r.l. burnside r.i.p.

saw him once in concert and as scott decribes it much better than i could, it was awesome.

have very fond memories of the when ass-pocket came out.

RIP you crazy old blues dude. sail on.

:(

The world was a much better place because of RL.

RIP

I saw him 5 times, the last time was downstairs with Dwayne and Cedric in Memphis (w/ Othar Turner) sometime in 2001, played his ass off for an hour and a half, drinking up a storm... found out he had a heart attack the next day.

god bless ya, RL. Thanks for the music.

Bleh, I was looking through a bunch of old magazines a couple of weeks ago, came to one on R.L. and thought, "where is he these days? He's got to be pushing 80 -- is he OK? Is he still recording?".

I saw him live in 1999 -- Elmo Williams and Hezekiah Early opened for him -- wow, those old fuckers made a hell of a lot of noise.

R. L. Burnside, a blues singer and guitarist who found fame only in his gray years, when his music was embraced by young rock fans and remixed with electronic beats, died yesterday at a hospital in Memphis. He was 78 and lived near Holly Springs, Miss.

The cause was unknown, said Matthew Johnson, the founder of Mr. Burnside's record label, Fat Possum.

With a raw, unadorned electric guitar style and hypnotic one-chord songs, Mr. Burnside's music was seen by critics as a link to the sound of Muddy Waters and Mississippi Fred McDowell. That might not have been a coincidence: Mr. Burnside, who was born in Harmontown, Miss., grew up near McDowell and learned to play guitar from him, and said that a cousin of his had married Muddy Waters.

But Mr. Burnside's music had a rough, obstinate energy that also appealed to contemporary rock musicians and fans, and in the 1990's, after decades of obscurity, Mr. Burnside began to find wide success. In 1991, in his mid-60's, he signed with Fat Possum, based in Oxford, Miss. One of his first albums for that label, "Too Bad Jim," was produced by Robert Palmer, a former pop critic for The New York Times.

Soon he was performing as an opening act for the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, an avant-garde rock band. Mr. Burnside continued to record for Fat Possum; his most recent album for the label was "A Bothered Mind" last year. He also collaborated with the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion on an album released by Matador Records in 1996. One of Mr. Burnside's albums, "Come On In," remixed his music with electronic beats.

Mr. Burnside continued to cross over to mainstream audiences as he entered his 70's. One of his songs was included in the soundtrack to "The Sopranos" in 1999, and another was used in a Nissan commercial in 2002. The New Yorker, in an article about Fat Possum and Mr. Johnson, reported that Mr. Burnside had earned around $175,000 in 2001.

In his recordings, Mr. Burnside's music could be gentle, but in concert it had a blare (and volume) closer to AC/DC than Muddy Waters. Usually sitting down during the shows, Mr. Burnside cut an odd figure, smirking quizzically and making few remarks to the crowd. A former sharecropper from one of the most segregated areas of the Deep South, he often seemed bemused by his popularity among white rock fans and celebrities.

"He was a happy-go-lucky nihilist," Mr. Johnson said. "He took things exactly as they were. No more, no less."

Except for a brief time in Chicago during his youth, Mr. Burnside spent most of his life in the poor hill country of northern Mississippi, and his experience with the music industry had been slight before the 1990's. He had been recorded by the folklorist George Mitchell in the late 1960's, but through the 1970's and 1980's, he was little known outside Mississippi.

He is survived by his wife, Alice Mae Burnside; 12 children; and numerous grandchildren.

http://www.nmshillcountrypicnic.com/07_press_release.htm

2nd annual North Mississippi Hill Country Picnic celebrates the legacies of departed North Mississippi blues legends including R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, and Othar Turner

Extended to Two Days, June 29-30, 2007

Last July’s inaugural North Mississippi Hill Country Picnic was a resounding success, drawing over 1,000 people to a rural site in Potts Camp in Marshall County. The festival demonstrated the vitality of the contemporary blues scene in North Mississippi, and in light of the tremendous public response this year’s event has been extended to two days. Potts Camp is located off of Route 78, about halfway between Memphis and Tupelo.

The festival celebrates the legacies of departed North Mississippi blues legends including R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, and Othar Turner, and the festival will once again feature many of their children and grandchildren. These include Duwayne Burnside, and his band the Mississippi Mafia; the Burnside Exploration, featuring Cedric and Garry Burnside; David Kimbrough; the Rising Star Fife and Drum Band, led by Othar Turner’s 17-year-old granddaughter Sharde Thomas.

