R.L. Burnside born 23 November 1926

R. L. Burnside (November 23, 1926 – September 1, 2005) 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 that 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 scenes. 

Robert Lee Burnside was born into a family of Mississippi sharecroppers, received little education and joined his parents picking cotton on plantations at a young age. Moving to Chicago in the late 1940s, where he saw his fellow Mississippi bluesman Muddy Waters play, he was part of the great migration of black Americans from the delta region to northern industrial cities. Two years later, he returned to Mississippi after his father, two brothers and an uncle had been murdered in separate incidents in Chicago. Back in the south, Burnside shot a man who had wanted to run him off his land. He was convicted of murder and sent to Parchman, the notorious Mississippi prison. After serving six months, Burnside was released through the influence of a white plantation foreman. 

He began learning blues guitar, observing his neighbour Mississippi Fred McDowell, who had helped shape the modal rhythm-based techniques of the north Mississippi blues. Burnside continued doing farm work by day and playing at weekends. Then, in 1967, he was recorded by folklorist George Mitchell. This led to the release of the album Mississippi Delta Blues, and Burnside started getting booked for festivals. 

Yet he remained a marginal figure, rarely playing outside his home state. Then, in 1991, his fortunes began to change when he was signed to the fledgling Fat Possum label by Matthew Johnson, then a student at Ole Miss University. Johnson had befriended the journalist and blues scholar Robert Palmer, and Palmer, intent on recording Burnside, encouraged Johnson to start a label. 

Fat Possum took the approach of marketing Burnside to an audience who generally favoured punk rock. If the approach seemed eccentric - Burnside's 1991 Fat Possum debut Bad Luck City initially sold only 700 copies - Johnson's vision was to prove itself: Burnside's raw blues, bleak wit and nihilistic character soon found a large, youth audience. 

In 1992 Palmer was approached by British pop musician Dave Stewart who wanted to produce a documentary about a music scene seemingly unchanged from the 1920s. The resulting film, Deep Blues (named after Palmer's highly regarded book of the same name), helped broaden Burnside's appeal. 

                             

This and Johnson's astute marketing found him playing rock venues across the US, Europe and Japan. Burnside's notoriety reached new levels when the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion joined him to record his 1996 album, A Ass Pocket Of Whiskey, which sold more than 70,000 copies. A surreal form of celebrity began to envelop Burnside: initially championed by Iggy Pop and Bono, he became the most chic black man in white, North American society. Richard Gere hired him to play at his parties, Uma Thurman attended his concerts, Jay McInerney wrote a profile of him for the New Yorker, while Annie Liebowitz took photographs for Vanity Fair. 

Burnside remained indifferent and continued to live in a ramshackle, cockroach-infested house surrounded by the debris of old vehicles. In 1997 Burnside's Mr Wizzard album found him performing uninspired material and gained poor reviews. Conscious of the devaluation of their most popular artist, Fat Possum released Come On In, a 1998 album of remixes of Burnside material. The album sold strongly even if Burnside appeared indifferent to the results. 

He retired from touring at the end of 1999, citing poor health and underwent heart surgery. After a heart attack in 2001, his doctor advised him to stop drinking; Burnside did, but he reported that change left him unable to play.

Another heart attack in November 2002 resulted in a surgery in 2003, and short-circuited any future career plans he had. Yet Burnside continued as guest singer on occasions, such as at Bonnaroo Music Festival, 2004, his last public appearance. He died at St. Francis Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee on September 1, 2005, at the age of 78. 

In 2004 Fat Possum issued A Bothered Mind, which sold well and attracted positive reviews. His songs continued to appear on film and television soundtracks (including The Sopranos) and a documentary film, You See Me Laughin', about Burnside and Fat Possum, was screened at film festivals. For the last decade of his life, Burnside was championed by the international media, earned six figure sums and outsold every other black blues icon except BB King and the late John Lee Hooker. 

Burnside won one W. C. Handy Award in 2000 (Traditional Blues Male Artist of the Year), two in 2002 and one in 2003). He had 11 unsuccessful nominations in 8 years for the awards, starting in 1982, as well as one for a Grammy. Several of the Mississippi Blues Trail markers, which have been erected since 2006, mention him. In 2014 he was inducted to the Blues Hall of Fame in Memphis. 

(Edited from article by Harth Cartwright @ The Guardian & Wikipedia)

Here's a clip of R.L. Burnside at home in Independence, Mississippi, shot by Alan Lomax, Worth Long, and John Bishop in August, 1978.