North Mississippi Blues
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North Mississippi Blues is the broader regional style that includes hill-country grooves, fife-and-drum music, country blues, juke-joint boogie, and modern electric interpretations from the state’s northern counties. Its sound emphasizes repetition, open tunings, drums or foot rhythm, call-and-response, and a rough communal feel more than polished soloist display.
History
North Mississippi Blues grew outside the Delta’s best-known plantation blues narrative, in hill country communities where picnics, house parties, church music, fife-and-drum bands, and local jukes preserved older African-derived rhythmic practices. Mississippi Fred McDowell, R. L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, Jessie Mae Hemphill, Othar Turner, Robert Belfour, and the North Mississippi Allstars became the best-known recorded representatives. The style influenced Fat Possum’s 1990s catalog, garage blues, blues-rock, trance blues, and modern roots festival programming.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- Alan Lomax, The Land Where the Blues Began
- George Mitchell, Blow My Blues Away
- Robert Palmer, Deep Blues
- AllMusic