Cedric Burnside is the grandson of legendary Bluesman RL Burnside and was brought up in the very Hill Country that gave its title to the form. Cedric was playing drums for his grandfather at age 13, has been associated with many other Bluesmen through his career, and all three of his previous albums have been nominated for Grammys, the latest, ‘I Be Trying’, winning a Grammy for Best Traditional Blues Album in 2021.
This time around, he set up in a building in Ripley, Mississippi that he had intended turning into a juke joint. An old legal office in Tippah County Mississippi, a town with 5,000 residents that’s known as the birthplace of the Hill Country Blues. “That building was actually going to be my juke joint. Everything was made out of wood, which made the sound resonate like a big wooden box,” said Burnside. He called up producer Luther Dickinson (co-founder of the acclaimed North Mississippi Allstars and the son of legendary Memphis producer/musician Jim Dickinson), who brought recording equipment into the empty space. “We recorded in the middle of a bunch of rubbish – wood everywhere and garbage cans,” Burnside says. “We just laid everything out the way and recorded the album right there.”
The music is classic Hill County – repetitive guitar lines and drum patterns, emphasis on the vocals and apparent simplicity. Except this isn’t simple or basic. Sure, it was recorded in two days and there are no great swathes of keyboards or strings, but the vocals are from the heart and there is plenty of complexity in the way that different instruments are playing different time signatures but always syncopated. Burnside’s vocals are rhythmic – you can hear his beginnings as a drummer – and he has a full tenor voice.
The stripped down nature of the music and the natural production is not for everyone but the album is a superb presentation of Hill Country Blues.
