Many would-be bluesmen think playing "Got My Mojo Workin'" with a fancy guitar solo after every verse will make them the next Muddy Waters, but R.L. Burnside, a veteran singer-guitarist from northern Mississippi, actually captures Waters' spirit. Burnside and his band -- a drummer and two long-haired guitarists who looked like they've been driving a Volkswagen bus since the '60s (he didn't have a bassist) -- played standard 12-bar blues, but the result was gloriously sloppy -- like the best garage band slamming through "Psychotic Reaction."

In short, Burnside rocked -- his sonic retread of Elmore James' "Dust My Broom" sounded like it probably did when James' legendary Broomdusters played the song at juke joints in the '50s. Burnside's cover of "Mannish Boy" matched Muddy Waters' explosive 1979 live version almost note-for-note. The amps crackled with static, but the grinning singer just didn't give a damn.

Burnside learned the blues from Mississippi neighbor Fred McDowell and played for years as a star attraction in ramshackle Southern clubs (some of which he owned) before critic Robert Palmer featured him in the acclaimed documentary "Deep Blues." After that, Burnside made two powerful solo albums, then last year recorded "A Ass Pocket of Whiskey," a fish-out-of-water collaboration with New York blues-punk Jon Spencer.

In Burnside's songs, fast grooves undercut lyrics about the devil, infidelity and whiskey. Like the young John Lee Hooker's stomping boogie-woogie, Burnside's riffs often evoke a raucous house party and a funeral march within the same short song. "It's bad, you know!" he shouted in "Goin' Down South," one of the few cuts he performed from "A Ass Pocket of Whiskey."

"This muddy water done gone into my head," Burnside sang after he'd been on the Legends stage for almost three hours. He proved it a few minutes later. Toward the end of "Mannish Boy," he got up from his chair for the first time and did a funky little hip-shake dance. It wasn't worthy