Too Bad Jim Exclusively Reissued for Vinyl Me, Please

Too Bad Jim Exclusively Reissued for Vinyl Me, Please Record of the month club, Vinyl Me, Please, announces the upcoming exclusive pressing of R.L. Burnside’s Too Bad Jim in the year that marks the 20th anniversary of its release. Available only to Vinyl Me, Please members, the 180-gram vinyl reissue includes a custom poster insert (24” x 24”) and is limited to 4,500 hand-numbered copies. Accompanying the album is a bespoke piece of commissioned artwork by Andrew Gunthardt and a cocktail recipe to complete the listening experience. “Fat Possum Records is proud to share this special edition of R.L. Burnside’s Too Bad Jim with the members of Vinyl Me, Please. Produced by New York Times music critic Robert Palmer and recorded in 1993 at Junior Kimbrough’s juke joint near Chulahoma Mississippi Too Bad Jim is Burnside at his best, with a family band and “adopted son” Kenny Brown on second guitar. This record and Junior Kimbrough’s All Night Long are the records that started it all for us. So sit back and fix yourself a Bloody Motha (featured cocktail pairing & favorite of R.L.) and enjoy this record.” “Our main promise to our members is that each month we’ll send them an album that’s essential to any vinyl collection and Too Bad Jim was an easy choice given that criteria.” - Tyler Barstow, Vinyl Me, Please co-founder. The album described by Robert Palmer, who produced the album, as below… “Chaos, chance, charm and luck are a primary blues paradigm, of course, and a late twentieth-century scientific paradigm as well. The Chaos Theory of post-relativity physics tell us of Strange Attractors – inexplicable higher-order functions that provide a kind of boundary or shape or structural dynamic for chaos systems – and this model fits R.L’s music as well. The essential character of R.L,’s blues is chaos-on-wheels; it rocks as hard as any music on the planet while spreading sonic waves of sex and mayhem far and wide. But it is grounded in an implicit order: the rhythmic and melodic deep structures of North Mississippi blues.” - Robert Palmer A limited number of membership slots are currently available by requesting an invite here: http://vinylmeplease.com/request-an-invite/.

