Mississippi Hill Country Blues

for Steve, Jonathan, and Oscar


Mississippi Fred McDowell is often cited as the first Hill Country Blues musician. Unlike the better known Delta Blues (Robert Johnson, early Muddy Waters, Son House), Hill Country Blues is characterized by few chord changes; a driving, sometimes droning rhythm; often reserved singing; and hypnotic, perhaps African-derived or influenced, percussion. Another important source is the fife and drum blues tradition in the area, which is usually characterized by a small band consisting of a fife (homemade flute) player and vocalist leading a group of percussionists.

The style became internationally known after Fat Possum Records began recording artists living around Holly Springs, Mississippi in 1992. While not the only label recording these artists, it is the best known and perhaps best distributed.

Here is my list of favorite Hill Country Blues recordings. To be upfront, my bias is towards singular stylists. Please add to it. (Links are to the allmusic.com articles on the artists.)

Junior Kimbrough & the Soul Blues Boys—All Night Long (Fat Possum)
Junior Kimbrough is often cited as the greatest artist in the genre. This is debatable, but this album is widely considered not only emblematic of the genre, but one of its greatest triumphs.

Mississippi Fred McDowell—The Alan Lomax Recordings (Mississippi Records)
McDowell was a complex, versatile, and cussedly stubborn musician (thank goodness.) This provides a good introduction. I don't know if he can be simply pigeon-holed a Hill Country musician in the manner of the Fat Possum artists, but he is an essential source.

Jessie Mae Hemphill—Get Right Blues (Inside Sounds)
Hemphill was the most important link that I know of between Hill Country blues and the fife and drum tradition. She played drum, tambourine, guitar, and sung with a studied reserve. No other artist is remotely like this singular woman. Steve Leggett calls her "a national treasure."

(I can identify no other female artist from this context. Perhaps this is simply my failure, but I wonder if rural female blues artists are finding it even more difficult to get recorded than are the men. Could there be other unique women artists who are not getting the attention they deserve in part because they are women?)

Charles Caldwell—Remember Me (Fat Possum)
"Why you wait till I get old/Before you decide to put me down?" Could there be a more devastating blues lyric? This 2004 classic proves that Junior Kimbrough, for all his deserved accolades, was not the only musician mining a hypnotic, droning, guitar-driven version of Hill Country blues. The 6'8" Caldwell recorded this album while undergoing chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer. It is his only recording. What did was this intense and ferocious man like when healthy?

CeDell Davis—Feel Like Doin' Something Wrong (Fat Possum)
Stricken with polio when young, Davis' right hand is crippled. As a result, he developed a singular style of playing guitar in which he uses a butter knife as a slide in his right hand and strums with his left. The music is as raw, obsessive, and scary as the title of the album. Davis high, whining voice pierces. His unusual playing style causes the music to be as intentionally atonal as free jazz.

R.L. Burnside—Too Bad Jim (Fat Possum)
Perhaps the best known of the Hill Country musicians, R.L. Burnside was also in many ways the most conventional from a traditional blues perspective. This is not a put-down; it simply points out the uniqueness of the above stylists.

Please add to the list.