One commentator noted that Burnside, along with Big Jack Johnson, Paul "Wine" Jones, Roosevelt "Booba" Barnes and James "Super Chikan" Johnson, were "present-day exponents of an edgier, electrified version of the raw, uncut Delta blues sound."
Early life and career
Burnside was born in Harmontown, Mississippi, in Lafayette County. He spent most of his life in North Mississippi, working as a sharecropper and a commercial fisherman, as well as playing guitar at weekend house parties. He was first inspired to pick up the guitar in his early twenties, after hearing the 1948 John Lee Hooker single, "Boogie Chillen" (which inspired numerous other rural bluesmen, among them Buddy Guy, to start playing). He learned music largely from Mississippi Fred McDowell, who lived nearby in an adjoining county. He also cited his cousin-in-law, Muddy Waters, as an influence.
During the 1950s, Burnside grew tired of sharecropping and moved to Chicago in the hope of finding better economic opportunities. But things did not turn out as he had hoped. Within the span of one year his father, brother, and uncle were all murdered in the city, a tragedy that Burnside would later draw upon in his work, particularly in his interpretation of Skip James's "Hard Time Killing Floor" and the talking blues "R.L.'s Story", the opening and closing tracks on Burnside's 2000 album, Wish I Was In Heaven Sitting Down.
Around 1959, he left Chicago and went back to Mississippi to work the farms and raise a family. Burnside was convicted for murder and sentenced to six months' incarceration (in Parchman Prison) for the crime. Burnside's boss at the time reputedly pulled strings to keep the murder sentence short, due to having need of Burnside's skills as a tractor driver. Burnside later said "I didn't mean to kill nobody ... I just meant to shoot the sonofabitch in the head. Him dying was between him and the Lord."
His earliest recordings were made in the late 1960s by George Mitchell and released on Arhoolie Records. Another album of acoustic material was recorded that year and little else was released before Hill Country Blues, in the early 1980s. An album's worth of singles followed, released on ethnomusicology professor Dr. David Evans' Highwater Records record label in Memphis, Tennessee.
Later life and career
In the 1990s, he began recording for the Oxford, Mississippi, label Fat Possum Records. Founded by Living Blues magazine editor Peter Redvers-Lee and Matthew Johnson, the label was dedicated to recording ageing North Mississippi bluesmen such as Burnside and Junior Kimbrough. Burnside remained with Fat Possum from that time until his death, and he usually performed with his friend and understudy, the slide guitarist Kenny Brown, with whom he began playing in 1971 and claimed as his "adopted son."
Burnside attracted the attention of Jon Spencer, the leader of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, touring and recording with this group and gaining a new audience in the process.
After the death of Kimbrough and the burning of Kimbrough's juke joint in Chulahoma, Mississippi, Burnside quit recording studio material for Fat Possum, though he did continue to tour. After a heart attack in 2001, Burnside's doctor advised him to stop drinking; Burnside did, but he reported that change left him unable to play.
Members of his large extended family continue to play blues in the Holly Springs area: grandson Cedric Burnside tours with Kenny Brown and most recently with Steve 'Lightnin' Malcolm as part of the 'Juke Joint Duo', while his son Duwayne Burnside has played guitar with the North Mississippi Allstars (Polaris; Hill Country Revue with R. L. Burnside). Duwayne's solo career began when "Duwayne Burnside and the Mississippi Mafia" recorded "Live At the Mint" in October 1997. Members included Cedric Burnside, Eddie Batos, Joe Hill from Alien Ant Farm, and David Kimbrough, Jr. (Junior Kimbrough's son) with Duwayne's father sitting in on a few tracks. Duwayne and the Mississippi Mafia released "Under Pressure" in March 2005, which was recorded at Delta Studios in Clarksdale, Mississippi featuring Jimbo Mathus, rhythm guitar (Squirrel Nut Zippers), Roy Cunningham on drums (Stax Sessions), and Burnside's son Garry Burnside on bass guitar. In 2004, the Burnside sons opened Burnside Blues Cafe, located 30 miles southeast of Memphis at the intersection of U.S. Highway 78 and Mississippi Highway 7 in Holly Springs, Mississippi.
In January 2006, Garry and Cedric released The Record under the moniker "Burnside Exploration".
