For Sale: Sonny Boy Williamson Cornmeal Bag

Item: Blues Food Sonny Boy Corn Meal Unused Bag MINT TASTY

Price: $24.99

Seller's description: "Down in Helena, Ark. in 1941, Sonny Boy Williamson and Robert Junior Lockwood had a 15-minute show on KFFA radio daily at noon. They were so popular, their sponsor, King Biscuit Flour, created a Sonny Boy brand corn meal mix which the band promoted on their radio show and on rural tours of Arkansas. This is a never-used empty bag of the cornmeal. The cornmeal continued to be produced and sold at least into the '90s, when this bag was likely printed. We managed to procure a couple of these, purchased at Cat Head Delta Blues in Clarksdale some years ago and we're told there aren't any more.

Our take: Do you sneer at the blatant product placement in modern music videos and deride them as nothing more than fancy commercials? Do you think they symbolize the commercial degradation of modern American music? Let this "Sonny Boy Corn Meal bag" be a lesson that American music has been used to sell stuff for as long as anybody's been buying.