RL Burnside

R.L. Burnside still plays Delta blues the way it was performed in its heyday, complete with off- beat rhythms, frightening guitar overtones, and searing vocals. That's as it should be, because he's the real thing. Born in Coldwater, Mississippi (he still lives nearby in Holly Springs), Burnside spent his youth picking cotton on a Mississippi plantation. He lived not far from Muddy Waters, one of his main influences. In fact, Muddy married Burnside's first cousin. In the 1950's Burnside first picked up the guitar and tried to imitate the music he heard on the King Biscuit Time radio show broadcast out of Helena, Arkansas. "I listened to Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Lightnin' Hopkins -- that's who I like to play behind," he explains. He first wanted to play harmonica like King Biscuit's star, Sonny Boy Williamson, but he felt he couldn't get the sound he wanted. He switched to guitar when his brother-in-law started teaching him. "I started playing country supper parties and the like. Sometimes I'd play from sundown to sunup for $5 and a bottle of whiskey. I was still working on the plantation drivin' a tractor during the day." A friend of R.L.s, Othra Turner, who led the Mississippi Fife and Drum Band, hooked Burnside up with some people who eventually recorded him for Arhoolie records ("Mississippi Delta Blues Vol. II"). Soon after, he was being invited to folk and blues festivals around the world and he has been playing this circuit ever since.

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