There is a specific, kind of rhythmic strumming on an acoustic guitar that always gets me.

Put that in a song, and I'm there.

Every single time. I'm that simple!

For 1000 songs project, I decided I finally needed to find out what that noise was actually called.

Turns out, it’s the "Roll and Tumble" riff.

My next step was to find an early recording of it. That search led me straight to a legend named Garfield Akers and a track called "Dough Roller Blues."

Dough Roller Blues by Garfield Akers

A part time legend.

He and his longtime collaborator, Mississippi Joe Callicott were from.Hernando, Mississippi.

Akers wasn't some touring rockstar. He lived his life as a sharecropper, caught in a brutal system of debt bondage.

They deliberately avoided the true heartland of the Mississippi Delta because they couldn't, because of that system.

Akers only left behind a tiny, four-track footprint of recorded sides. "Dough Roller Blues" was cut during his second session in February 1930.

Technically, it is a variation of Hambone Willie Newbern's "Roll and Tumble." But Akers injects it with his own energy.

It is actually debated whether Callicott was playing second guitar on this specific track because the instrumentation is so tightly intertwined. Callicott, for what it's worth, later claimed he was there in the room.

But Garfield Akers is in. I'm not sure if he lit the blues explosion but he was definitely there prodding it and gently blowing into it.