Geoff Travis, Rough Trade;

I met Jim Dickinson only the once. It was in his capacity as the father of Luther and Cody Dickinson, who we were signing to our record label. They recorded their album in the studio,which resided in the barn that the family owned, apparently next to the trailers that they lived in. Jim had one trailer, the kids another. The kids called themselves the North Mississipi All Stars and they played a version of the Hill Country Blues that they had grown up, with RL Burnside as their mentor and friend. Jim Dickinson was extraordinarily proud of his boys and was very pleased that they had fallen into the hands of what he called “a music man”. He anointed me with that title and it was an honour to be called that by someone I regarded as a real music man through and through. If he was the man that played piano on the Stones “Wild Horses” and piano on Aretha’s “Don’t Play that Song for Me'” and absolutely nothing else, he would have been blue blooded rock and roll royalty to me. And he certainly was that man.