R.L.
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Shibuya Live Inn, Tokyo, Japan 2nd March 1998
Here's some -Blues-Indian Classical-Underground-'60's amazing gems from long time ago...
WANTED:
Shibuya Live Inn, Tokyo, Japan 2nd March 1998
There are no longer 'dancers', the possessed.
The cleavage of men into actor and spectators
is the central fact of our time. We are obsessed
with heroes who live for us and whom we punish.
If all the radios and televisions were deprived
of their sources of power, all books and paintings
burned tomorrow, all shows and cinemas closed,
all the arts of vicarious existence...
We are content with the 'given' in sensation's
quest. We have been metamorphosised from a mad
body dancing on hillsides to a pair of eyes
staring in the dark.
J.D.M.
The cleavage of men into actor and spectators
is the central fact of our time. We are obsessed
with heroes who live for us and whom we punish.
If all the radios and televisions were deprived
of their sources of power, all books and paintings
burned tomorrow, all shows and cinemas closed,
all the arts of vicarious existence...
We are content with the 'given' in sensation's
quest. We have been metamorphosised from a mad
body dancing on hillsides to a pair of eyes
staring in the dark.
J.D.M.
1 comment:
R.L. Burnside:
Double Decker Arts Festival
Oxford, MS
29-4-2000
(SBD)
Tracklisting:
01 Poor Black Mattie
02 Long Haired Doney
03 Fireman Ring The Bell
04 Boogie Chillen
05 Shake 'Em On Down
06 Walkin Blues
07 Story Time
08 Whiskey & Women
09 Poor Boy
10 Goin' Down South
11 Jumper On The Line
12 Goin Away Baby
13 Dust My Broom
14 Let My Baby Ride
15 Hoochie Coochie Man
Recorded at House of Blues,Chicago 1998
(FM broadcast)
1) Old black Maddie
2) Shake 'en on down
3) Rollin' and Tumblin'
4) Please don't stay
5) Long Haired Doney
6) Boogie chillun
7) Walkin blues
8) Po' Boy
9) Goin' with you Baby
10) You better stay awhile
11) Let my baby ride
Recorded 4/29/2000 in Jackson, Miss.
(soundboard)
12) He ain't your daddy (spoken)
13) Bad luck and trouble
14) Jumper on the line
15) Dust my broom
16) Mannish Boy
Recorded in Tenn. 1999
(FM broadcast)
17) Gotta find my baby
18) Boogie instrumental
R.L. Burnside 050596 Bealse Street Music Festival Memphis TN
& more...
American blues musician (b. Nov. 21/23, 1926, Harmontown, Miss.ód. Sept. 1, 2005, Memphis, Tenn.), became widely known in the 1990s for his spare, raw style of Mississippi Delta blues. Burnside spent most of his life working as a farmer and fisherman and playing the blues in local bars in Mississippi. As a young man R.L. moved North into the neighboring Marshall County and began sharecropping. Inspired by John Lee Hooker's '50s hit "Boogie Chillun'," R.L. began singing blues and playing guitar. In addition to the Hooker 45 rpm there were other local forces that influenced R.L as well, such as Mississippi Fred McDowell and Ranie Burnette. Fed up with the hopelessness of sharecropping, Burnside migrated to Chicago in hopes of finding economic opportunity. Chicago did not work out. In the span of one month R.L.'s father, brother and uncle were murdered. Around 1959 he returned to Mississippi to again work the farms and raise a family. He also started to play music at night and on weekend.R.L.'s first recordings appeared on a 1967 Arhoolie compilation.
This all began to change for R.L. in the early '90s when the documentary film based on author Robert Palmer's book Deep Blues featured R.L. as one of its highlights. Subsequently Palmer produced R.L.'s Too Bad Jim for the fledgling Fat Possum label.
It was one of the most important and influential blues albums of the '90s. In 1998 R.L. released Come On In, which pitted his raw blues against modern electronica, courtesy of producer Tom Rothrock (Beck, Elliot Smith). The album was a critical and commercial success, and one of its tracks, "It's Bad You Know," became a respectable radio hit and was featured in The Sopranos and on its soundtrack.
North Mississippi guitarist R.L. Burnside was one of the paragons of state-of-the-art Delta juke joint blues. The guitarist, singer and songwriter was born November 23, 1926 in Oxford, MS, and made his home in Holly Springs, in the hill country above the Delta. He lived most of his life in the Mississippi hill country, which, unlike the Delta region, consists mainly of a lot of small farms. He learned his music from his neighbor, Fred McDowell, and the highly rhythmic style that Burnside plays is evident in McDowell's recording as well. Despite the otherworldly country-blues sounds put down by Burnside and his family band, known as the Sound Machine, his other influences are surprisingly contemporary: Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker and Lightnin' Hopkins. But Burnside's music is pure country Delta juke joint blues, heavily rhythm-oriented and played with a slide.
It wasn't until the 1990's that he began hitting full stride with tours and his music, thanks largely to the efforts of Fat Possum Records. The label has issued recordings made by a group of Burnside's peers, including Junior Kimbrough, Dave Thompson and others.
Up until the mid-'80s, Burnside was primarily a farmer and fisherman. After getting some attention in the late '60s via folklorists David Evans and George Mitchell (Mitchell recorded him for the Arhoolie label), he recorded for the Vogue, Swingmaster and Highwater record labels. Although he had done short tours, it wasn't until the late '80s that he was invited to perform at several European blues festivals. In 1992, he was featured alongside his friend Junior Kimbrough (whose Holly Spings juke joint Burnside lives next to), in a documentary film, Deep Blues. His debut recording, Bad Luck City, was released that same year on Fat Possum Records. Burnside has a second record out on the Oxford-based Fat Possum label, Too Bad Jim (1994).
These recordings showcase the raw, barebones electric guitar stylings of Burnside, and on both recordings he's accompanied by a small band, which includes his son Dwayne on bass and son-in-law Calvin Jackson on drums, as well as guitarist Kenny Brown. Both recordings also adequately capture the feeling of what it must be like to be in Junior Kimbrough's juke joint, where both men played this kind of raw, unadulterated blues for over 30 years. This is the kind of downhome, backporch blues played today as it has been for many decades. In 1996, Burnside teamed with indie-rocker Jon Spencer to cut A Ass Pocket O' Whiskey for the hip Matador label; he returned to Fat Possum in 1998 for the more conventional Come on In. As Burnside had been recording intermittently since the late '60s a spate of re-issues and live recordings began to appear in the 2000's. Chief among them were Mississippi Hill Country Blues, largely recorded in the Netherlands in the 1980s; First Recordings, which gathered 14 of George Mitchell's 1967 field recordings of Burnside in Coldwater, MS; a live set documenting a west coast tour Burnside on Burnside appeared in 2001. His next studio album Wish I Was in Heaven Sitting Down appeared in 2000 but it would be another 4 years before the next new R.L. Burnside recording Bothered Mind was released. That same year Burnside suffered a heart attack and underwent bypass surgery. He never fully recovered from the attack and in 2005, at the age of 79, R.L. Burnside passed away in a Memphis, TN hospital.
Get those chickens out of here...
:)
Henry
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