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That’s where he was found by Alan Lomax in 1959 who was the first to record him, but McDowell’s

breakthrough didn’t come until four years later, when he was 60 years old and Chris Strachwitz
went to his Como home to record him for those good guys at Arhoolie. They recorded two albums in
fairly short order, bringing Mississippi Fred McDowell the attention he deserved. He played at Blues
Festivals throughout the UK and Europe and appeared in the films “The Blues Maker” [1968], “Fred
McDowell” [1969] and “Roots of American Music: Country Urban Blues” [1971].

I was fortunate to see and hear him when he first came to the UK as part of the 1965 American Folk
Blues Festival—God Bless Horst Lippman and Fritz Rau—and he was extraordinary.

His subsequent recording output was prolific with releases on Vanguard, Testament, Milestone and
others as well as more on Arhoolie. He was mostly inactive during 1972. He died that year in

Memphis and was buried in Hammond Hill Church Cemetery in Como, Mississippi. He was 68.

Mississippi Fred McDowell - ‘Baby Please Don't Go’

R.L. Burnside was born in the heart of Hill Country Blues territory in
Oxford, Mississippi in 1926. He learned to play guitar aged 7 or 8 years

old by listening to Mississippi Fred McDowell, and began playing Juke
Joints while in his teens. He didn’t get to record until the late 1960s
when he appeared on an Arhoolie anthology.

In the late 1940s he moved to Chicago, where he became a Maxwell
Street regular, but Chi-Town didn’t treat him well: his father, two
brothers and two uncles were reportedly all murdered within the span of

one year.

Three years later R. L. moved back South, married Alice Mae Taylor in
1949 or 1950, a union that eventually produced thirteen children and
thirty four grandchildren. It is said that R.L. was convicted of murdering a man in a crap game in

the early 1950s and sent to Parchman’s Farm where his boss arranged for his release after 6 months
as his skills as a tractor driver were required.

R. L. Burnside: ‘See My Jumper Hanging On The Line’

Sid Hemphill, the musical patriarch of Mississippi Hill Country, was born in Como, Panola County,
in 1878 according to State records, or in 1876 according to Sid himself. The son of a slave fiddle

player he was a blind multi-instrumentalist – banjo, guitar, piano, violin, organ, cane fife and more
– and songwriter who hand-crafted instruments.

A local string band leader described him to Alan Lomax as “the boar-hog of the hills, the best
musician in the world” and apparently Lomax found little to argue about with that, promptly high-