Artist: R.L. Burnside

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Thanks to CR Humphrey of Old Gray Mule ! This video is tragically too short. If you have info on this band please let me know!

Cheers DJ Hillfunk for the score!

Cheers to DJ Hillfunk for the find!

Devin Miller writes: "I recorded the audio on a $25 mini-jambox I bought at Sears, so forgiveness for the lo-fi and modulation. Musicians with R.L. including 17-year-old Cedric Burnside, Kenny Brown, and Dale Beavers (on bass). This was the second time I saw R.L. and one of four. The visuals is Super 8 film I shot that day (actually the first film I ever shot in my life). Then projected against the wall and captured with my Canon 5D Mark II for digital capture. No post processing or filters used other than cross [...]

R.L. Burnside at home in Independence, Mississippi, shot by Alan Lomax, Worth Long, and John Bishop in August, 1978.

Thanks to Charlie Humphrey of Old Gray Mule for calling my attention to this piece. Posted here without permission from Charles Russo . It has come to pass as a particular sort of historical irony - both poignant and peculiar - that one of the last great southern bluesmen died on the same day that Hurricane Katrina tore through the Gulf States. R.L. Burnside passed away at the age of 78 in a Memphis hospitable bed, just one of many chapters that came to a [...]

Do I really need to write anything about Kenny Brown? Really? Haven't we got to the point yet where his albums are issued at birth to each newborn child? If not this world is in a damn sad state. Y'all know Mr. Brown learned to play mostly at the feet of Mr. Joe Callicott , and as a young man became R.L. Burnside's [...]

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Joe Sacco , artist of the award-winning graphic novel Palestine was sent on tour with R.L. Burnside by Details Magazine in 2000. The work below was published in the magazine and included in the Fat Possum Records book Darker Blues .

From the Archives: Here is a post I did to remember R.L Burnside when he passed away. I edited out some of the links that no longer worked. He is probably in heaven sitting down. I hope Mr. Burnside has a peaceful journey to the other side and may God bless his soul. One of his albums was named, "Wish I Was in Heaven Sitting Down" and I hope that he is. My condolences go out to his widow Alice Mae, and his kids and [...]

Notes @ YouTube: RL Burnside doing his version of .44 blues that was written by Roosevelt Sykes. I've always enjoyed the Howlin Wolf version of this song, but R.L. does a great job with it. R.L. Burnside @SqueezeMyLemon R.L. Brunside mp3s @Amazon.com

R. L. Burnside was born on November 23, 1926, and he passed away on September 1, 2005. May God rest his soul. I imagine that if heaven has a front poarch he is sitting out there playing his guitar. He was a Delta blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist who lived much of his life in and around Holly Springs, Mississippi. I remember when he came on my radar screen back in the early 1990s, I played a cassette tape of his over and over. Wanting everybody I knew to hear this music. You could [...]

Thx Karen Abney Korn!

R.L. Burnside with family at home in Independence, Mississippi, shot by Alan Lomax, Worth Long, and John Bishop in August, 1978 mp3

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R.L. Burnside at Houston's Continental Club, 2000. Bluesman R.L. Burnside is definitely an acquired taste: when he was alive and stompin’, R.L. was as raw and rowdy as the Mississippi juke joints he played in most of his life. But he remains one of America’s purest bluesmen, one who ought to be ranked alongside greats like Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf. Burnside played music since the 1960s, but nobody really paid attention until 30 years later. Certainly it was the album A Ass Pocket of Whiskey (1996), recorded with white-boy [...]

Trailing back to a previous List 'Em article regarding cover songs, everything from tributary motives to bowdlerization to pure subconscious innocence preserves a folksy tradition of recreating earlier work, thereby making it one's own. The cycle of covering older songs, for whatever the reason, has continued for decades. Most commonly seen in a nostalgic light, encompassing everything from pre-Billboard 45s and porch-played blues to '80s pop, a reboot or a re-imagining can be stripped of pretense to selfish cores, or even hailed as a classic so much that the original creator sees fit to redo his own take [...]