R.L. Burnside - Too Bad Jim (1994) Lossless

Too Bad Jim starts with a great sound: some rusty swipes on a slide guitar, the downbeat stomp of cheap drums, and all of a sudden R.L. Burnside has you off and running on “Shake ‘Em On Down,” a song he learned directly from his neighbor Mississippi Fred McDowell. The album was a welcome antidote to the hordes of Stevie Ray Vaughn imitators who had become stand-ins for blues music in the ‘80s and ‘90s. You couldn’t have picked a better person than R.L. to remind the world that the blues wasn’t really meant to be played by some guy with a ponytail in a Boston bar. R.L. had honed his trance-like technique over several decades, and at his advanced age he could swing and stamp a song like no one else. Heretofore unknown classics like “Goin’ Down South” and “Old Black Mattie” were putty in his hands. Better still, Too Bad Jim doesn’t sound like a record; it sounds like a night at a Holly Springs juke joint, the production (courtesy of Fat Possum engineer Bruce Watson and music critic/musician Robert Palmer) bringing to life the boxy echo and old wood of a country nightspot.