A personal favorite of RL Burnside’s electric blues output, no small thanks to the life-affirming ruckus kicked up by drummer Calvin Jackson, who delivers some of the most suspenseful drumrolls this side of ESG.  A landmark Robert Palmer production for Fat Possum, recorded in April 1993.

Four of the very greatest hits from RL Burnside’s incredible first recordings: “Just Like a Bird Without a Feather,” “Skinny Woman,” “Goin’ Down South,” and “Poor Black Mattie”.

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First ever recordings of the great Jessie Mae Hemphill.  Two sweet-voiced a cappella gospel numbers (“Home Going” and “I Want To Be Ready”) on one side and an interesting interview on the other, where she discusses learning to play music from her grandfather, the legendary Sid Hemphill.  Recorded in Senatobia, MS in August 1967, back when she was still known as Jessie Mae Brooks.

“Paul Jones of Belzoni, Mississippi, a small town with a rich blues heritage in the heart of the delta, is a professional welder. He lives with his wife Bessie Mae in a house he purchased with the sweat of his brow. Before becoming a welder, Jones worked in a Delta cotton gin; before that, like many of his Delta neighbors, he worked on a farm. And throughout his adult life, Paul Jones has been a bluesman, known and admired by a number of his fellow Delta musicians but seldom venturing far from home. His style is deeply rooted in the rural blues of the delta, but so distinctly original and idiosyncratic that his sound will not easily be mistaken for that of any other artist. Rock-solid bass-string drones, expansively sonic guitar textures, a seasoning of wah-wah riffs, and a voice that can sound vinegary, molasses-like, or simply, urgently passionate, as the song demands - these are some of the qualities that make Paul Jones a unique and formidable talent.

Just in, a six-song 10” vinyl issue of Junior Kimbrough’s earliest recordings circa 1966, with some unidentified accompanists, already hitting on that great groove of his. As these tracks were recorded by Quinton Claunch in Memphis, I’d guess these would’ve been for the Goldwax label? One online source claims a CD was issued in 1992, but I can’t find confirmation as of “press time”. The running time is perhaps a bit on the short side, but maybe you’ll be like me and want to play it three times straight so it won’t matter so much.

Track listing:
Lonesome in My Home
Feels So Good #1
Done Got Old
Meet Me in the City
Feels So Good #2
Feels So Bad

Abe McNeil played some cool acoustic country blues and cut a fine figure, but the most crucial reason to grab this three-song EP is “Drink Drink Drink,” where he claps and does the hambone behind dazzling harmonica player Richard Driggs, which is wild enough to give you the spins.

Several years ago Fat Possum bought the rights to the recorded archive of folklorist George Mitchell, which resulted in the release of several CDs and a slew of 7”s, a fair number of which are also stocked here.  Right before this update was about to go out, word came in of this budget-priced 7CD box which compiles all of the material released on those 45 7”s, plus a full CD of additional material.  Mitchell’s recordings and books such as Blow My Blues Away and Ponce de Leon have had a substantial impact on 50 Miles of Elbow Room, so this will get a special mention in these parts. 

For many years, the recordings made by George Mitchell as he traveled the south needed to be procured in a similar manner to which Mitchell learned about the musicians he recorded: following up on a lead here or a reference there, analyzing some scrap of information that might prove to be key, and generally a lot of asking around.  A music enthusiast from an early age, Mitchell’s first trip to hang out with blues musicians took place in 1961, when he was only 17 years old.  Over the next 20 years, he proceeded to periodically record, interview, and photograph many great blues artists.  Along the way he made the first recordings of some artists who later went on to great renown, such as RL Burnside and Otha Turner, as well as some of the earliest “revival” sessions with pre-war stars such as Sleepy John Estes and Furry Lewis.  Mostly he recorded people who remain largely unfamiliar to modern listeners, but whose music offers great rewards: the massive “Georgia Drumbeat” stomp of James Davis, the deep and inscrutable blues of Cecil Barfield, the stately slide guitar gospel of Leon Pinson, the ancient-sounding blues of Lonzie Thomas, the stunning high and lonesome tunes of John Lee Ziegler, beautiful a cappella spirituals, and on and on.  Particularly noteworthy is the amount of material from the Chattahoochee Valley region, which was largely ignored by other folklorists of the time. 

Though these recordings are consistently outstanding, what makes this material truly special to me is the manner in which it transports the listener to a different place and time, giving a sense of how the blues existed during a period when the status of the musicians who played it was often starting to fade in their communities.  That said, the performances often have an intimate and relaxed feel to them, as befits a music played for the joy of a few.  In his liner notes to this box set, Sam Sweet sums it up quite well, “A detailed picture of 20th century black musical culture in the rural South emerges from the recurring themes in Mitchell’s archive: kids learning instruments from their relatives or family friends; musicians spending their entire life within the distance of one or two towns; musicians forming irreplaceable and lifelong musical partnerships; people staging non-church-related concerts and parties for themselves in the woods and fields near their homes.  What Mitchell amassed over his 20 years in the field is as good a picture of that world as any of us are ever going to get.”

Raw and rocking Natchez Mississippi blues circa ’97 in the classic Fat Possum mold (“Insane Instrumental” and so forth).  Drummer Hezekiah Early is best known as the leader of the great Hezekiah and the Houserockers and his swinging, fife-and-drum influenced style on cuts like “Mother’s Dead” is a great foil for Elmo Williams’ wild, distorted electric guitar riffs.  They can also lay down a steady groove when the song calls for it.  Hard to figure out why this didn’t get as big as other Fat Possum acts of that period, but this July they’ll be playing their first gigs since quite a while back, in Minnesota of all places, so maybe there’s hope yet.  I’ll get sound clips up here one of these days, but in the meantime, you can hear samples at http://www.myspace.com/elmowilliamshezekiahearly