Other "second generation" acts returning to the event include Kenny Brown, R.L. Burnside’s longtime guitarist and "adopted son;" and the Reverend John Wilkins, son of pre-WWII recording artist Robert Wilkins, whose song "Prodigal Son" was covered by the Rolling Stones. Also returning to the festival are soul-blues legend Bobby Rush, Jimbo Mathus and Knockdown South, T-Model Ford, Cary Hudson with Blue Mountain, Jocco Rushing with Fried Chicken & Gasoline, and John Barnett.

Additions this year include the North Mississippi Allstars, whose leader Luther Dickinson grew up listening to R.L. Burnside and attending Othar Turner’s fife and drum picnics; the Oxford-based Taylor Grocery Band, which features Junior Kimbrough’s son Kinney Kimbrough on drums and vocals; and Alvin Youngblood Hart, Danny Lancaster, and Olga Wilhelmine Mathus.

Potts Camp resident Kenny Brown, who has been playing Hill Country blues since he was a young boy with artists including Mississippi Joe Callicott and Johnny Woods, conceived the festival. "The original idea for this thing was to get all the Hill Country acts we could together at one time here in North Mississippi," says Brown. "I know from first hand experience how popular the music is all over the world, but we previously didn’t have an opportunity to celebrate our shared heritage here on our home turf. Last year we had a better turn out than we expected and it was wonderful for the performers to be able to hang out together and see the audience having such a great time. Sara Davis and the other organizers did a great job of getting everything together. This year we’re adding another day and some more acts, and we’re looking forward to an even greater turnout. Last year we had people from seventeen states and three foreign countries and I’m sure it will be even better this year. We’ll have plenty of food and a camping area."

The festival is run by the non –profit organization North MS Hill Country Picnic, Inc., and enjoys great support and sponsorship from North Mississippi communities. Camping will be allowed both nights, coolers are permitted, and vendors will sell local delicacies including barbeque and fried catfish. A portion of each ticket will be donated to MusiCaresÓ , a charity run by the Recording Academy that provides free health care for musicians in need. Sponsors to-date include Flick’s Country Restaurant, R & B Feder Charitable Foundation, Paragon Casino, Freeland & Freeland, One Day Signs, Holly Springs Tourism, Oxford Tourism, Honest Tunes, Living Blues, Two Stick, Parrish Baker Pub, Cleary Designs, Fat Possum, Vista III Media, Budweiser, and American RV.

For more information visit the website www.nmshillcountrypicnic.com

damn, what a weekend not to go home. please post 6 weeks ahead of time next time kthxbye.

I just saw it mentioned in the weekly e-mail of New Orleans magazine Offbeat. Wow, what a bill.

http://www.clarionledger.com/story/life/2015/12/16/much-nominated-burnside-dream/77393342/

RL Burnside's grandson Cedric was nominated for a blues Grammy for “Descendants of Hill Country” by the Cedric Burnside Project,

Hopefully it sounds drawn from hill country Mississippi blues and not blues-rock

I still haven't listened to it yet. I am not a fan of the Dickinson kids and hope their influence is not felt here

RL Burnside live in a Mississippi hill country honky-tonk, September 1974. T-Model Ford is in the audience, too. Really blessed footage tbh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PwUIDr6FPQ

unreal.

what i wouldn't give to be incredibly drunk in 1974 seeing rl burnside in a crowded honky tonk.

it made me cry!

makes me miss going out and dancing

yeah it's emotional!

How's the sound quality so good? No microphone but it's so easy to hear his vocals vs. guitar/room noise, and the clarity doesn't change even when his head is turning in different directions. Pretty great video

Filmed by Tav Falco!

wow

amazing

who's the lester bangs looking dude?

wow!

incredible. so much to love here. i had no idea he had been playing Goin' Down South so far back. crazy how few views it has.

Holy shit this rules.

echoing everyone else here, wow

this is like if a scene from Steve McQueen's Lover's Rock was set in the Deep South in 1974, all the looks and gestures and body language are incredible to watch

Yes! I watched it again and thought the same thing. i wonder what was going on with the woman with the giant Afro sitting down around 13.16 looking well pissed off?

it's a party, there's gonna be some drama

seriously though, this is like Best Picture 2021

Truly made my year. "See My Jumper" and watching people shimmy around and get live— whew

the way he plays is so amazing, he's like a drummer, bassist and guitarist in one

Great footage of a great musician

30 miles east, I was just a suckling baby at the time.

