R. L. Burnside (November 23, 1926 – September 1, 2005), born Robert Lee Bur… Read Full Bio ↴R. L. Burnside (November 23, 1926 – September 1, 2005), born Robert Lee Burnside, was an American blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist who lived much of his life in and around Holly Springs, Mississippi. He played music for much of his life, but did not receive much attention until the early 1990s. In the latter half of the 1990s, Burnside repeatedly recorded with Jon Spencer, garnering crossover appeal and introducing his music to a new fanbase within the underground garage rock scene.

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.

The Criminal Inside Me
R.L. Burnside Lyrics

Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴

Mama, mama
I want some milk

Yeah!
Back years ago
In the month of June
When all those animals got together
And had that party down at the house of brother ′Coon

Now the little Monkey
He was most delighted
He was a hot mother 'cause he wasn′t invited
Well late that night, he looked at his watch
I got half past nine
I know god damn well it's party time
Looked up over his door
Got that long .44
Started walkin' down the street
Whilst walking down the street, he was walking slow
He kicks an Elephant′s ass and leaves him lying dead on the road

Then he went on down to this building
Where they were having this party at
And he made a loud knock on the door
Say you mammy fuckers
Get down drinkin′ that goddamn Bacardi
If you don't give me some of that shits
Or I′ll break up the motherfucking party
Said, "I got an ass pocket of whiskey and a front pocket of gin
If you don't open this door I′ll kick the motherfucker in."
That's when the Lion jumped up, you know
Said, "listen to that little squirt out there talkin′ shit
It couldn't mean a thing."
"Can't bullshit the public, know damn well I′m the king."
But they opened the door and opened it wide
Little bad monkey stepped inside
All you motherfuckers get up on your (unknown) toes
And quit your clowning ′cause you know you're wrong
Those the queen of diamonds on the
Table and four of diamonds on the floor
And cut the lights out with his .44
By that time one them pimps got the light
He jumped up on the counter and throw back his vest
And said, "every motherfucker in here is under arrest."
He′s the Police you know

He was the main man you know

JS:Whoa!
RL:Yeah!
JS:Whoa!
RL:Hey!
JS:Whoa!
RL:Yeah!
Woo!
JS:Well, well, well!
RL:Yeah!

JS:Hey RL
RL Burnside

RL:Talk to me now!

JS:RL.?

RL:Huh?

JS:RL Listen man
I'm a little, wait a second,
I′m a little short of money right now and I
Was wondering, RL, RL you got forty nickels

RL:How many?

JS:I need forty nickels for a bag of potato chips, c'mon man

RL:You don′t get out of my face quick
I'm gonna kick yo ass you son of a bitch!

JS:Ow!
JS:Ow!
RL:Yeah!
JS:Oww!
RL:Yeah!

RL:I'll tell you what!

JS:C′mon, I need forty nickels
I′m not talking about the big bag of potato chips

RL:I'll tell you what if you don′t get out of here
And make it fast I'm gonna put my foot right in your ass!

JS:Oww!
RL:Yeah!
JS:Oww!
RL:Yeah!
JS:Oww!
RL:Hey!

RL:Well!
JS:Hey!

Overall Meaning

The lyrics to R.L. Burnside's song "The Criminal Inside Me" tell a story of a mischievous and rebellious monkey who is not invited to a party. Feeling left out and angry, the monkey decides to take matters into his own hands. He grabs his gun and walks down the street, showing off his power by kicking an elephant's ass and killing it. He then arrives at the party and demands to be let in, threatening to break up the party if he doesn't get what he wants. The lion at the party underestimates the monkey, thinking he's just talking nonsense, but eventually lets him in. The monkey takes control of the situation, declaring everyone under arrest. The song ends with a playful interaction between R.L. Burnside and another voice, where they exchange words about needing money for potato chips.

The lyrics seem to convey a sense of rebellion, power, and a disregard for authority. The monkey symbolizes an individual who is marginalized and excluded but manages to assert their own agency and disrupt the established order. The song also touches on themes of justice and control, with the monkey assuming a position of power and becoming the "Police" or the "main man."

