I first encountered R.L. Burnside's signature Delta blues in 1991, on the soundtrack to the film Deep Blues, a documentary about contemporary blues musicians living in the Delta (area of Mississippi). The documentary was inspired by music journalist (not the singer) Robert Palmer's excellent book (of the same name) on Mississippi Delta blues, a book I'd read in high school, sometime in the mid-'80s (the book was published in 1981). Back then, I'd already immersed myself in the music of the traditional blues artists, as well as more modern blues artists (including most of the entire round-up of Alligator Records and Malaco Records blues artists, not to mention the more popular Stevie Ray Vaughn and Robert Cray), so when I read about the film being made, I was excited. I couldn't wait to see the movie.
Well, I was wrong. I could wait to see the movie*, as I never saw it listed as playing in my state (not to say that it didn't play in my state, but just that I never saw I listing for it anywhere, and I looked). I did, however, manage to drive to Jackson to buy the soundtrack. I listened to the cassette--twice--the entire hundred-mile trip back home, and the music just floored me. This wasn't the sound of the new blues I'd been listening to; this was something entirely different. It was rawer and (thereby...sort of) more powerful than any contemporary blues I'd ever heard.
This must be, I thought, what the blues must have sounded like back when Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf first unleashed their early records: primal, hard-core, gut-bucket blues, music that grabbed your crotch and soul at the same time, music that forced you to pay attention, that struck a primordial groove and held it, refusing to change chords, refusing to let go, until you understood...until you understood not what these musicians had been through ('cause you couldn't, 'cause you didn't live their lives--Thank God!), but until you understood that they'd been through these times and lived to tell their tale. These songs demanded a congregation, because these folks were there to witness, and they demanded we listen, 'cause someone needed to take note, and that someone was me.
On the album (which has sadly been discontinued, though you can find it cheap), the first two tracks completely astounded me. The second track is"Jr. Blues" (which was subsequently retitled as "All Night Long" for release on his solo album) by the late Junior Kimbrough, and it contains possibly the best bass/guitar (I'm not sure which instrument it is--really, as it sounds like a hybrid of the two) blues riff of the past thirty-five years. In a year-or-so, when I start writing my best songs of the '90s list, I'll riff more on that riff, as that song places high, as does the first track of the Deep Blues album, "Jumper on the Line," (later re-titled "Jumper Hanging Out on the Line")by R.L. Burnside.
What both "Jumper on the Line" and "Jr. Blues" do is take a lick and run it straight through the song with no chord changes. What this type of song structure--one riff with no/little variation--provides is a holding pattern--a vamp--onto which the singer (in blues it's the singer, but when rock or jazz employ this strategy, it's the musicians that do this) can improvise. Burnside and Kimbrough utilize this instrumental monotony to allow the groove and feel of the song to sink in deeply so that the lyric and vocal can be felt deeply; it's like those of us who study or write (or whatever) better when there's some background noise. This concentrated and repetitive sound drowns out any inessential information and allows for focus, allows us to more fully enter into whatever world we're trying to enter. In other words, the vamp is used by Burnside and Kimbrough to hypnotize the listener, to drag us into their world by taking us out of our own, as the repeated groove eliminates everything else except the performance. It's singular, and it's demanding.
It's not new, this vamping style of Burnside and Kimbrough. Not completely. Burnside's and Kimbrough's sound comes--primarily--via Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. Waters and Wolf developed their sound**--the Chicago Blues sound (even though both originally hailed from Mississippi--by removing some of the chord changes inherent in the (more acoustic) country (Delta) blues style (which owes its half its origin to European ballads***) in order to give the new music more drive and more power. What Burnside (whose sound comes more from Waters) and Kimbrough (whose sound comes more from Wolf) do is take the (early) Chicago Blues sound and strip it down even further, taking out even more chord changes, leaving only one or two--and ofttimes none.
This new Delta Blues style was, to me, almost revelatory, as with a musical history and sound as singular as the blues, very little musical change is ever expected or predicted, and what we have here is something new in a world where that hasn't been anything new in almost forty years. So, I did a bit of researched, asked around, called around, trying to find something either Burnside or Kimbrough, and back then, in 1991, I could find nothing. Nada.
A few years later, I read a review of Kimbrough's debut album in Rolling Stone, and I was excited, as well as a little dumbfounded. Debut? Really? Yes, really. I searched for that album in nearby record stores (and Wal-Mart), and I couldn't find it. I asked a few record stores if they could order it for me, and they politely dismissed my request, for they hadn't heard of the record, nor of the artist. Well, somehow, I eventually tracked down Fat Possum records (out of Oxford, Mississippi), and they sent me a catalogue (which, back then, looked less like a catalogue than it did a flier), and there was Kimbrough's record, and...they had one from R.L. Burnside as well. Alright!