Death
Burnside had been in declining health since heart surgery in 1999. He died at St. Francis Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee on September 1, 2005 at the age of 78.[4] Services were held at Rust College in Holly Springs [which is also where services were held for his friend, Junior Kimbrough, who died in 1998], with burial in the Free Springs Cemetery in Harmontown. Around the time of his passing, he resided in Byhalia, Mississippi and his immediate survivors included:
His wife: Alice Mae Taylor Burnside (married 1951); died November 16, 2008
Daughters: Mildred Jean Burnside, Linda Jackson, Brenda Kay Brooks, and Pamela Denise Burnside;
Sons: Melvin Burnside, R.L. Burnside Jr., Calvin Burnside, Joseph Burnside, Daniel Burnside, Duwayne Burnside, Dexter Burnside, Garry Burnside, and Rodger Harmon
Sisters: Lucille Burnside, Verelan Burnside, and Mat Burnside
Brother: Jesse Monia
35 Grandchildren
32 Great-Grandchildren
Style
Burnside had a powerful, expressive voice and played both electric and acoustic guitars (both with a slide and without). His drone-based style was a characteristic of North Mississippi hill country blues rather than Mississippi Delta blues. Like other country blues musicians, he did not always adhere to 12- or 16-bar blues patterns, often adding extra beats according to his preference. He called this "Burnside style" and often commented that his backing musicians needed to be familiar with his style in order to be able to play along with him.
His earliest recordings, like those of John Lee Hooker, sound very similar in their vocal and instrumental style. Many of his songs do not have chord changes, but use the same chord or repeating bass line throughout, giving his music a hypnotic feel. His vocal style is characterized by a tendency to "break" into falsetto briefly (usually at the ends of long notes).
Like the bluesman T-Model Ford, Burnside utilized the stripped-down element of his music, playing up the rawness, emphasizing his image as a lifelong hard-drinking man, and singing songs of swagger and rebellion. Burnside collaborated in the late 1990s with The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion on the album A Ass Pocket of Whiskey. Consequently, he gained the attention of many within this underground music scene, cited as an influence by Hillstomp[9] and covered on record by The Immortal Lee County Killers. Burnside's "Skinny Woman" was also interpolated into the song "Busted" by fellow Fat Possum musicians The Black Keys, a band associated with the punk blues scene in their early years.
He also knew many toasts (African American narrative folk poems such as "Signifying monkey" and "Tojo Told Hitler") and frequently recited them between songs at his live concerts and on his recordings.
Selected albums
First Recordings (recorded in the late 1960s by George Mitchell; re-released by Fat Possum Records in 2003)
Too Bad Jim (produced in 1992 by Robert Palmer)
Well, Well, Well (songs and interviews from 1986-1993, released in 2001 on MC Records)
A Ass Pocket of Whiskey (1996, featuring the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion)
Mr. Wizard (1997)
Acoustic Stories (1997)
My Black Name A-Ringin' (1999)
Burnside on Burnside (a critically acclaimed 2001 live album recorded in the Crystal Ballroom on Portland, Oregon's Burnside Street)
Come On In, Wish I Was in Heaven Sitting Down, and A Bothered Mind (three albums of remixed material, often featuring guest artists, released in 1998, 2000 and 2004, respectively)
Films
Deep Blues: A Musical Pilgrimage to the Crossroads (1991). Directed by Robert Mugge
American Patchwork: Songs and Stories of America, part 3: "The Land Where the Blues Began" (1990). Written, directed, and produced by Alan Lomax; developed by the Association for Cultural Equity at Columbia University and Hunter College. North Carolina Public TV; A Dibb Direction production for Channel Four. This is a lightly re-edited version of "The Land Where the Blues Began" (1978) made by Alan Lomax, John Bishop, and Worth Long in Association with Mississippi Authority for Educational Television
You See Me Laughin': The Last of the Hill Country Bluesmen (2003; released by Fat Possum Records in 2005). Produced and directed by Mandy Stein. Oxford, Mississippi: Plain Jane Productions, Inc; Fat Possum Records.
