Although we’ve picked Slim’s rockinest tracks here, there is variety in his piano and vocal performances, and you can still hear all the elements of blues and gospel and R&B that shaped him. When he took that music to Chicago in the 1940s and formed an R&B group, The House Rockers, many of the recordings he made then were firmly in the advance guard of rock and roll. Slim always maintained a fine band of mainly Memphis musicians. These included sax players Ernest Cotton and Alex Atkins, and particularly the sensational guitar player Matt Murphy. ‘Guitar’ Murphy gained great prominence through the ‘Blues Brothers’ movie, and bluesman and producer Willie Dixon told ‘Living Blues’ that Matt ‘is definitely the best guitar player, the best one I heard anywhere.’ Talking in Paris in 1968, Memphis Slim said: ‘I’ve had a good life. Well, I had a very bad life, but it took a bad life to make it a good life for me. And I mean by that that I played my dues very early, and now I think I am reaping the benefit.’ By the time he died in 1988, Slim had become known around the world and the U.S. Senate had resolved that ‘Memphis Slim become an ambassador at large of good will for the United States.’ The Memphis Music hall of fame and the Blues Foundation hall of fame both have Memphis Slim among their inducted members. The Rock and Roll hall does not, but maybe when they hear these 29 rocking tracks they will find a place for the man who always rocked the house wherever he played.