Levon told it just this way exactly in his book. He said he was so ashamed that Robbie and the other guys had to see how life really was in the South and the racism.

those English kids wanna play the blues so bad - and they do! famous SBW quote

Great story!
R. I. P. Sonny Boy

RIP Robbie 💔 your spirit will never die ❤🎶🎸🥀🕊️🕯️🙏

Good bless sonny boy and people that love him

That is a wonderfully told story of an absolute disgraceful situation. I feel heartbroken and ashamed to be in a world where someone as talented as that was treated the way he was treated.

This video needs to be in the Library of Congress. Tragic first hand account of that period.

An amazing and sad story about Sonny Boy Williamson and that era.

This made me cry

RR has a good memory and tells a good story about a great time

I am an old white buck. As a child I lived in the South a few times. I love many things about the South, but "Jim Crow" is not one of them. In the autumn of 1968, I enrolled into a school in Hampton VA that was half white & half black. Reverend Martin Luther King had been assassinated that April, but we all got along. White kids & Black kids played Baseball & Basketball together without any trouble at all. In fact, this is when Motown was at its zenith, and the black girls would do their best impressions of The Supremes, Martha Reeves & the Vandellas, The Marvelettes, Mary Wells, etc, etc - in the cafeteria. It was great stuff!!! I fell in love with the Blues, and once shook hands with Muddy Waters. I haven't washed that right hand since. We lived all over the globe during my childhood, compliments of the USAF, and I have never understood where any one race, creed, color, ethnicity or religion gets off on thinking they are above another such group of people. We really dropped the ball in the game of humanity.

Brings a tear to my eye

Best story of the night for me!

nobody tells a story like Robbie !!

I did a TV show in the Sixties with 'Sonny Boy' in England where I live. We were all in the room waiting to be called to tape our part of the show, he had a small suitcase with his harps and two bottles of JD. He opened a bottle and passed it round, and also got out a harp and we were jamming with him our guitarist playing acoustic guitar.
I went the the bathroom and in the sink full of water there was a huge pair of new black shoes soaking in the water!! I got back to the room and said what I had found, Sonny said 'they are mine, I just bought them and back home when we get shoes we get them mail order and sometimes they don't fit, so we put them on and  soak them in a bowl of water or in the river, and when they dry they fit'. I thought he was spinning me a yarn, (yanking my chain), but when we were called to play our bit after Sonny had finished his bit and all down the hallway leading to the studio there were wet footprints!!!!!!!!!!

wow, what a story on so many levels

I saw SBW play in an English Pub, in the early sixties,  it must have been just before this.  I still have and treasure the album that I bought then.

As we all know, music brings people together like nothing else. Helena, Arkansas...about 90 minutes south of Memphis...hosts the King Biscuit Blues Festival every late Sept/early Oct. Helena's a town bound in poverty, but with lots of nice people who truly count on the revenues raised at this annual event. That's why I buy beer, tobacco, BBQ and other great food from the people IN TOWN. If you prefer, you can frequent the many "official" event vendors, etc., who do very well during this 3-day event - but I love talking to the folks who live in town. You have to walk a bit further, but it'll make a big difference to you and them. And da blues can't be beat!

Robbie Robertson tells an incredible and tragic tale.

Levon tells this story the exact same way in his book. Great post.