Hill Country Blues: History and Sound of Hill Country Blues

North Mississippi hill country blues, is a subgenre of blues music known for simple harmonies, percussive motifs, and a steady boogie built around guitar riffs and percussion patterns. Some of the leading Black blues musicians of the Deep South built their name on Mississippi hill country blues, including Mississippi Fred McDowell, Robert Belfour, and R.L. Burnside.

The hill country blues scene emanates from northern Mississippi, just over the border from Memphis, Tennessee. The towns of Holly Springs, Como, and Oxford have been notably fertile ground for the genre. The archetypal hill country bluesman is a singing guitarist who plays percussive patterns that can be traced to the traditions of West Africa. Many of these bluesmen perform solo, but in some cases they are accompanied by a drummer or percussionist. In rare cases they may be accompanied by a fife-and-drum ensemble.

The genre we now know as hill country blues was many decades in the making.

• West African origins: North Mississippi hill country blues traces back to West African percussion styles brought to the United States by African slaves and revived after the Civil War.
• Recordings highlight individual artists: In 1959, Mississippi Fred McDowell was among the first solo artists to gain mainstream recognition for the style that would become hill country blues, when a widely-circulated recording of one of his performances by musicologists Alan Lomax and Shirley Collins garnered attention within the music industry. His success inspired a new generation of hill country musicians including R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, Robert Belfour, Sid Hemphill, and Napoleon Strickland. The genre also featured several notable women such as Rosa Lee Hill and Jessie Mae Hemphill—the daughter and granddaughter, respectively, of Sid Hemphill.
• Fat Possum Records: Fat Possum Records was founded in Oxford, Mississippi in 1992 by Peter Redvers-Lee, who sought to both release older blues recordings by musicologists like George Mitchell and to also support active blues musicians from Oxford, Holly Springs, and other parts of northern Mississippi. Fat Possum Records released music by artists including R.L. Burnside, Furry Lewis, Mississippi Joe Callicott, Junior Kimbrough, Robert Belfour, and T-Model Ford. The label has also been home to indie rock artists without obvious blues connections, including Andrew Bird, Wavves, and Soccer Mommy.
• A living genre: The current faces of hill country blues include Cedric Burnside (grandson of R.L. Burnside), Kenny Brown, Terry "Harmonica" Bean, and the North Mississippi Allstars. Indie rock stars the Black Keys released a 2021 record of hill country blues covers entitled Delta Kream.

Hill country blues music is distinct from the delta blues popularized by Son House, Robert Johnson, and Memphis Minnie (although some players like John Lee Hooker bridged the gap between both genres). Its distinctive qualities include:

1. 1. Grooving guitar riffs: Most hill country blues songs are built around fingerpicked guitar grooves that can cycle for long periods of time. Some of these riffs are played on slide guitar.
2. 2. Strong percussive elements: Musicologists have traced the percussive sounds of hill country blues all the way to the drum traditions of West Africa.
3. 3. Occasional use of fifes and drums: Fife and drum blues combines African polyrhythms with the instruments of American military drumming. These instruments would eventually find their way into hill country blues, albeit not with great consistency. In many cases, fife players could not afford professionally-made instruments, and instead crafted their own using reeds from the Mississippi River.
4. 4. A mixture of singing and talking: The vocal style of leading hill country bluesmen like Mississippi Fred McDowell and R.L. Burnside was conversational. While these artists could sing powerfully, they sometimes dropped into a spoken-style drawl to continue a narrative.
5. 5. Open-ended song structures: Hill country blues does not adhere to the classic twelve-bar blues and sixteen-bar blues structures of delta blues. It features a more open-ended song format, and musicians may vamp on a single chord for many measures.

Many distinctive players have shaped the sound of hill country blues. Some prominent artists include:

1. 1. Mississippi Fred McDowell: Some of the first recordings of hill country blues feature Mississippi Fred McDowell. In the 1960s he helped define the genre's distinctive percussive patterns, open-ended song structures, and repeating guitar riffs. Popular McDowell records include You Gotta Move and Mama Says I'm Crazy.
2. 2. R.L. Burnside: Burnside was a disciple of Mississippi Fred McDowell and was the most popular artist on Fat Possum Records (although his most discussed record, A Ass Pocket of Whiskey recorded with the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, was actually issued by New York's Matador Records). He made his name as a masterful fingerpicker, slide guitarist, and vocalist.
3. 3. Junior Kimbrough: Known for records like All Night Long and Sad Days, Lonely Nights, Junior Kimbrough had a notably melodious voice and a droning guitar style that features syncopated patterns between an open bottom string and fretted upper strings.
4. 4. Jessie Mae Hemphill: Jessie Mae Hemphill was the subject of a 1967 field recording by George Mitchell and a 1973 recording by David Evans, but her formal debut album, She-Wolf, did not come out until 1981 and was only issued in France. Her American full-length debut Feelin' Good hit record stores in 1990 and won that year's W.C. Handy Award (now called a Blues Music Award) for best acoustic album.
5. 5. Othar Turner: Turner was not a guitarist but rather a fife player. His earliest fifes were made of reeds pulled from the Mississippi River, but he later played on professionally crafted instruments. He led the Rising Star Fife and Drum Band until his death in 2003. He famously appeared on a 1982 episode of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood with Jessie Mae Hemphill and Abe Young.

Become a better musician with the MasterClass Annual Membership. Gain access to exclusive video lessons taught by the world’s best, including Questlove, St. Vincent, Sheila E., Timbaland, Itzhak Perlman, Herbie Hancock, Tom Morello, and more.