V/A feat. R.L. Burnside – The Rough Guide To Delta Blues (CD, UK)

R.L. BURNSIDE Born in 1926, in Lafayette County, near Oxford, Mississippi, R.L. Burnside’s first recordings appeared on a 1967 Arhoolie compilation. His luck changed when Robert Palmer made a documentary about the blues and featured R.L. as one of its highlights. His appearance must have caught the attention of The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, and R.L. recorded an album with them entitled An Ass Pocket Of Whiskey. The album proved a huge cult success, which rapidly gained R.L. a worldwide following. He is still recording and touring to this day and, at the age of 75, remains one of the last of the true Mississippi bluesmen alive.”

02. ROBERT JOHNSON: Preaching Blues (Up Jumped The Devil) from the album BEG, BORROW OR STEAL (KATCD107) (Robert Johnson) Copyright Control. Courtesy of Catfish Records

03. MISSISSIPPI FRED MCDOWELL: Done Left Here from the album MISSISSIPPI FRED MCDOWELL (ROUN2138) (Fred McDowell) pub Happy Valley Music, BMI. ℗&© 1995 Rounder Records Corp. Licensed from Rounder Records

04. CHARLEY PATTON: High Water Everywhere Part One from the album THE DEFINITIVE CHARLEY PATTON (KATCD180) Copyright Control. Courtesy of Catfish Records

05. SON HOUSE: Walkin’ Blues from the album SON HOUSE & THE GREAT DELTA BLUES SINGERS (1928-1930) (DOCD5002) (Son House) pub Jamil Music. Courtesy of Document Records

06. MISSISSIPPI SHEIKS: Sitting On Top Of The World from the album 20TH CENTURY BLUES DISC 2 (KATX1) (Carter/Jacobs) pub Chapell-Morris. Courtesy of Catfish Records

07. MUDDY WATERS: Country Blues from the album COUNTRY BLUES (KATCD113)
(McKinley Morganfield) pub Bug Music Ltd. Courtesy of Catfish Records

08. ASIE PAYTON: Goin’ Back To The Bridge from the album NOT THE SAME OLD BLUES CRAP II (03422) (Asie Payton) pub Big Legal Mess Publishing, BMI/Admin. by Wixen Music Publishing, BMI. Licensed from Fat Possum Records

09. GEECHIE WILEY & ELVIE THOMAS: Last Kind Words Blues from the album MISSISSIPPI BLUES Vol. 1 (DOCD5157) Copyright Control. Courtesy of Document Records

10. ROBERT PETWAY: Catfish Blues from the album THE ROOTS OF MUDDY WATERS (KATCD175) Copyright Control. Courtesy of Catfish Records

11. TOMMY JOHNSON: Cool Drink Of Water Blues from the album 1928-1929 (DOCD5001) (Johnson) pub Peer International. Courtesy of Document Records

12. ROBERT BELFOUR: Black Mattie from the album NOT THE SAME OLD BLUES CRAP II (03422) (trad, arr Junior Kimbrough) pub Mockingbird Blues Publishing, BMI/Admin. by Wixen Music Publishing, BMI. Licensed from Fat Possum Records

13. BLIND JOE (WILLIE) REYNOLDS: Outside Woman Blues from the album SON HOUSE & THE GREAT DELTA BLUES SINGERS (1928-1930) (DOCD5002) (Joe Reynolds) pub Chicago Music Co. Courtesy of Document Records

14. WILLIE BROWN: Future Blues from the album SON HOUSE & THE GREAT DELTA BLUES SINGERS (1928-1930) (DOCD5002)(Willie Brown/Hanns Blessing) pub Termidor Musikverlag. Courtesy of Document Records

15. LOUISE JOHNSON: On The Wall from the album MISSISSIPPI BLUES Vol. 1 (DOCD5157) Copyright Control. Courtesy of Document Records

16. MISSISSIPPI JOHN HURT: Stack O’Lee Blues from the album THE ROOTS OF TAJ MAHAL (KATCD141) (trad, arr Hurt) pub Wynwood Music Co. Inc. Courtesy of Catfish Records

17. ALFRED LEWIS: Mississippi Swamp Moan from the album GREAT HARP PLAYERS 1927–1936 (DOCD5100) (Alfred Lewis) pub Universal/MCA Music. Courtesy of Document Records

18. BUKKA WHITE: Aberdeen Mississippi Blues from the album SHAKE ‘EM ON DOWN (KATCD106) (White) pub Wynwood Music Co. Inc. Courtesy of Catfish Records

19. JUNIOR KIMBROUGH: Meet Me In The City from the album NOT THE SAME OLD BLUES CRAP II (03422) (Junior Kimbrough) pub Mockingbird Blues Publishing, BMI/Admin. by Wixen Music Publishing, BMI. Licensed from Fat Possum Records

20. ROBERT WILKINS: That’s No Way To Get Along from the album 20TH CENTURY BLUES DISC 2 (KATX1) (Wilkins) pub Wynwood Music Co. Inc. Courtesy of Catfish Records

