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.
Don't Stop Honey
R.L. Burnside Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Они слепят мой взор
Let you close this door
Don’t call me phone
Я не чувствую боль
Leave me please alone
Don’t stop my game
Они слепят мой взор
Don’t call me phone
Я не чувствую боль
Leave me please alone
Я решаю судьбы тварей, они знают, кто я
Они уже не боятся, рядом нету тебя
Я начинаю забывать, что такое реал
Я начинаю забивать на этот мертвый реал
Кибератака на твой закрытый профиль в инсте
Ты почему-то передумала остаться в игре
И мне не победить без тебя ведь мне нужен саппорт
Но ты закрыла без репризы доминанта аккорд
Don’t stop my game
Они слепят мой взор
Let you close this door
Don’t call me phone
Я не чувствую боль
Leave me please alone
Don’t stop my game
Они слепят мой взор
Let you close this door
Don’t call me phone
Я не чувствую боль
Leave me pleasе alone
R.L. Burnside's song "Don't Stop Honey" is a gritty, bluesy track that tackles the themes of perseverance and determination. The song starts with the singer expressing his desire to pursue his goals relentlessly and make it to the top. He doesn't want any distractions or arguments to come in the way, which is why he's willing to cut off his partner. He yearns for a low-key connection with his lover, promising to make her feel good.
The song then moves on to the singer's struggles and the rough life he's endured, especially with people not believing in him. He feels trapped and is haunted by the fear of death, yet he keeps going even in difficult times. The singer's message in the song is clear; he refuses to give up or let negative experiences slow him down. He's determined to keep pushing forward no matter what.
Overall, the lyrics of the song reflect the struggles of life and the need to stay committed and motivated through it all. The singer wants to build something meaningful, which requires a lot of hard work and dedication. He knows the path will be full of obstacles and challenges, but he's ready to face them head-on and keep moving forward.
Line by Line Meaning
I just wanna build until we make it to the top (Yeah)
I want to work hard and succeed in life with you by my side.
I don't wanna argue bitch, that's why I cut you off (Aye)
I don't want to fight with you and that's why I ended our relationship.
I just wanna hit it low key don't stop (Yeah)
I want to have a discreet and enjoyable sexual encounter with you.
Babe you looking pretty, I'ma make ya panties drop (Aye)
You look beautiful and I plan to seduce you sexually.
Still about the money so don't get no wild ideas (Aye)
I am still focused on making money, don't think otherwise.
Lookin' at me funny you can kiss on my adidas
If you have a problem with me, you can kiss my shoes.
Bitch I'm lookin' for a meal ticket, I see Georgia peaches (Aye)
I am looking for a rich woman and I see potential in the women from Georgia.
Pick em from the tree, watch em pick you into pieces
I plan to use and manipulate women for my personal gain.
I been sitting on a ledge dying over shit I never said
I have been struggling with unresolved personal issues.
I can hear the sirens for my death
I feel like I am on the verge of dying or being punished for my actions.
I'm a ambulance away from running outta breath
I am close to my breaking point and may soon reach a mental or physical collapse.
Body in the street, I see them zippin' up the bag
I fear for my life and imagine what it would be like to die on the streets.
(I ain't) I ain't got a clue how I flew that coop
I am confused about how I got into my current situation.
I just wanna float up all the way to the God Root
I wish to escape my current reality and reach a higher spiritual plane.
This is not what you been thinking, what you thought wasn't what y'all do
My actions and intentions may not be what you expect or believe.
I been in the trenches diggin' with nothing but volume
I have been working hard and putting a lot of effort into my career.
Every time I catch a L
Every time I face a setback or loss.
I never trip and they can't even tell
I never let setbacks affect me and I remain strong despite them.
What it's really doing to my inner shell
The setbacks and challenges are affecting me internally.
Everybody wanna prod at me without a doubt
Everyone wants to criticize or scrutinize me, regardless of the situation.
Guess I'll keep it rolling cause I won't stop now
I will keep moving forward and not let anyone bring me down.
I think I'm caught up in a whirlwind
I feel like my life is moving too fast and I cannot control it.
Flying through the sky I never know which way the world is
I feel lost and directionless in life.
High up there is where this girl is
I am attracted to a woman who is out of my league.
I think she wanna flirt with me and a bottle with some herb, shit
I believe she is interested in me and wants to drink and smoke weed together.
So I'ma kick it on the surface
I will keep things casual and not get too involved with her.
If you wanna hang with me I suggest you find your purpose
If you want to spend time with me, you should have a clear goal or intention in mind.
Not to make anyone nervous
I don't want to make anyone uncomfortable or uneasy.
But I don't surround myself wit clowns from the circus
I don't associate with people who are foolish or immature.
Lyrics © O/B/O APRA AMCOS
Written by: Aleksej Kungurov, Il'ya Mordovskij
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
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