This is what I hear when I close my eyes and think of the hill country.

who's the lester bangs looking dude?

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown)

Jim Dickinson I think...?

(this might have been around the time of Big Star's 3rd recording sessions)

linking this for like-minded folx, Alan Lomax's footage of Otha Turner in 1978:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91_oMlVqKcQ

More documentary style with incidental music but "Shimmy She Wobble" drops in around 3:35.

Sorry that's 1971 not 1978^^^

Tav's comments on the 1974 footage:

Dancing at the Brotherhood Sportsman’s Lodge far out in the boondocks behind Como, Mississippi. There are dice tumbling in a leather dice horn, chicken frying in a big iron skillet, and girls turning tricks in the back room while hatchet-faced revelers sway to the drone of electric blues. Rural Burnside, the artist with the guitar, has just returned to the lodge from a week of sharecropping in the surrounding cotton fields. The busy life of a farm hand affords little time for laundering one’s pants.

My last post of the night~~

I am fairly certain this is footage from Othar Turner's 2003 funeral procession in Como proper (probably not terribly far from the 1974 juke joint in the revival post), led by Othar's 13-year-old granddaughter Sharde (who is awesome and still at it today with The Rising Stars Fife & Drum Band):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llXbIejneo0

incredible. so much to love here. i had no idea he had been playing Goin' Down South so far back. crazy how few views it has.

― stirmonster, Friday, 19 February 2021 01:15 (twelve hours ago) link

If you haven't heard "First Recordings" which Fat Possum put out in 2002, they are George Mitchell's recordings from 1967/68 of Burnside and he was pretty much fully formed even at that point, already playing "Goin Down South" (in fact this vers might be my favorite).

They didn't come out at the time like some of Mitchell's other recordings from same trip (notably the Mississippi Fred McDowell & Johnny Woods record) in part maybe cuz Mississippi Fred told Mitchell not to, though there some dispute about that

Though the story goes that Mitchell was recording blues players and Othar Turner was like "you gotta see RL"

Also I can't believe you guys haven't seen this footage before, cuz it's the internet I just assume everything has seen everything already

in all fairness, a post labelled "Honky Tonk" on YouTube isn't the first thing to come up when searching Burnside's name— I wouldn't have found it had a friend of a friend not posted it.

Yeah also it has under 600 views and was posted in October

a bunch of those views came yesterday, btw!

Nice that Tav posted this. Like chris, I also (mistakenly) assumed everybody who wanted to see this already had. This footage has circulated for decades. Glad it's on YT.

Otha Turner’s blues fife playing granddaughter Sharde Thomas had pre- Covid kept her Grandfather Otha’s annual goat meat picnic event active in Mississippi . My wife and I went a few years back. Sharde & her snare drums playing band were great. The barbecue food offerings were tasty. But we got bored with many of the jam bands who also played. Sharde didn’t have money to hire and let play whoever offered.

If you haven't heard "First Recordings" which Fat Possum put out in 2002,....

Thanks chr1sb3singer. i'm not sure how i missed that as i was all about Fat Possum in 2002. Maybe as it was initially CD only? I see he released it on his 1981 debut too.

Nice that Tav posted this. Like chris, I also (mistakenly) assumed everybody who wanted to see this already had. This footage has circulated for decades. Glad it's on YT.

― jaywbabcock, Friday, 19 February 2021 17:44 (one hour ago) link

Where was it circulated? This is making me feel a little like I used to when I was younger and had this conception that my hipness was measured by whether or not I knew everything there was to know. If you didn't know everything you felt like you knew nothing. Guy at Other Music drops a name, blank stare- "um, dude that was the friend of the bass player on the original Pastels cassette demos? Come on what are you even doing here?"

i remember when i saw him, he had great jokes - "waitress - bring me new beer - this one's got a hole in it!!"

yeah i saw him with his son (or grandson?) on drums 1997-ish — totally blazing. seemed like he was having a great time.

Evan - Where was it circulated? Youtube, websites, film festivals, music festivals, excerpted in documentaries, etc. Like I said, glad that Tav has posted this on YT. Obviously better for more people to see it than for it to be some hidden or inaccessible thing!

Cedric was the name of RL's grandson that drummed with him and Kenny

Tav obv needs help in properly posting/labeling/SEOing this stuff so people can find it in searches.

