hill country blues
Holly Springs, Mississippi
Photo: Stephen Payne
Cedric Burnside is heralded as a torch bearer and innovator of the North Mississippi hill country blues tradition. Spanning three decades, Burnside’s work bridges the music’s legacy and future, communicating the collective hardships, joys, and daily lives of Black families who have called the region home for centuries. Transmitting deeply held blues stories through a fresh, contemporary voice, Burnside roots this distinctly spellbinding blues tradition firmly in the 21st century.
Hill country blues is named for its origins in the hills of northern Mississippi, east of the Delta. Known for being “rhythmically unorthodox,” it is characterized by driving rhythms; hypnotic repetition; sparse, punctuating guitar riffs; and unbound, sometimes meandering song structures. With fewer chord changes than Delta or other styles of blues, in hill country the voice and guitar will often “sing” the same melodic line in unison. A largely rural tradition, hill country blues was not recorded until several decades after its more well-known cousin, Delta blues, when in 1959 Alan Lomax recorded Mississippi Fred McDowell, a singular artist in developing the sound. It shares characteristics with fife and drum music, a related, pre-blues tradition from the same region that combined military marching band elements with African-derived rhythms and melodies.
Cedric has early memories of accompanying his grandfather (“Big Daddy”), hill country blues icon R.L. Burnside, to traditional fife and drum picnics organized by the legendary Othar Turner. He hails from the Holly Springs area of Mississippi, considered the cradle of hill country blues. “It was in my blood to play the blues,” he says. “Watching my Big Daddy as a kid, watching my dad (Calvin Jackson) play drums, watching my family … I always was that kid sitting right there in front, watching them, wanting to do what they were doing.” R.L.’s house parties regularly included the weightiest blues names in Mississippi, including Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and Junior Kimbrough—and Cedric would sit and absorb it all. One evening during a break in the music, he found the courage to get behind the drums. He soon began sitting in at juke joints, and by the age of 13, he was on tour drumming for his Big Daddy’s band.
Now a celebrated artist in his own right, Burnside has carried forward the legacy of hill country blues for over 30 years. He’s been part of countless collaborations, released nine albums, toured worldwide, and won innumerable awards for his work as a drummer, guitarist, singer, songwriter, and culture bearer. From 2009 to the present, he has been nominated for 14 Blues Music Awards in several categories, and won 10 of them. In 2021 he was awarded an NEA National Heritage Fellowship, and in 2022 his record I Be Trying won the Grammy for Best Traditional Blues Album.
Burnside has embraced a timeless artistic expression rooted in family and community history to speak to themes both of the moment and universal—and to provide insight into the human condition. “The blues is about surviving through those hard times,” he says, “telling the world what you’ve been through, and how you came out of it.”