Line by Line Meaning

Mama, mama
Mother, mother

I want some milk
I desire some milk

Back years ago
In the past

In the month of June
During the month of June

When all those animals got together
When all those animals gathered

And had that party down at the house of brother 'Coon
And celebrated at brother 'Coon's house

Now the little Monkey
Now the small Monkey

He was most delighted
He was extremely pleased

He was a hot mother 'cause he wasn't invited
He was angry because he wasn't invited

Well late that night, he looked at his watch
Later that night, he checked his watch

I got half past nine
It was 9:30

I know god damn well it's party time
I am certain it's time to party

Looked up over his door
Raised his eyes above his door

Got that long .44
Obtained the long .44 gun

Started walkin' down the street
Began strolling down the street

Whilst walking down the street, he was walking slow
While he was walking slowly down the street

He kicks an Elephant's ass and leaves him lying dead on the road
He forcefully strikes an Elephant and leaves it dead on the road

Then he went on down to this building
Then he continued to this building

Where they were having this party at
Where the party was taking place

And he made a loud knock on the door
And he forcefully knocked on the door

Say you mammy fuckers
Said, you motherfuckers

Get down drinkin' that goddamn Bacardi
Start drinking that damn Bacardi

If you don't give me some of that shits
Unless you give me some of it

Or I'll break up the motherfucking party
I will disrupt the entire party

Said, 'I got an ass pocket of whiskey and a front pocket of gin
Stated, 'I have a pocket of whiskey and a pocket of gin

If you don't open this door I'll kick the motherfucker in.'
If you don't open this door, I will forcefully kick it

That's when the Lion jumped up, you know
At that moment, the Lion quickly stood up

Said, 'listen to that little squirt out there talkin' shit
Said, 'listen to that small monkey outside speaking nonsense

It couldn't mean a thing.'
It couldn't be significant

'Can't bullshit the public, know damn well I'm the king.'
'Can't deceive the public, I know I'm the king'

But they opened the door and opened it wide
However, they opened the door completely

Little bad monkey stepped inside
The mischievous monkey entered

All you motherfuckers get up on your (unknown) toes
All of you motherfuckers get on your tiptoes

And quit your clowning 'cause you know you're wrong
And stop fooling around because you know you're doing something immoral

Those the queen of diamonds on the
They saw the queen of diamonds on the

Table and four of diamonds on the floor
Table and four of diamonds on the floor

And cut the lights out with his .44
And shot the lights out with his .44 gun

By that time one them pimps got the light
At that moment, one of the pimps grabbed the light

He jumped up on the counter and throw back his vest
He leapt onto the counter and pulled back his vest

And said, 'every motherfucker in here is under arrest.'
And declared, 'every person in here is arrested'

He's the Police you know
He is the Police, you know

He was the main man you know
He was the main authority figure, you know

Whoa!
Expressing surprise

Well, well, well!
Expressing surprise

Hey RL
Hey RL

Talk to me now!
Speak to me now!

RL.?
RL?

Huh?
What?

RL Listen man
RL, listen man

I'm a little, wait a second, I'm a little short of money right now and I
I currently have a small amount of money and

Was wondering, RL, RL you got forty nickels
I was wondering, RL, do you have forty nickels

How many?
How many?

I need forty nickels for a bag of potato chips, c'mon man
I require forty nickels to purchase a bag of potato chips, please

You don't get out of my face quick
If you don't leave promptly

I'm gonna kick yo ass you son of a bitch!
I will kick your buttocks, you unpleasant person

Ow!
Expressing pain

Now!
Now!

I'll tell you what!
I'll tell you what!

C'mon, I need forty nickels
Come on, I need forty nickels

I'm not talking about the big bag of potato chips
I'm not referring to the large bag of potato chips

If you don't get out of here
If you don't leave this place

And make it fast I'm gonna put my foot right in your ass!
And quickly, I will forcefully kick your buttocks

C'mon, I need forty nickels
Come on, I need forty nickels

I'm not talking about the big bag of potato chips
I'm not referring to the large bag of potato chips

If you don't get out of here
If you don't leave this place

And make it fast I'm gonna put my foot right in your ass!
And quickly, I will forcefully kick your buttocks

Ow!
Expressing pain

Now!
Now!

Well!
Expressing surprise

Hey!
Hey!

Writer(s): Brown Kenneth H, Bauer Dennis Judah, Burnside Robert Lee, Spencer Jonathan Kirk, Simins Russell Paul

Contributed by Gavin O. Suggest a correction in the comments below.

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