Convenience Big Store: One of the creepiest scenes in ‘Sinners’ includes a Houston Easter egg

March 20, 2026

Correction: A previous edition of Houston Explained was resent on Tuesday.

Michael B. Jordan, right, in a scene from 'Sinners.'

That chilling song in 'Sinners'? It traces back to an almost-forgotten Houston blues artist

In one of the eeriest scenes of the 2025 Academy Award-winning film "Sinners," the movie's white antagonist, Remmick, and two Mississippi townspeople he's turned into vampires linger outside the juke joint owned by Smoke and Stack, the twin brothers played by Michael B. Jordan in the performance that earned him this year's Best Actor Oscar.

Unable to enter the twins' establishment without an invitation, Remmick, played by Jack O'Connell, and his two victims hope to convince the twins they're worthy by breaking into song.

What spills out of this bloodthirsty choir is a deceptively innocent, and therefore quite creepy, rendition of "Pick Poor Robin Clean," a blues standard with deep ties to Houston thanks to the Bayou City-born musician L.V. (or Elvie) Thomas.

Who was L.V. Thomas?

Thomas' life remained largely obscured until John Jeremiah Sullivan's 2014 New York Times profile helped piece it back together.

Born Aug. 7, 1891, on Washington Avenue, Thomas told researcher Mack McCormick that she started playing guitar around age 11 and was earning money from music by her late teens, performing at country suppers and neighborhood gatherings across Houston.

Part of a circuit of Black musicians performing across Houston, she was by the 1920s playing with artists like Texas Alexander. And in the 1930s, she traveled to Wisconsin with Geeshie Wiley to record for Paramount Records, cutting a handful of songs, including "Pick Poor Robin Clean."

Despite that brief recording career, Thomas stepped away from secular music (she remembered that era of her life as her "sinful days") after joining Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Acres Homes.

Thomas died in Houston in May 1979, largely unknown outside her community but known within it, simply, as "Sister L.V." She's buried at Cemetery Beautiful in Acres Homes.

The origin of 'Pick Poor Robin Clean'

"Pick Poor Robin Clean" has no clear author, one of many instances where early American music circulated before it was ever recorded.

Some historians have linked it to minstrel-era performances, but by the time Thomas and Wiley recorded their own version, it was already circulating as a blues classic.

The lyrics tell of a character ("poor Robin") who's been taken for everything he has, while others look on or laugh. In "Sinners," that playful, almost predatory, dynamic takes on a different meaning as a song that once graced Black performance spaces is now being used by tricky white vampires trying to gain access to one.

It's an unexpected place for a Houston easter egg to surface, but there it is, woven masterfully into the scene.