Last.fm: Junior Kimbrough Done Got Old and Died

Top Artists for the week ending Sunday 17 August 2008

1			Antônio Carlos Jobim		28
2			Junior Kimbrough		24
3			Dean Martin		19
4			Ben Vaughn		18
5			The Soft Boys		9
6			Ruth Brown		7
7			Southern Culture on the Skids		6
7			Dave Bartholomew		6
9			Nina Simone		5
10			Wreckless Eric		3
10			Joe South		3
10			Ronnie Spector		3
10			Freedy Johnston		3
10			Tom Waits		3

David "Junior" Kimbrough was born in 1930 in the North Mississippi Hill Country.  The Hill Country was a geographically distinct area of Mississippi that was generally overlooked as ethnomusicologists scoured the nearby Delta for blues musicians.

David would get out his father's and brother's hidden guitars while they were working on the farm. Then he taught himself to play be ear.  He would also drink their whiskey.  (So, I ask you, what was he gonna do but be a bluesman?)  He learned from "Mississippi" Fred McDowell and was an inspiration to his rockabilly friend Charlie Feathers.   Junior worked in a John Deere dealership in Holly Springs, MS until 1954, when he (and every other aspiring blues musician) headed to Chicago.  Later he returned to Memphis performing and recording as "Junior" Kimbrough.

Junior got through life as a bluesman and a jack-of-all-trades.  He was a mechanic, a sharecropper, and a moonshiner.  He also was known for turning his home into a jumpin' juke joint on the weekends.  Playing in juke joints was his bread and butter.  He eventually bought his own, "Junior's Place" in Chulahomah, which stood until destroyed by an arson's fire in 2000.

All Night Long was produced by Robert Palmer (author of Deep Blues ) and was released in 1992.  It was the premiere recording on the new Matthew Johnson's Fat Possum Records.

Junior only recorded two more albums:  Sad Days, Lonely Nights (1994) and Most Things Haven't Worked Out (1997) both on Fat Possum. "Lonesome Road" is from the latter. 

"Done Got Old" was recorded in 1988 with Junior's band in sessions that were released in 1997 as Do The Rump.

'Tomorrow Night' was recorded in the early eighties but didn't get released until 1999 on a compilation, Deep South Blues.

Hard living and drinking took a toll on Junior's health and he died of a heart attack in Holly Springs in 1997 at the age of 67.   He had 36 children.  I'm thinking that took a toll on him, as well.