Raw rhythm

But roots-music fans don't seem to mind a little abrasion, if 1994's national discovery of "new" Mississippi-roadhouse bluesmen R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough is an indication. Although it's good that the Mississippians are getting their due, it's also important to remember players like Kirkland who've been out there a heck of a lot longer delivering the same rough-as-a-hog's-ass-style of juke music in hellholes and backwater bars across the nation.

That raw sound permeates the Jamaican-born guitarist's older records as well as his later releases, like the 1993 collection of live songs recorded on a Canadian tour titled Some Like It Raw and his new Where You Gonna Get Your Sugar (both on Deluge). Absorb the funky, groove-driven, Southern-style bump-and-grinds, then come tell me that this isn't as good as the stuff everyone's billing as the "Second Coming from Clarksdale." In particular, listen to the live disc, recorded at the Yale Hotel, in Vancouver, where Kirkland led his band through a set of bulletproof juke tunes sweetened by lots of fat, primitive, and -- yes -- at times out-of-tune guitar. The experience apparently delighted the ripped-to-the-gills audience. Sure, it was Canada in late September -- freezing outside. But inside it could have been a steamy Saturday night in the Delta.

Kirkland's homegrown style is rooted in regional sounds, which the bluesman encountered as a kid living in New Orleans and in Dothan, Alabama. Listening to the players who'd roll through the area, as well as Memphis Minnie and Tampa Red records, Kirkland developed the rhythm-heavy style that's first evident on his recordings for the King label in the early '50s, recordings that featured a young James Brown on drums. He continued to develop his trademark sound with It's the Blues, Man, his first full-scale LP (it was released in 1960 for the Prestige imprint, Tru-Sound). In the mix was his at-times strained vocals, and yet he often barked the lyrics to his own written-on-the-fly compositions as if his life depended on it.

The sound on these early records helped form the backbone of the heavy mixes that were popular during the '60s British blues explosion. Many credit John Lee Hooker, but Kirkland was actually more than responsible for the sound. He was there -- in Detroit in the late '40s -- to help usher the rough-hewn Delta style into the urban, electric age. Teaming up for the first time together in '48, Kirkland and Hooker worked and recorded on-and-off in the '50s. Listen to any of Hooker's VeeJay or Chess sides from this era: chances are, if there's a second guitar lurking within the mix, it's Kirkland chopping away beneath the Hook's own string gouging.

In spite of that promising start, Kirkland's career never really went anywhere in the '60s or the '70s -- or the '80s, for that matter. Unsigned during much of that time, he floated like a rudderless ship from town to town, from jobs in and out of the music business, including a stint with Ford Motors, and as an Atlanta hotel owner renting out rooms by the hour.

But there were some highlights. Arriving in New York's Hudson Valley as the Nixon era began, Kirkland hooked up with blues writer Pete Lowry and recorded the acoustically oriented Front and Center (1970) and the funky Devil and Other Blues Demons (1972) on his Trix label. The two records helped Kirkland enjoy a revived career that went flat again as soon as Reagan took office. Yet thanks to the efforts of number-one fan Randy Labbe -- who started his own label, Deluge, just to record the hard-luck bluesman -- another Kirkland comeback is taking place. He's on an international tour -- though he still insists on driving his own beaten van, which he repairs in mall parking lots. Not only a skilled auto mechanic, but one of the last of a rapidly fading generation who helped write the book on roots music, Eddie Kirkland is worth catching.