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.
When My First Wife Left Me
R.L. Burnside Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
God knows put that on the road
Well, when my first wife left me
God knows put that on the road
Yeah you know since that day, now people
I've been sleeping on door to door
We ain't no (?) travellin' people
Ain't no (?) people
You know my clothes got paper thin
You know just said you want no man
When my baby take me back again
When my baby take me back again
God knows I won't leave my home no more
When my baby take me back again
God knows I won't leave my home no more
Yeah I just stand on my baby
And God knows I would settle down
The song "When My First Wife Left Me" by R.L. Burnside is a blues song that reflects the emotional turmoil of a man who has lost his wife. The lyrics express how the singer's life was turned upside down after his wife left him. He is left with nothing but the clothes on his back and is forced to travel door to door, looking for a place to sleep. The phrase "God knows put that on the road" suggests that this is a difficult journey that he never wanted to take.
The singer's clothes are described as being "paper thin," indicating that he is in a state of poverty. This line also suggests that he is vulnerable and exposed to the elements, which adds to his feelings of despair. He longs for his wife to take him back and promises that if she does, he will settle down and never leave his home again.
Overall, the song is a powerful expression of the pain that comes with losing a loved one. It portrays the sadness, loneliness, and vulnerability that can follow in the aftermath of a relationship breakdown.
Line by Line Meaning
Well, when my first wife left me
The first line of the song highlights the singer's despair and heartbreak. The use of the word 'well' suggests that the situation is not a desirable one.
God knows put that on the road
The second line suggests that the singer believes that God put his wife leaving him on his life's journey or 'road.'
Yeah you know since that day, now people
The third line is a continuation of the singer's thought in the first two lines. He is speaking to other people, letting them know how his life has been since his first wife left him.
I've been sleeping on door to door
The fourth line suggests that the artist has been living a tough life since his wife left. He has no home and is forced to sleep wherever he can find a shelter.
We ain't no (?) travellin' people
The artist is stating that he and his wife were not known for traveling frequently, which signifies how unexpected and abrupt her leaving was.
You know my clothes got paper thin
The sixth line suggests that the singer's situation has left him with no means to take care of himself, and his clothes have become thin to the point of almost falling apart.
You know just said you want no man
The seventh line highlights that the singer's wife left him because she did not want a man anymore. The use of 'just' suggests he is still dealing with the shock of it.
When my baby take me back again
The artist is hoping that his wife will come back to him, and this line suggests that he has not yet given up on their relationship.
God knows I won't leave my home no more
The penultimate line reveals that the artist's intention is to stay put if his wife comes back. He does not want to risk losing her again by leaving home.
Yeah I just stand on my baby
And God knows I would settle down
The final two lines indicate the artist's love and devotion to his wife. He states that he is simply waiting for her and would settle down with her in a heartbeat. The repetition of 'God knows' is used to accentuate the strength of his desire.
Writer(s): John Lee Hooker
Contributed by Noah A. Suggest a correction in the comments below.
Ben Lynn
You sit here watching him play and while you are listening you think how amazing it is the way he is playing. Then he looks up and smiles. You realize how much fun he is having. Thank you Lord for the talent you gave him
essej1973
This video series is just great. The sound comes through well, the filming is clear and straightforward, etc. R.L. Burnside rules!
gtispwn
the man is full of raw emotion
lamerical
he's the man, I love his style!
Dylan Eynon
This is more of what the world needs!
Scott Grant
RL's best acoustic Album is titled "First Recordings". Incredible sound quality as well.
quovadis1952
How can an amazing guitarist like this not be on the best 100 list??? What a fucking injustice. This man is so good and so original there are no words to describe it. He's the closest thing to guitar God...Thank you for everything Mr. Burnside!
Sam Dickinson
Absolutely Immense!!
the Big Nose Attack
this is the blues!
bangaway
his playing is out of this world awesome