R. L. Burnside (Robert Lee Burnside) was born November 23rd 1926 in Mississippi. He worked as a fisherman and a sharecropper in rural northern Mississippi where he lived for most of his life. Burnside picked up the guitar for the first time in his early twenties drawing inspiration from the likes of John Lee Hooker, Mississippi Fred Dowell and his cousin-in-law Muddy Waters.
In the 1950’s R.L.Burnside moved to Chicago in search of work but tragedy hit when his Uncle, Father and Brother were all murdered in the city. In the late 1950’s he returned to Mississippi to raise a family and work on the farms. After returning to Mississippi, Burnside was convicted of the shooting and killing of another man but only served six months due to his farm boss’s influence in court.
Burnside’s earliest recorded material was released in the late 1960’s though nothing else was released until ‘Hill Country Blues’ in the early 1980’s. Despite having played music for much of his life R.L Burnside did not receive much attention until the 1990’s when he recorded and performed with Jon Spencer of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, the album ‘Ass Pocket of Whisky’ coming from this collaboration. He signed to Fat Possum Records during this period, a label dedicated to aging Mississippi blues-men.
R.L Burnside sang with a powerful, expressive voice accompanied by both electric and acoustic guitar. His style did not always follow the standard 12 or 16 bar patterns and like many of the blues players of his time he favoured a stripped down and raw sound representing his life of hardship and rebellion.
Burnside suffered a heart attack in 2001 and stopped performing soon after. He died September 1st 2005 aged 78.
