R.L. Burnside

After a 30-year career spent in near obscurity in small-time northern Mississippi juke joints, R.L. Burnside was "discovered" by Fat Possum Records in the late 1980s, for which he's recorded a series of traditional blues sides as well as rowdy, remarkably experimental works that are credited with inspiring all kinds of punk blues, from the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion to the White Stripes.

A farm laborer, Burnside learned the blues from his neighbor Mississippi Fred McDowell, and was first recorded in 1967 (Mississippi Delta Blues). That record led to a string of festival appearances and the development of his first bona fide band, which included members of his large family on guitar. Burnside's growly intensity was first heard by rock audiences in 1991, when Fat Possum released Bad Luck City. The subsequent Too Bad Jim, recorded at the club of another important rural-blues belter, Junior Kimbrough, is even more intense -- its droning modal harmonies providing the perfect backdrop for Burnside's hectoring, woeful-but-not-pitiful incantations.

Breakthrough comes with A Ass Pocket of Whiskey, recorded with the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, and the subsequent blues-meets-loops odyssey Come On In, experiments that prove it's possible to expand even the most raw, primal blues. Along the way, Burnside has made several hauntingly spare acoustic records, including the uniformly good live document Burnside on Burnside. Since attaining a national profile, several reissues of work he did in the '80s have surfaced -- among them Mississippi Hill Country Blues, recorded in 1984, and the incredibly energetic Raw Electric. (TOM MOON)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide