R.L. Burnside: Too Bad Jim [FAT POSSUM]

Why you'll love it

This 20th anniversary edition is pressed on 180g vinyl and comes with a poster and a download card. Too Bad Jim captures Burnside's raw, hypnotic Mississippi boogie in the room where it was meant to be heard.

This edition

• 20th anniversary edition
• 180g vinyl
• Poster included
• Download card included

About the album

Junior Kimbrough's juke joint was not built with recording in mind, which turned out to be the whole point. In April 1993 producer Robert Palmer, the writer behind Deep Blues, set up at Junior Kimbrough's place in Chulahoma, Mississippi, and at Fat Possum's own headquarters in Oxford, and got R.L. Burnside to play the way he played on a Saturday night.

Burnside learned from Mississippi Fred McDowell, and the hill country style he carried is all droning, one-chord grooves that roll on until the floor gives in. "Shake 'Em On Down" and "Old Black Mattie" lock into a trance, "When My First Wife Left Me" is a slow, aching confession, and "Fireman Ring The Bell" and "Goin' Down South" stomp with a drummer pushing hard behind him. "Death Bell Blues" and ".44 Pistol" bring the darker hues.

A year or so later Burnside was touring with Jon Spencer and winning over a whole new crowd of punk and garage fans, and records like this one are why. Palmer wrote the liner notes too, so you get the producer, the critic and the man who ran the tape all in one chap.

Also at Kops: more R.L. Burnside on vinyl · browse Blues

Tracklist

Listen

On Fat Possum (cat# 80307-1), a reissue of the 1994 album.