Description
*This is a Vinyl LP*
Release Date: 2016
Fat Possum Records
Track List
Side A
1. Miss Maybelle
2. House Up On The Hill
3. Gone So Long
4. Skinny Woman
5. See What My Buddy’s Done
6. Don’t Care How Long You’re Gone
7. Lost Without Your Love
8. Shake ‘Em On Down
9. Bad Luck And Trouble
Side B
1. Just Like A Woman
2. Greyhound Bus Station
3. Crying Won’t Make Me Stay
4. Poor Boy
5. Poor Black Mattie
6. Jumper On The Line
7. Long Haired Doney
Personnel
- R.L. Burnside – vocals, guitar
- Red Ramsey – harmonica track B4
Notes
Fans of this Mississippi hill country blues patriarch who’ve been put off by his previous two albums, the hip-hop remix set Come On In and the trip-hip experiment, Wish I Was in Heaven Sitting Down, will enjoy this time capsule recorded in 1982 and 1967. It’s Burnside in the raw, playing solo on acoustic guitar as he did for his neighbors for most of his early career — when farming was still his profession.
Burnside reprised “Miss Maybelle,” “Mellow Peaches,” “Poor Boy,” “Jumper on the Line,” and others among these songs on his more recent albums for Fat Possum Records, but these early versions capture his driving blend of one-chord rhythm with lightning decorations of slide and melody already fully developed.
If anything, Burnside’s guitar playing has slowed over the years, but it’s taken on gravity as it’s grown more spare, just as his voice — high and limber here — has added character with the imperfections of age. Burnside, who turned 73 in November, is also a more idiosyncratic musician now. Nonetheless, it’s a pleasure to hear him doing numbers such as “Bad Luck and Trouble” nearly 20 years ago, fusing the influences of John Lee Hooker and Fred McDowell into the potent style that’s made him one of today’s premier practitioners of old-time rural blues.
