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Junior Kimbrough
David "Junior" Kimbrough, quite possibly the most important blues guitarist of the second half of the 20th century, redefined blues. Junior's approach to music is so hugely different from anything that came before him that he ranks among the three greatest bluesmen of all: Son House, Bukka White, and Fred McDowell. An originator, Junior did more than build on certain tradition or perfect a certain style. Junior re-imagined the blues; he made a sound for himself. If Junior's sister had been any kind of baby-sitter he might not have picked up the guitar. When Junior was too small to help his father work the fields his eldest sister stayed home with him. She was supposedly watching him the day he took his father's guitar "off the high shelf," where his father kept everything he didn't want his children fooling with. It became routine: when his father left for the fields, Junior carefully took down the guitar. He learned fast and well, well enough to teach a local white boy, Charlie Feathers, how to play. Junior was six years old, and his sister was doing her usual bang-up job of babysitting the day he took a gallon jug of corn off the high shelf. His mother found him in an alcohol-induced coma; she thought Junior was dead. Junior's father recognized the problem and knew the solution: his daughter needed a whipping and Junior belonged in the field. After two years of high school Junior was lured into Holly Springs by a job at the John Deere dealership. Junior couldn't remember the exact date he deliberately set out to create music but knew the reasons. He was still a young man and had gone as far as he could go at John Deere. If Junior was gonna make his mark in the world, he'd have to do it with a guitar. Up until then he'd been playing the same country blues standards, as well as the contemporary hits of Little Milton and Albert King, in the same jukes and clubs that his long-time friend and rival R.L. Burnside played. And then Junior stopped playing covers and stopped taking requests. Determined not to become just another "entertainer" or "performer," Junior realized playing covers only helped the composers or the artist who first recorded the song. He wasn't going to help anybody, ever again. From then on, Junior would only play Junior. He might've been the first person in his family to work off the farm, but Junior never gave up his rural habits like throwing parties every Sunday night with his furniture dragged out in the yard so more people could fit.
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Junior Kimbrough: Meet Me In the City
![Read "Meet Me In the City" reviewed by Derek Taylor](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/photos/profile/musician/40030f96f1f853e3a88f3ac5d457dbc5.jpg)
by Derek Taylor
With Kimbrough’s death in early '98 the blues world lost one its most uncompromising and idiosyncratic practitioners. All we’re left with now are posthumous collections like this one that out of necessity are forced to scrape the bottom of the corn liquor barrel for ‘new’ and releasable material. Though not imbued with the same level of quality as Fat Possum’s earlier Kimbrough compendium “God Knows I Tried,” the eight tracks included on this new compilation still offer plenty of Junior’s ...
read moreJunior Kimbrough: Meet Me in the City
![Read "Meet Me in the City" reviewed by Ed Kopp](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/photos/profile/musician/40030f96f1f853e3a88f3ac5d457dbc5.jpg)
by Ed Kopp
Along with his neighbor R.L. Burnside, the late Junior Kimbrough may have been one of the last of the old-school Mississippi bluesmen. Kimbrough died of heart failure last year at age 67.A popular singer and guitarist in northeast Mississippi, Kimbrough turned his house into a juke joint that became such a hot spot he was forced to rent an apartment. The critic Robert Palmer featured Kimbrough in the film Deep Blues, which led to the bluesman's first and ...
read moreJunior Kimbrough, "All Night Long" (1992)
![Junior Kimbrough, "All Night Long" (1992)](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/photos/2010/helpinghands100x100.jpg)
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Something Else!
By Nick Deriso Recorded not at his own country juke, but in a booming, hollow-sounding church, the late North Mississippi bluesman Junior Kimbrough's debut was ghostly, and vivid. Why he didn't record it at his housewhich became such a popular neighborhood party spot that Kimbrough eventually conceded its nightclub status by putting a Junior's Place" sign out frontI'll never know. Still, the surroundings, and the sidemen, give all of All Night Long" the mythic, American feel of the early Sun ...
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