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Loud and proud
R.L. Burnside 1926–2005
BY TED DROZDOWSKI
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Related Links
Ted Drozdowski reviews R.L. Burnside's No Monkeys on This Train. Ted Drozdowski reviews R.L. Burnside's First Recordings. Ted Drozdowski reviews R.L. Burnside's A Bothered Mind.
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Rural Burnside, known to friends and fans as R.L., began recording in 1967 when musicologist George Mitchell visited his North Mississippi home to make field recordings. He stopped last December, when a heart attack robbed him of the vitality that had made him such a charismatic figure. And on September 1, after a long decline capped by a three-week hospital stay, he died, age 78. Burnside’s death isn’t just a monumental loss to blues. His influence extended to modern rock and hip-hop, whether he wanted it to or not. Groups as diverse as the Black Keys, North Mississippi All Stars, and Widespread Panic trumpet that influence; mixer Tom Rothrock and Dirty South outfits like the Go Gittas Camp and Organized Noise fell under his music’s sway. Burnside was one of the last torch bearers of a distinctive North Mississippi sound. His droning guitar and hypnotic rhythmic attack nourished the blues’ deepest roots. North Mississippi was one of the first regions in the Deep South where African slaves and their children were permitted freedom, albeit in Jim Crow–sized doses. African music was not suppressed in the hills as it was by the Delta’s plantation operators. So its legacy flourished and was carried on to modern times by Sid Hemphill and Napoleon Strickland, whose Mississippi fife-and-drums groups were recorded by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress, the singer/guitarist Fred McDowell, and others. They in turn passed the torch to a generation that included fife-and-drum bandmaster Othar Turner, Burnside’s neighbor Junior Kimbrough, and Burnside himself. All three are now dead, leaving only a handful of direct inheritors. Burnside and Kimbrough, through their recordings for Fat Possum Records, were the key figures of the ’90s Mississippi juke-joint revival. Raw albums like Burnside’s Too Bad Jim and Kimbrough’s All Night Long were jolts to an ossifying genre — full of electric crackle and pop, as charged with attitude and intensity as the best punk rock and as mesmerizing as the most intoxicating groove bands. Live, they played loud and proud. Burnside in particular upped the ante with his twisted toastmaster persona, cracking jokes about liquor and gunfire and illegitimate children without regard for political correctness. He was also welcoming and kind to fans and other musicians, despite having served time in Mississippi’s legendary Parchman prison farm for murder. All of this appealed to the indie-rock crowd, who embraced Burnside and were further encouraged by his 1996 collaboration with blues-rock punk Jon Spencer, A Ass Pocket of Whiskey. It was Fat Possum’s best-selling CD until Rothrock played slice-and-dice with Burnside’s recordings, adding his own beats and sonic tics, and created 1998’s Come On In, the most successful mating of hip-hop and blues to date. "I didn’t like it much when I heard it," Burnside said, "but I started likin’ it more when the checks came in." The album sold more than 100,000 copies. Burnside would revisit this fusion with 2000’s Wish I Was in Heaven Sitting Down, a more emotionally nuanced album than Come On In, masterminded by Epitaph president Andy Kulkin. Although the disc included a few traditional numbers, its highs were the trippy textural excursion "Hard Time Killing Floor" and hip-hop infused numbers like "Miss Mabel" and "Got Messed Up." This one required more effort from Burnside, who cut vocals for the tracks Kulkin provided. The bluesman also gave it thumbs down until his royalties arrived. Burnside was, to say the least, a very practical man. Much more could be said about his charm, humor, musicianship, and spirit. For now, though, let’s simply hope he’s got his wish.
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