I love me some R.L. Burnside.
And anything else from Fat Possum, too. Dayum!
I was gonna write all this up, and then I read this review on Amazon by ‘A Customer,’ and I laughed and had to share it.
All deference to the other artists mentioned, natch…
“A customer
5.0 out of 5 stars
an unstoppable force of nature
May 25, 1999
Format: Audio CD
There is no other description for it: this CD has BALLS. Burnside unleashes the screaming, vengeful ghost of Elmore James to claim the Delta’s muderous retribution on all the Chicago crap that has passed for “blues” over the last 3 decades. I dream that Buddy Guy, BB King, Eric Clapton, Kenny Wayne Shepard, and all the other popular “blues” guitarists are led to a one room shack surrounded by a blinding cotton field on a dirt road deep, deep in Mississippi. Outside RL and his band tear into the groove of “Alice Mae” with such ferocity it sounds like a freight train loaded with nuclear bombs slamming into a mountain. The blasphemers inside the shack wail and gnash their teeth as they beg for mercy for their terrible sins. RL’s cataclysmic howl of “DID YOU SEE MY BABY?/CALL HER ALICE MAE!” summons a pillar of fire from the black sky to consume the shack and lay waste to the world. That’s what this CD sounds like.”
Oh yeah, and Jon Spencer Blues Explosion plays on tracks 2 & 7. Fuck yes.
Pure gold. I own this on CD and on LP. Why do I own two? BECAUSE IT’S R.L., that’s why!
keepsmealive 
I’m with you on this one.
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YES! It’s a great one. I love R.L.
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Hey now, no need to knock BB just ’cause he is popular. He can’t help it. 😉
I have a few RL albums but not this one. I guess I better check it out if it can stir up this much emotion!
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That was the one part of that person’s post that bugged me – Buddy and B.B. were around longer than three decades ago. I mean, Buddy played with Muddy! And B.B. truly is the king so maybe leave him outta this! Anyway I just found it amusing, and ol’ R.L. would probably have been horrified by it. Probably.
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Also lemme know how your search goes. I can hook you up if you need a preview track or three… koffkoff…
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I like that spelling of Dayum – I’ll have to add it to my wordpress dictionary so it doesn’t think it’s a typo, but an enthusiastic Damn!
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I just wrote it out like it sounds in my head – I’m sure I’ve seen it written like that elsewhere, but anyway.
In fact: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=dayum
I love that you are teaching your computer to swear. This means you are using the internet machine correctly! 🙂
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Very fine album this one, though I do prefer the one before it (A Ass Bottle of Whiskey). In fact, all RL Burnside is very fine.
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All Burnside is very fine indeed! AAPOW is great two… I think the JSBX played on that whole record, didn’t they? What’s not to like!
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Aye… I believe so. Jon Spencer produced those albums, eh?
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Well, AAPOW was produced by Matthew Johnson. But R.L. and the JSBX wrote all the songs except for three on that one (others were by John Lee Hooker, Bukka White, and Son House).
Mr. Wizard, well, I couldn’t find who produced it. Not in the liner notes, not on Amazon, Wiki or Discogs. Best I could come up with was Compiled By [Assembled By] Matthew Johnson. Him again! Haha. And three different folks recorded the tracks, but no mention of Producer that I could see.
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Ah, well there you go! I was wrong… I never had physical copies, but was aware of the Blues Explosion link and have somehow assumed Spencer produced them, too!
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No worries, it has Burnside and JSBX… what else do we need to know, really, eh? Give ‘er!
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