In popular culture
The 2007 Samuel L. Jackson / Christina Ricci film, Black Snake Moan is infused with countless Burnside nods, including: the Reverend R. L. character and when Jackson plays the blues toward the end of the film, he thanks "Ced" and "Kenny" - Cedric Burnside (Burnside's grandson) and Kenny Brown (Burnside's "adopted son"), who were primary sidemen through the 1990s and early 2000s. Cedric and Kenny are also part of Jackson's band in the juke joint scene.
"It's Bad You Know," and "Shuck Dub" were featured in the HBO series The Sopranos.
"Got Messed Up" was featured in the FX series Rescue Me during an opening montage on Season 5 Episode 18, "Carrot".
A Burnside poster can be seen on a wall in brothers Drake and Josh's room in the Nickelodeon sitcom, Drake & Josh.
Bad Luck City
R.L. Burnside Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Now Lord, a lotta people don't know about that
'Cause they have never been there
But I've been there, and I know
Lotta times you love them women
And they don't love you
But I have one, and I love the one I have
I sit down and tell her these words
'Cause I love you, baby
'Cause I love you, baby
Love you for myself, girl
Love you for myself, girl
Them women, you know
Lotta times you have them women, they love you too
They gon' say the same thing back to you, you said to them
No, I ain't gonna leave you, baby
No, I ain't gonna leave you, baby
Love you, too, baby
Love you, too, baby
But if there's trouble, problems
When you love them women and they don't love you
Lotta times
I wanted to leave her a lotta times
I been through that problem
But they be so nice to you, you just sit down and tell 'em
No, I ain't gonna leave you, baby
No, I ain't gonna leave you, baby
Love you too, baby
Love you, grinnin' proud girl
Yeah, but it's trouble, I tell you
When you love them women and they don't love you
You love them, and they tell you one morning "I got to leave you"
I tell her these words, one more time
Don't leave me, baby
Don't leave me, baby
Don't leave me crying, girl
Don't leave me crying, girl
Lotta times she feels sorry, y'know?
Say the same things back to me I said to her
I be done started back in the house fixin' to close the door
She'll tell me the same words
No, I ain't gonna leave you, baby
No, I ain't gonna leave you, baby
Love you, too, baby
Love you, too, baby
By that time we got everything settled then
Gon' try to move on
But it's a problem, but it's a problem, but it's a problem
When you love them women and they don't love you
I know a lotta people don't know about Bad Luck City
'Cause they have never been there
But I been there and I know about it
'Cause I love you, baby
'Cause I love you, baby
Love you for myself, girl
Love you for myself, girl
The lyrics of R.L. Burnside's song "Bad Luck City" contain a story about the struggles of loving someone who may not love you back. Burnside speaks about his personal experiences and imparting wisdom about the complexities of love, which he learned through his time spent in "Bad Luck City." He implies that this is a city where things never go right, and people are never content with their lives. This can be seen as a metaphor for a state of mind or an emotional place that one finds themselves in when they are experiencing hardship in their personal relationships.
The lyrics are not just about Burnside's personal experience, but rather, the way things generally go for many people in love. The message of the song is that it's essential to be patient, forgiving, and committed even though things can be incredibly challenging at times. The refrain of the song, "No, I ain't gonna leave you, baby/Love you too, baby," is an affirmation of his love for his partner, even when times are tough. It's a message that displays the resilience and strength of love, no matter the situation.
Line by Line Meaning
Now Lord, a lotta people don't know about that
Many people are unaware of the situation I am in
'Cause they have never been there
This situation is something that people who haven't experienced it won't understand
But I've been there, and I know
I have experienced it, and I have firsthand knowledge of it
Lotta times you love them women
Often, one may fall in love with a woman
And they don't love you
However, the woman may not reciprocate those feelings
But I have one, and I love the one I have
I have a woman in my life who I love very much
That's why I tell her every morning, when I wake up
Every morning, I express my love for her
'Cause I love you, baby
I say 'I love you' because I genuinely love you
'Cause I love you, baby
Yes, I really do love you
Love you for myself, girl
I love you not for the validation of others, but for my own happiness
Love you for myself, girl
I love you because you bring joy to my life
Them women, you know
Women in general
Lotta times you have them women, they love you too
Often, women will love you back when you love them
They gon' say the same thing back to you, you said to them
They might say 'I love you too' in return
No, I ain't gonna leave you, baby
Even when times get tough, I won't abandon you
No, I ain't gonna leave you, baby
I really mean it, I won't leave you
Love you, too, baby
You know I love you just the same
Love you, grinnin' proud girl
I'm proud to love you, and I do it with joy
But if there's trouble, problems
However, when there are issues that arise
When you love them women and they don't love you
When you are in love with a woman who doesn't love you back
I wanted to leave her a lotta times
There have been moments when I've wanted to give up on the relationship
But they be so nice to you, you just sit down and tell 'em
However, when they are kind to you, it's hard to walk away
Don't leave me, baby
Please don't leave me, I need you
Don't leave me, baby
I can't imagine life without you, please stay
Don't leave me crying, girl
If you leave, it will break my heart
Don't leave me crying, girl
I don't want to be left alone, heartbroken
Lotta times she feels sorry, y'know?