21. BIG BILL BROONZY: The Banker’s Blues from the album Vol. 1 1927-1932 (DOCD5050) Copyright Control. Courtesy of Document Records

22. BO CARTER: Don’t Mash My Digger So Deep from the album BO CARTER Vol. 4 (DOCD5081) Copyright Control. Courtesy of Document Records

23. BIG JOE WILLIAMS: Baby Please Don’t Go from the album GOING BACK TO CRAWFORD (CD9015) (Big Joe Williams) Copyright Control. Licensed from Arhoolie Records

24. SKIP JAMES: I’m So Glad from the album THE COUNTRY BLUES ROOTS OF ERIC CLAPTON (KATCD159) (Skip James) pub Tro. Essex Music Ltd. Courtesy of Catfish Records

“the bedrock of rock’n’roll cornerstone of popular music Delta blues…

…is more than just music

Delta blues is more than just music. It’s waking up in the morning and finding your baby gone. It’s jumping on a train, not knowing or caring where it’s going. It’s picking cotton all day long in the blistering sun and then playing a jook joint and drinking corn liquor until dawn. Delta blues was the rap music of its day drinking hard, playing hard, womanising, playing the guitar and rambling from town to town. It’s the cornerstone of American popular music and the bedrock of rock ‘n’ roll. In the late 1800s African slaves were brought to America. Their native music merged with the field hollers from the cotton patch, religious spirituals and the show tunes of the time and evolved into a deep, rhythmic form of music, full of feeling and passion, and which we now call ‘the blues’. Henry Sloan was the first known bluesman, when in the 1890s he started playing a style of music that came to be known as the Delta blues. This was a grittier, acoustic-guitar-led style, which was harsh and primitive. Many of the players chose to play ‘slide’, where a pocket knife, broken off bottleneck or piece of pipe was used to press against the strings and ‘slide’, thus producing a voice-like effect close to that of the popularised Hawaiian sound.

Geographically, styles of blues vary dramatically the Delta took in a large area, stretching from Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee and, of course, Mississippi. There weren’t many places to perform in these areas in the 1920s and 1930s, so people played wherever they could. On a Saturday afternoon, it was a regular occurrence to see a crowd gathered to watch someone standing by the train tracks, playing for money. The artist would announce where they would be playing that night, and that is where the crowd would go.

The mythology and folklore of the Delta blues is well documented in books and film. The story goes that if you wanted to learn the blues, you would stand at the crossroads at midnight, play a piece on your guitar and a man called Legba would approach. Originally, Legba was a voodoo trickster god, who became known as a devil of Christianity by the 1920s. He would tune your guitar, play a piece and hand it back to you. Both Tommy and Robert Johnson were thought to have learned this way as naive, relatively innocent, unimpressive guitar players who drank little, they disappeared for weeks and returned as alcoholic womanisers with an unthinkable, almost supernatural singing and playing ability. Whether this legend is true or not, the fact remains that these were spiritual men, who felt that their time on this earth was not long. In fact, their deaths were probably more to do with the lifestyle they led: chronic alcoholism, gambling and womanising were all factors that led to their individual ends. Recording sessions in the 1920s and 1930s usually took place in hotel rooms or abandoned warehouses, and were arranged by talent scouts from large recording corporations, without whom many of these people would never have been discovered or recorded for posterity. While recording, those in charge of the session would keep the artists ‘lubricated’ by supplying controlled amounts of whisky (given in a small paper cup) on the completion of a track. After recording, they would be handed a large amount of money (even by today’s standards) and sent on their way.

By the late 1940s, most bluesmen who considered themselves serious musicians were moving north to Chicago. The big city was calling, times were changing and so were the sounds. Amplifiers were being introduced and the acoustic-guitar blues of the 1920s and 1930s was a thing of the past, making way for the electrified sounds of Chicago blues. Artists simply modernized the style they had learned back in the Delta. But that’s another story…
Move forward in time to the 1960s… This was a good time for the Delta blues, for people such as Bukka White, Fred McDowell, Robert Wilkins, Skip James and Son House were rediscovered, still living and still playing. Dragged from obscurity and poverty and back into the limelight for a second time, they enjoyed a huge following, touring and playing to packed concert halls the world over.”

R.L. Burnside Notes

R.L. BURNSIDE Born in 1926, in Lafayette County, near Oxford, Mississippi, R.L. Burnside’s first recordings appeared on a 1967 Arhoolie compilation. His luck changed when Robert Palmer made a documentary about the blues and featured R.L. as one of its highlights. His appearance must have caught the attention of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, and R.L. recorded an album with them entitled An Ass Pocket Of Whiskey. The album proved a huge cult success, which rapidly gained R.L. a worldwide following. He is still recording and touring to this day and, at the age of 75, remains one of the last of the true Mississippi bluesmen alive.”

BARCODE: 9 781843 53021 3

MATRIX: “02 [Sonopress Logo] RGNET1087CD 02”