Mississippi-born Elmore Leonard was a blues musician known as "The King of the Slide Guitar". He played on various radio shows throughout the South and built up a following. In 1951, he recorded his first record, "Dust My Broom", for the small Trumpet Records label out of Jackson, MS. It became a "sleeper" hit, breaking through to the Top-10 charts and making him a star. Leonard recorded more than 100 songs over the next dozen years and helped to shape what eventually became known as the "Chicago Blues" sound of the postwar period. He was elected to the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in 1980.

He died of a heart attack in Chicago in 1963.