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, topical songs like Sales Tax, and the 1931 tracks The World Is Going Wrong and I’ve Got Blood in My Eyes for You that Bob Dylan later recorded. We follow his drift through New Orleans to Chicago with the Great Migration, his fade as electric blues took over, his 1960s folk revival comeback, his death in 1975, and the 2009 Killer Blues benefit concert that finally placed a headstone on his grave.

• Why the lone-genius Delta blues myth does not fit a lifelong collaborator like Vinson
• Aliases, flat fees and no royalties: the economics of the 1920s race-record industry
• Recording 100 flawless three-minute sides direct to wax during the Depression
• How a gig for a white audience in Greenwood produced Sitting on Top of the World
• The Grammy Hall of Fame honor in 2008 and the headstone finally placed in 2009