Poor Boy A Long Way From Home - R.L. Burnside

R. L. Burnside (November 23, 1926 – September 1, 2005), born Robert Lee Burnside, was an American blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist who lived much of his life in and around Holly Springs, Mississippi. He played music for much of his life, but did not receive much attention until the early 1990s. In the latter half of the 1990s, Burnside repeatedly recorded with Jon Spencer, garnering crossover appeal and introducing his music to a new fanbase within the underground garage rock scene. One commentator noted that Burnside, along with Big Jack Johnson, Paul "Wine" Jones, Roosevelt "Booba" Barnes and James "Super Chikan" Johnson, were "present-day exponents of an edgier, electrified version of the raw, uncut Delta blues sound. Burnside was born in Harmontown, Mississippi, in Lafayette County, United States. He spent most of his life in North Mississippi, working as a sharecropper and a commercial fisherman, as well as playing guitar in juke joints and bars. He was first inspired to pick up the guitar in his early twenties, after hearing the 1948 John Lee Hooker single, "Boogie Chillen". Burnside learned music largely from Mississippi Fred McDowell, who lived nearby in an adjoining county. He also cited his cousin-in-law, Muddy Waters, as an influence. Burnside grew tired of sharecropping and moved to Chicago in 1944 in the hope of finding better economic opportunities. He did find jobs at metal and glass factories, had the company of Muddy Waters and married Alice Mae in 1949, but things did not turn out as he had hoped. Within the span of one year his father, two brothers, and uncle were all murdered in the city, a tragedy that Burnside would later draw upon in his work, particularly in his interpretation of Skip James's "Hard Time Killing Floor" and the talking blues "R.L.'s Story", the opening and closing tracks on Burnside's 2000 album, Wish I Was In Heaven Sitting Down. Around 1959, he left Chicago and went back to Mississippi to work the farms and raise a family. He killed a man at a dice game and was convicted of murder and sentenced to six months' incarceration (in Parchman Prison). Burnside's boss at the time reputedly pulled strings to keep the murder sentence short, due to having need of Burnside's skills as a tractor driver. Burnside later said "I didn't mean to kill nobody ... I just meant to shoot the sonofabitch in the head. Him dying was between him and the Lord." His earliest recordings were made in the late 1960s by George Mitchell and released on Arhoolie Records. Another album of acoustic material was recorded that year and little else was released before Hill Country Blues, in the early 1980s. Recorded between 1980 and 1984 by Leo Bruin in Groningen, Netherlands. An album's worth of singles followed, released on ethnomusicology professor Dr. David Evans' High Water record label in Memphis, Tennessee. In the 1990s, he appeared in the film Deep Blues and began recording for the Oxford, Mississippi, label Fat Possum Records. Founded by Living Blues magazine editor Peter Redvers-Lee and Matthew Johnson, the label was dedicated to recording aging North Mississippi bluesmen such as Burnside and Junior Kimbrough. Burnside remained with Fat Possum from that time until his death, and he usually performed with drummer Cedric Burnside, his grandson, and with his friend and understudy, the slide guitarist Kenny Brown, with whom he began playing in 1971 and claimed as his "adopted son." In the mid 1990s, Burnside attracted the attention of Jon Spencer, the leader of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, touring and recording with this group and gaining a new audience in the process. Burnside's 1996 album A Ass Pocket of Whiskey (recorded with Jon Spencer) gained critical acclaim, earning praise from Bono and Iggy Pop. During this time he also provided the entertainment at private events such Richard Gere's birthday party. After the death of Kimbrough and the burning of Kimbrough's juke joint in Chulahoma, Mississippi, Burnside quit recording studio material for Fat Possum, though he did continue to tour. After a heart attack in 2001, Burnside's doctor advised him to stop drinking; Burnside did, but he reported that change left him unable to play. Burnside at the Double Door Inn in Charlotte, N.C. in 1998 Members of his large extended family continue to play blues in the Holly Springs area: grandson Cedric Burnside tours with Kenny Brown and most recently with Steve 'Lightnin' Malcolm as part of the 'Juke Joint Duo', while his son Duwayne Burnside has played guitar with the North Mississippi Allstars (Polaris; Hill Country Revue with R. L. Burnside). Youngest son Garry Burnside used to play bass guitar with Junior Kimbrough and in 2006 released an album with Cedric. In 2004, the Burnside sons opened Burnside Blues Cafe, located 30 miles southeast of Memphis at the intersection of U.S. Highway 78 and Mississippi Burnside had been in declining health since heart surgery in 1999. He died at St. Francis Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee on September 1, 2005 at the age of 78 If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of the Blues, -  ”LIKE” ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorite band!

Telephone Blues - R.L. Burnside & Johnny Woods

Johnny Woods (November 1, 1917 – February 1, 1990) was an American blues singer and harmonica player in the North Mississippi hill country blues style. Woods was born in a small Mississippi town called Looxahoma, just west of Mississippi Highway 35. His harmonica playing first gained notoriety in the 1960s as a duet partner with fellow blues revival discovery guitarist/singer Mississippi Fred McDowell. They recorded together first for George Mitchell in 1967, for Chris Strachwitz's Arhoolie Records (King of the Country Blues V2), Swingmaster (Blues of Johnny Woods) and in 1972 for Tom Pomposello and Fred Seibert on Oblivion Records (Mississippi Harmonica). Stylistically, Woods' music sprang from the same North Mississippi Fife and drum blues band tradition as McDowell's. However, personal problems kept him rooted in the Delta, primarily working as a farm hand and sharecropper. After McDowell's death in July 1973, Woods faded away until George Mitchell paired him again with another late Mitchell Mississippi Delta discovery, R. L. Burnside, himself a McDowell disciple. Together they recorded the Swingmaster album and video, Going Down South. Johnny Woods died in Olive Branch, Mississippi in 1990. If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of the Blues, Like ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorites band! -  ”LIKE”

When My First Wife Left Me - R.L. Burnside

R. L. Burnside (November 23, 1926 – September 1, 2005), born Robert Lee Burnside, was an American blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist who lived much of his life in and around Holly Springs, Mississippi. He played music for much of his life, but did not receive much attention until the early 1990s. In the latter half of the 1990s, Burnside repeatedly recorded with Jon Spencer, garnering crossover appeal and introducing his music to a new fan base within the underground garage rock scene.

One commentator noted that Burnside, along with Big Jack Johnson, Paul "Wine" Jones, Roosevelt "Booba" Barnes and James "Super Chikan" Johnson, were "present-day exponents of an edgier, electrified version of the raw, uncut Delta blues sound.
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