North Mississippi Allstars

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The North Mississippi Allstars were founded in 1996; a product of a very special time for modern Mississippi country blues. RL Burnside, Junior Kimbrough,Otha Turner and their musical families were at their peak touring the world, making classic records, and doing the all-night boogie at Jr’s Juke Joint andOtha’s BBQ Goat picnics -- the music and the culture rich as the black Mississippi dirt.
We used to drive down wide-eyed and open-eared to watch and listen to these giants among men, the kings of the hills playing their music with their people for their people. The musical traditions passing from generation to generation. Down at Otha’s we used to boogie in the dirt, dust, and gravel. Old ladies teachin’ the young girls how to shake ’em on down. The sweaty walls of Jr’s Juke Joint used to vibrate and amplify the all night long moonshine madness. The corn liquor inspired a very unique psychedelic trance blues. The multi-generational musical families gave the old-field hollers a very aggressive, loud edge, modern, electric, country blues. Young, outsider musicians couldn’t just hang out and hide in the corner, you had to play. It felt like it was an insult not to. The elder’s requesting you to play their own songs. You had to come on with the come on.
For us, the experience goes back another generation. In the middle 60s, at the Memphis Country Blues Festivals, Mudboy and the Neutrons, our father Jim Dickinson, Lee Baker, Sid Selvidge and Jimmy Crosthwait experienced the cultural collision of wise blues men and crazy white kids with Furry Lewis, Bukka White, Sleepy John Estes and Hill Country master Mississippi Fred McDowell. This is the World Boogie.
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