Sometimes, she feels guilty for not returning my love
Say the same things back to me I said to her
She will often return my words of love
I be done started back in the house fixin' to close the door
I may have already started walking away, ready to give up
She'll tell me the same words
She will reassure me, saying the same words of love back
By that time we got everything settled then
Eventually, we will have worked out our differences
Gon' try to move on
We'll try to move forward from this together
Yeah, but it's trouble, I tell you
It's definitely not easy
When you love them women and they don't love you
Loving someone who won't return your feelings is a difficult situation
I know a lotta people don't know about Bad Luck City
I understand that some people may not be familiar with this situation
'Cause they have never been there
It's not something you can understand unless you've experienced it
But I been there and I know about it
I have been through this before and know what it's like
'Cause I love you, baby
As I said before, I truly love you
'Cause I love you, baby
I want to make sure you know how much you mean to me
Love you for myself, girl
And I love you not for anyone else, but for my own reasons
Love you for myself, girl
My love for you is genuine and comes from my own heart
Lyrics © O/B/O APRA AMCOS
Written by: R L Burnside
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
@GabrihellHorny-kn2ci
Cause I love you, baby
'Cause I love you, baby
Love you for myself, girl
Love you for myself, girl
Them women, you know
Lotta times you have them women, they love you too
They gon' say the same thing back to you, you said to them
No, I ain't gonna leave you, baby
No, I ain't gonna leave you, baby
Love you, too, baby
Love you, too, baby
But if there's trouble, problems
When you love them women and they don't love you
Lotta times
I wanted to leave her a lotta times
I been through that problem
But they be so nice to you, you just sit down and tell 'em
No, I ain't gonna leave you, baby
No, I ain't gonna leave you, baby
Love you too, baby
Love you, grinnin' proud girl
Yeah, but it's trouble, I tell you
When you love them women and they don't love you
You love them, and they tell you one morning "I got to leave you"
I tell her these words, one more time
Don't leave me, baby
Don't leave me, baby
Don't leave me crying, girl
Don't leave me crying, girl
Lotta times she feels sorry, y'know?
Say the same things back to me I said to her
I be done started back in the house fixin' to close the door
She'll tell me the same words
No, I ain't gonna leave you, baby
No, I ain't gonna leave you, baby
Love you, too, baby
Love you, too, baby
By that time we got everything settled then
Gon' try to move on
But it's a problem, but it's a problem, but it's a problem
When you love them women and they don't love you
I know a lotta people don't know about Bad Luck City
'Cause they have never been there
But I been there and I know about it
'Cause I love you, baby
'Cause I love you, baby
Love you for myself, girl
Love you for myself, girl
@grahamcarver4527
Cruising down the Boulevard 🔥🎸👍🏼🎶🌃🌃🌃
@smoothoperator7023
Absolutely 🔥FIRE🔥!
R.I.P. R.L. & Junior Kimbrough two of the most bad ass hill country Mississippi bluesmen ever. ✊🏾
@stefanlewandowski487
Another R.L. classic. Superlative vibe
@Roky59
Wow blues fantastic !!!
@stefanlewandowski487
Very, very cool
@craigthibodaux
I've been there! And I know! 😅
@luna.p.guglielmi
Exquisite
@PonziZombieKiller
🔨Word Up 🚬
@ordonezelvin
I need a guitar lesson video for this beauty of a song
@thesaparo123
Oh yeah