thompson grocery burned down in December of 1996.