R.L. Burnside — Holly Springs, Mississippi

R.L. Burnside — Robert Lee Burnside — spent most of his life in the hill country around Holly Springs and Independence in Marshall County, Mississippi, farming and playing the trance-like, hypnotic Hill Country blues he learned from Mississippi Fred McDowell and developed into his own ferocious style. Burnside recorded for Alan Lomax in the 1960s but remained essentially unknown outside north Mississippi until the late 1980s and 1990s, when Fat Possum Records began documenting his music and the wider world discovered the Hill Country blues tradition. His late-career recordings for Fat Possum, and an unlikely collaboration with the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, brought him to audiences who would never have encountered his music through traditional blues channels.

Burnside's music — and his life — were as raw as his guitar style. He spent time in prison for killing a man (he later said he 'didn't mean to kill nobody — I just meant to shoot him in the head') and made no attempt to soften the edges of his biography. His Sunday-night sessions at Junior Kimbrough's juke joint in Chulahoma were the social centre of the Hill Country blues world, and the two men had a musical partnership that defined the genre for a generation. Burnside's family — multiple sons and grandchildren who all played music — were part of the same tradition, and several continue to perform today.

A Mississippi Blues Trail marker near Holly Springs acknowledges Burnside's life and music in the Hill Country tradition. He died on 1 September 2005 in Memphis and is buried in the Holly Springs area. The Fat Possum Records catalogue, much of it recorded at or near Burnside's home in the 1990s, remains the definitive document of his music and the Hill Country blues tradition he exemplified.