Soon, toward the middle of the '90s, both artists' reputations began to grow statewide and then nationally. In '96, Jon Spencer (of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion) took a liking to Burnside's music, and the two combined forces and toured and recorded together, and Burnside's popularity began to soar (relatively, that is). Going to Chulahoma to Kimbrough's juke joint began to be the new "in" thing to do, especially if Burnside was going to be there. His records started to sell, and I started seeing national ads promoting them. Then, in '98, Kimbrough (who never became anywhere near as popular as Burnside, though I don't know why) died, and then his club burned down, and then Burnside stopped recording. Period. No more. He'd stopped drinking at the same time, and I believe I read an interview with him once (though I don't remember where or when) where he stated that his sobriety affected his playing/songwriting ability. Huh. Usually, it's the other way around, but go figure. He still toured, though.
In 2001, Fat Possum released the last album containing new Burnside material: Wish I Was in Heaven Sitting Down. Like all of Burnside's albums of the previous six-or-so years, the results were mixed. Burnside liked to tinker with his material (or either he allowed his producers the leeway to do so), and--usually--on about (at least) every other song, contemporary R&B/hip-hop/nu-rock production and/or arrangement would be tacked onto the song, and the results varied...from bad to worse. Okay, that's hyperbole: some of the hip-hop/blues songs worked well; most didn't, though, and when they misfired, they misfired by miles.
What did work, though, was Burnside being Burnside--either with a traditional jump-blues backing band (usually his sons), or by himself. On the title track of the aforementioned 2001 album, Burnside accompanies himself on guitar. His voice, here, deeper--and wearier--than it was back in 1991, back when I first heard him. His signature style--the modern day Delta Blues vamp--has receded, leaving Burnside's voice as the only distinctively Burnsidian aspect of the song. He's regressed his music back to its original Delta Roots, back to the days before Waters and Wolf, back to Robert Johnson and Son House, back to their songs of impending doom, of death letters and hellhounds on their trails.
Here, Burnside repeats the title multiple times, as if he was hoping he could make it so by wishing, by chanting, as a mantra, as if he stops wishing, stops chanting, that it might not happen. He also asks for redemption, for the Lord to "take away [his] sin and give [him] grace," sounding like a man who either knows his end is coming soon (Burnside had heart surgery in 1999, and never completely and healthily recovered, and would die in 2005) and is afeared that he'll suffer eternal damnation if not forgiven and saved before his time comes, or a man who's too long for this world as he's tired and weary and in pain and has had enough. Burnside's powerful vocals (made all the more effective by their imperfection) are earnest to the point of being nigh-confessional, as if the microphone was his alter, and we--the listeners--his priest, here not only to bear witness but also to transfer the message. And we do. But we're not sure if the message was ever received, 'cause Burnside's still here, opening up his soul, praying to the Lord and us, and the only thing we can do is grant him an audience...and if we listen to him one more time, then maybe, he'll find the peace he wants, 'cause if he doesn't, then his sin is on us, but we'll take it, 'cause he's there, too.
NOTES
*I finally saw Deep Blues about four years ago, on either IFC or the Sundance Film Channel. It's worth a watch, and I enjoyed it, but the movie didn't delve as deep into the music and history of these musicians as I'd hoped it would, though as a document of what life was like back then (and, from what I hear from people who know the area, still is) in a poor Mississippi town, it was an accurate depiction.
**Waters's and Wolf's style--the Chicago Blues sound--is as much the product of Willie Dixon as it is Waters and Wolf, as it was Dixon who wrote some of their earliest, best, and most influential songs. Dixon's talent and influence as a songwriter knows few equals, but as a recording artist and performer--especially the latter--he wasn't very distinctive, certainly nowhere near as distinctive as either Waters or Wolf.
***Which goes to show you that musicians will "steal" from whenever and wherever they can legally**** get away with it. So, the next time you hear someone complaining that all Elvis or Eric Clapton or the Rolling Stones did is steal the black man's music and put a white face on it so that the richer white folks would by it, tell this person that he/she is correct, and that the black people who were robbed also robbed people (musically) themselves, both white and black. It's always been this way, and it ain't changing anytime soon, either. Musicians will take whatever they know to be great, call it an "influence," and make their own music using someone else's...until, of course, the takers--the robbers--start tweaking that sound to make it fit themselves, start adding a bit of this and that, and then they have developed their own sound, which someone later will subsequently take, etc....
****They'll do it illegally, too. Just ask George Harrison*****. Or the Beach Boys. Or M.A.R.R.S.
*****Actually, considering Harrison is dead, it might not be a good idea to try to exhume his corpse in order to be able to do that.
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