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The Blues According to Junior Kimbrough

Mississippi master shines on new album

All Night Long
Capricorn Records

Reviewed by Nicky Baxter

They say the blues done died and gone--Lightnin' Hopkins, Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, all long gone. Sure, we still have B.B. King and John Lee Hooker, but the former's taken to the supper-club circuit, playing music the well-heeled crowd "appreciates" the way one does a foreign wine. These people know nothing about the blues; they dig it vicariously, the way slave masters enjoyed listening to the darkies shuffle and sing "Ol' Virginny." Hooker, ensconced in the south bay's suburban hills, is retired.

But deep in the hills of northern Mississippi, just off Highway 4, the blues tradition thrives. In a rickety old tumble-down shack, Junior Kimbrough has been rockin' the blues for some 30 years; the juke joint's proprietor is hardly concerned with the preservation of folk music--he's much too busy eking out a living doing what he enjoys best, waving his calloused fingers over a beat-up guitar, singing about his sweet baby or doin' the romp to a simple but powerful backbeat. This is that black cat calling, the mojo man working his thing on you. This is the Delta blues.

We have enterprising music pundit Robert Palmer to thank for providing Kimbrough the opportunity to deliver his unique brand of blues to wider public notice. Three years ago, Palmer brought a film crew to Holly Springs, Miss., and turned a camera eye on the bluesman. The resultant documentary, Deep Blues, garnered national recognition, and not long after, a record deal for Kimbrough. (Note to black folk: Wake up! Must we continue to leave it to others to preserve our heritage?)

Prior to his "discovery," Junior Kimbrough played around the Mississippi area, managing to lay down a couple of singles along the way. His first, "Tramp," came out in 1968; his only other recorded efforts occurred when he made "Keep Your Hands Off Her" and an early version of "All Night Long."

Shadowy traces of Mississippi Fred McDowell's primal work was about the only discernible influence on his playing then. Even back then, Kimbrough's skittering, brittle guitar playing was capable of creating a spell--something in the way he would play a line and repeat it with the slightest modulation over and over until you find yourself slipping into a floating, atavistic trance.

Fat Possum released his first recording, All Night Long, in 1993, but despite rave reviews, the debut was not a big seller. Now re-released on the larger Capricorn label, All Night Long will receive the kind of push it so richly deserves.

As intimate and idiosyncratic as the backwoods bar Kimbrough plays in on weekends, All Night Long is at once unrecognizable and familiar, like some half-remembered reverie. Kimbrough's singing is older than the blues, recalling the field hollers of African ex-slaves toiling on the Delta's cotton plantations. It's not hard to imagine Kimbrough, brow glistening with sweat, retreating from the summer heat to find a shady spot beneath a tree, guitar right where he left it. He picks it up and commences singing and playing, probably sounding a lot like what we hear on this record.

Of course, All Night Long wasn't recorded in any cotton patch but in Kimbrough's latest roadhouse--a converted church--with no fancy equipment, no overdubs, just Junior and his Soul Blues Boys: Garry Burnside, the bass-playing son of famed country-blues singer R. L. Burnside, and Kenny Malone, Kimbrough's son, on drums.

Songs like the easy-riding "Do the Romp," and "Work Me Baby" featuring just Junior's voice and guitar are as elemental as Mississippi mud, with their lurching rhythms and eerie harmonics. Picking out lead lines against his own chugging rhythm playing and rough singing, these blues are self-contained; like Charlie Patton's or Robert Johnson's this music requires no further fleshing out in order to fill a room.

With his Soul Blues Boys accompanying him, Kimbrough truly scratches that sex itch--something in the way he tells his woman that he wants her, something in the way his voice drops out just before Malone smacks his cymbal on the title track. Belly rubbin' under the dim blue light of a blues dive. At moments like these--and there are several--you realize that All Night Long is more than a song or album title, it's a promise.

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