Rockin'XXL: R.L.Burnside (USA)

Robert Lee Burnside, known as R. L. Burnside was born on 23.November 1926 in Harmontown (or Blackwater Creek)/MS and died on 1.September 2005 in Memphis/TN. He was an American blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He played music for much of his life but received little recognition before the early 1990s. In the latter half of the decade, Burnside recorded and toured with Jon Spencer, garnering crossover appeal and introducing his music to a new fan base in the punk and garage rock Scene.
He played the harmonica and dabbled with playing the guitar beginning at the age of 16, He reported that he first played in public at age 21 or 22. He learned mostly from Mississippi Fred McDowell, who lived nearby since Burnside was a child. He first heard McDowell playing at age 7 and eventually joined his gigs to play a late set. Other local teachers were his uncle-in-law Ranie Burnette, who was a popular player from Senatobia, and the mostly unknown Henry Harden, Son Hibbler, Jesse Vortis, and Burnside's brother-in-law. Burnside cited church singing and fife and drum picnics as elements of his childhood's musical landscape, and he credited Muddy Waters, Lightnin' Hopkins and John Lee Hooker as influences in adulthood.
In the late 1940s he moved to Chicago, where his father had lived since he separated from his mother, in the hope of finding better economic opportunities. He found jobs at metal and glass factories, had the company of Muddy Waters (his cousin-in-law), and enjoyed the blues scene on Maxwell Street. But things did not turn out as he had hoped; within the span of one year his father, two brothers, and two uncles were all murdered in the city.
Three years after coming to Chicago, Burnside went back south. He married Alice Mae Taylor in 1949, his second marriage.
He moved several times In the 1950s, between Memphis, the Mississippi Delta and the hill country of northern Mississippi. During his time in the Delta, he met bluesmen Robert Lockwood, Jr. and Aleck "Rice" Miller. It seems it was around that time that Burnside killed a man, possibly at a craps game, was convicted of murder and incarcerated in Parchman Farm. He would later relate that his boss at the time had arranged to release him after six months, as he needed Burnside's skills as a tractor driver.
He spent the next 45 years, not unlike his early years, in Panola and Tate counties, in northern Mississippi. At first he kept to particularly remote dwellings, working into the 1980s as a sharecropper growing cotton and soybean, as a commercial fisherman, selling his catch from door to door, and as a truck driver. Later he moved closer to Holly Springs. After coming back to Mississippi, and especially after marrying, he picked more local gigs, playing guitar in juke joints and bars, at picnics and at his own open house parties, and at an occasional festival. His career boomed in the last twenty years of his life. His earliest recordings were made in 1967.

In 2002 he suffered from several heart attacks, a surgery in 2003 ended his future plans. On occasions he came back on stage, his last appearance was the Bonnaroo Music Festival n 2004.

He won four Blues Awards (2000,2002 (2) and 2003) was nominated for another 8 and for one Grammy. His legacy lives on in his Family, he had 13 children and 35 Grand children. Duwayne & Garry Burnside (sons) and Cedric (Grandson) are best known.

1981

HMG 6501, 13 tracks, 50:24 min