R.L. Burnside: Unfiltered Blues

One sunny February afternoon in Oxford, Mississippi, I felt like I'd gone to Heaven. It was nearly T-shirt warm and the birds were singing outside Jimmy's Auto Repair, a corrugated steel building that the Fat Possum label had turned into a makeshift studio. And what moved me wasn't a celestial choir but something better to my ears: the high voice and sweet picking of R.L. Burnside, who sat on the tailgate of a Toyota truck and effortlessly played some Robert Johnson on a dobro a friend had brought by.

That was the only time I'd heard Burnside on an acoustic instrument before the present release of two new CDs, Acoustic Stories (MC Records) and Mississippi Blues (Arion). The honest purity of his voice and subtle perfection of his accompaniment so angelically reflected the glow of the day that it remains an unforgettable experience. Remembering it transports me even now.

These two albums can't promise similar transcendence, but they do provide a rare chance to hear a deep, contemporary Mississippi bluesman perform solo. That's a setting Burnside (who turns 71 next week) rarely works in anymore -- unless he tosses a few loner numbers into a typically romping set by the Mississippi touring band he was slated to bring to the House of Blues this Monday. That date, which was booked as part of a week-long celebration of the House of Blues' fifth anniversary, has been canceled so Burnside can be with his wife, Alice, during her gall-bladder surgery. Mississippi's Big Jack Johnson will be taking R.L.'s place.

Acoustic Stories is oddly titled, since Burnside uses an electric guitar in the country-blues style for most of its songs. The album's an abbreviated index of his personal approach and influences, starting with John Lee Hooker's "When My First Wife Left Me." Burnside's initial performances in the '50s were imitations of Hooker's roiling-bottomed sound, which he has nailed. Throughout there are also the graceful slide asides and the blend of rhythm & melody picking that Burnside absorbed from his mentor and fellow Mississippi hill-country resident Fred McDowell. "Long Haired Doney," "Poor Black Mattie," and other songs that have become Burnside trademarks since his '90s success recording for Fat Possum are here too. So is "Monkey in the Pool Room," a mild but very funny entry from the encyclopedia of off-color limericks he's memorized.

Burnside's artistry makes this off-the-cuff 1988 recording a vital essay in the passion and beauty of the blues in its most undiluted form. His guitar illuminates the emotionally drenched nuances of his voice with all sorts of lush idiomatic detail.

Nonetheless, purists might prefer Mississippi Blues, a French import that records a live '83 solo concert in Rennes. When Burnside plays solo in public these days, it's invariably on electric six-string. Here he's on acoustic guitar exclusively. The set list is a little more generic, with tunes by Muddy Waters, Elmore James, Hooker, and Lightnin' Hopkins in the mix. Burnside enthusiasts will note that his playing and singing are not as developed as they were five years later, on Acoustic Stories. Yet his fans will appreciate that Mississippi Blues catches Burnside shortly after the beginning of his career as a professional musician -- following more than 40 years of farming and some bounty hunting.

-- Ted Drozdowski

(For information about the House of Blues' fifth-anniversary celebration, call 491-BLUE.)