Cool! It has an obscure footage vibe to it- would have been happenstance to have stumbled on it prior in my case.

yeah i saw him with his son (or grandson?) on drums 1997-ish — totally blazing. seemed like he was having a great time.

― tylerw, Friday, February 19, 2021 2:15 PM (twenty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i'm betting i saw this same tour, that year sounds about right

Oh wow thanks for posting

pretty positive the white guy dancing is Randall Lyons, featured prominently in Bill Eggleston’s “Stranded in Canton”, which is on YouTube and extremely worth your time imho.

(Bill shot bunch footage in Memphis, the Delta, and New Orleans with his ‘luded out hipster dirtbag friends in the 70s. Features Furry Lewis, gunplay from Waylon’s onetime road manager, and a real life circus geek).

we went to Jr’s spot in Chulahoma, MS a couple of times in the mid 90s. Saw R.L. there. Spent one night in David Kimbrough’s trailer drinking moonshine and watching the sun come up. shit was wild and I’m bummed the memory is so fuzzy from altered state at the time and, well, time.

re: this comment under the video:

HellsDonutHouse
4 hours ago
I worked with Cheri at the archive that once repped these tapes, this blew my mind back then and remains one of the greatest things I've ever seen on videotape. I tried in vain to get some labels interested in releasing it but nobody ever bit, thank you so much for making it available here.

does anyone happen to know which archive this might be referring to?

think he's talking about Tav Falco's archive

some of the same crew here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3e-BNLYrMU

my all things Memphis music & film knower pal says he thinks it was likely Tav shooting on Eggleston’s camera, and that Tav and Randall had a “company” that shot concerts, etc called TeleVista (maybe mentioned in Gordon’s recent It Came From Memphis update); he thinks the comment re “archives” could be regarding the footage they would have shot.

lol so yes basically what tylerw said!

anyway, I have enjoyed these clips immensely. thanks for the thread bump.

If you haven't heard "First Recordings" which Fat Possum put out in 2002, they are George Mitchell's recordings from 1967/68 of Burnside and he was pretty much fully formed even at that point, already playing "Goin Down South" (in fact this vers might be my favorite).

Revisited this just now and it's still one of the greatest things ever imo.

Agreed. Also, Tav Falco liked my comment on the video that started this revive.

If you haven't heard "First Recordings" which Fat Possum put out in 2002, they are George Mitchell's recordings from 1967/68 of Burnside and he was pretty much fully formed even at that point, already playing "Goin Down South" (in fact this vers might be my favorite).
Revisited this just now and it's still one of the greatest things ever imo.

― pomenitul, Sunday, 21 February 2021 17:52 (yesterday) link

Even compared to other Mitchell recordings from the era, which are plenty raw, the Burnside ones have an "otherness" to them, that droning tone of his voice matched with the guitar that makes it feel different from any others blues recordings of the time, the only thing that seems comparable are the Junior Kimbrough ones from 66 that also didn't get released until way later

Well put, that’s precisely why I love them so much. Bits of it make me feel like I’m listening to, I dunno, Ali Farka Touré or even Hamza El Din. I haven’t heard the Kimbrough sessions, though, so thanks for the heads up.

The Kimbrough sessions Fat Possum did as a 10 inch ep, they are good, with a band in a studio, they are superficially more electric "blues" but it is still Kimbrough so still weird if not quite as free as his 90s material

Yeah Ali Farka Toure isn't far off or all those Tuareg bands, Group Inerane, Bombino, but there is a weird "keening" to Burnside that makes me think of Irish fiddle music or something

But yeah even if Mississippis Fred McDowell had told Mitchell to not release the Burnside recordings it does also seem pretty clear that RL was still way outside even marketing to hardcore blues collectors at the time

the seven-disc george mitchell boxed set is a steal and packed with amazing sounds: https://store.fatpossum.com/products/the-george-mitchell-box-set

I've shown students video of Groupe Inerane and Burnside performing "See My Jumper," it always blows their minds, the ways sounds and aural traditions survive and persist and travel back and forth between the continents

All I know is the brilliantly sinister "Shuck Dub" clip from The Sopranos, which I've watched about a dozen times since this thread was revived. Will investigate other things mentioned here.

Something I've come to love even more than "Shuck Dub": "Goin' Down South," which is posted just above. I've got three of his CDs now (one I haven't listened to yet), and most of what I've heard is neither here nor there. But for those two songs alone, he occupies some tiny corner of my pantheon.

I see now that the clip above is not the one on First Recordings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCCDN7uWrZ0