ABSTRACT
James Burke “St. Louis Jimmy” Oden was born in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1903. In the mid-1920s he learned piano, and performed at house parties, bars, and clubs in the St. Louis area. He often played with Big Joe Williams and Roosevelt Sykes. In the 1930s he moved to Chicago, where he continued his career and became a mainstay of the Chicago blues scene into the 1960s. He began recording with Roosevelt Sykes in 1932 and continued to record until 1964. He died in 1977.
