Kenny Brown | |
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| Background information | |
| Born | July 5, 1953 Selma, Alabama, United States |
| Genres | Blues |
| Instrument(s) | Guitar |
Kenny Brown (born July 5, 1953, on the Air Force base in Selma, Alabama) is an American blues slide guitarist skilled in the North Mississippi Hill Country blues style. [1]
Brown apprenticed with Mississippi Joe Callicott, who was his neighbor in Nesbit, Mississippi, from age 12 [2] [3] to 15, when Callicott died. [4] He had heard Othar Turner and others in nearby Como picnics, and cited Junior Kimbrough, Johnny Winter, and Johnny Shines as influences. [4]
Around 1971, beside working in construction, Brown began playing with two other musicians. Johnny Woods would make an occasional playing partner to his death in 1990. [4] More steady was Brown's learning with R. L. Burnside, who claimed Brown as his "adopted son," [5] [6] and affectionately called him "white boy on guitar" [4] and "my white son."[ citation needed ] Brown has noted that they had trouble to book dates, when European event organizers would hear he is a white musician playing the traditionally African American blues, [7] and that American record producers and critics have similar reservations. [2]
Nevertheless in the early 1970s they started to perform in their region, and would keep up as a duo for 20 years. [1] Cedric Burnside joined their tours from about 1994, [8] as Burnside's reputation surged. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Brown participated in most of Burnside's tours and recordings, including the Burnside-Jon Spencer Blues Explosion collaborations [4] and the remixed albums.
Brown first appeared abroad in Sweden in 1989, and later in the 1992 Åmåls Blues Fest with George "Mojo" Buford. [7]
On record, he plays second guitar on two of Junior Kimbrough's albums throughout, and on some tracks on the posthumous compilation, God Knows I Tried. He is on tracks by Asie Payton, CeDell Davis and Paul "Wine" Jones, as well as Frank Frost and Cyndi Lauper.
Brown's own debut album was Goin' Back to Mississippi (1996), produced by Dale Hawkins. He has recorded one album for Fat Possum Records, Stingray (2003). He released Cheap, Fast, and Dirty (2006) with Danish guitarist Troels Jensen, at Olufsen Records. Meet Ya In The Bottom (2008) is a CD Baby release. His double album Can't Stay Long (2011) [9] was released on Devil Down Records.
In their 2003 tour, he opened for Widespread Panic (and the extended combo, Smiling Assassins), [10] as he earlier had with Burnside. [11] [12]
Brown's guitar work was featured in the 2006 film Black Snake Moan , where he provided backing for star Samuel L. Jackson's vocals. [13] He can be seen in the film's climax as a guitarist in a blues band, playing alongside Cedric Burnside.
Brown's slide guitar was featured prominently in the Black Keys' 2021 album, Delta Kream . Gary Walker in his review in Guitar describes Brown's playing as "electrifying" and states that "it's worth the price of admission for Brown's scorching slide solo alone." Brown along with bassist Eric Deaton joined the Black Keys' 2022 tour to promote Dropout Boogie , joining the band on stage to perform songs from Delta Kream. [14] [15] Brown (along with Deaton and the Black Key's Dan Auerbach) also collaborated with Robert Finley in the 2021 album, Sharecropper's Son. [16] Brown would also return to perform on Finley's 2023 album, Black Bayou. [17]
Brown performed on several songs on Hank Williams Jr. 2022 album, Rich White Honky Blues .
Brown lives in Potts Camp, Mississippi, in the North Mississippi Hill Country with his wife Sara. [18]
R. L. Burnside was an American blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. He played music for much of his life but received little recognition before the early 1990s. In the latter half of that decade, Burnside recorded and toured with Jon Spencer, garnering crossover appeal and introducing his music to a new fan base in the punk and garage rock scenes.
The Black Keys are an American rock duo formed in Akron, Ohio, in 2001. The group consists of Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney (drums). The duo began as an independent act, recording music in basements and self-producing their records, before they eventually emerged as one of the most popular garage rock artists during a second wave of the genre's revival in the 2000s. The band's raw blues rock sound draws heavily from Auerbach's blues influences, including Junior Kimbrough, R.L. Burnside, Howlin' Wolf, and Robert Johnson.
Daniel Quine Auerbach is an American musician, singer-songwriter, and record producer, best known as the guitarist and vocalist of The Black Keys, a blues rock band from Akron, Ohio. As a member of the group, Auerbach has recorded and co-produced eleven studio albums with his bandmate Patrick Carney. Auerbach has also released two solo albums, Keep It Hid (2009) and Waiting on a Song (2017), and formed a side project, the Arcs, which released the albums Yours, Dreamily, (2015) and Electrophonic Chronic (2023).
Fat Possum Records is an American independent record label based in Water Valley and Oxford, Mississippi. At first Fat Possum focused almost entirely on recording previously unknown Mississippi blues artists. Recently, Fat Possum has signed younger rock acts to its roster. The label has been featured in The New York Times, New Yorker, The Observer, a Sundance Channel production, features on NPR, and a 2004 documentary, You See Me Laughin. Fat Possum also distributes the Hi Records catalog.
Thickfreakness is the second studio album by American rock duo The Black Keys, released in 2003. It is their debut release for the Fat Possum record label, although in the UK and Europe it was co-released by Epitaph Records.
David "Junior" Kimbrough was an American blues musician. His best-known works are "Keep Your Hands off Her" and "All Night Long". In 2023, he was inducted in the Blues Hall of Fame.
Bob Log III is an American slide guitar one-man band based in Tucson, Arizona, and Melbourne, Australia. During performances, he plays old Silvertone archtop guitars, wears a full body human cannonball suit, and a helmet wired to a telephone receiver, which allows him to devote his hands and feet to guitar and drums. His show has been described as a blues punk guitar dance party. Log tours internationally, performing about 150 shows each year; he has made tours of North America, Europe, Japan and Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Taiwan, and Iceland.
Robert "Wolfman" Belfour was an American blues musician. He was born in Red Banks, Mississippi. When he was a child, his father, Grant Belfour, taught him to play the guitar, and he continued his tutelage in the blues from the musicians Otha Turner, R. L. Burnside, and Junior Kimbrough. Kimbrough, in particular, had a profound influence on him. His music was rooted in Mississippi hill country traditions, in contrast to Delta blues. His playing was characterized by a percussive attack and alternate tunings.
Chulahoma: The Songs of Junior Kimbrough is an EP by American rock duo The Black Keys. Essentially a tribute album, it is a collection of the band's cover versions of songs by Fat Possum Records bluesman Junior Kimbrough, who died in 1998. The title is a Choctaw word for red fox and is a reference to Chulahoma, Mississippi, location of "Junior's Place", a juke joint bought by Kimbrough around 1992 and operated after his death by his sons until it burned down on April 6, 2000.
"Mississippi" Joe Callicott was an American Delta blues singer and guitarist.
George Mitchell is an American record producer and music historian.
"Crawling King Snake" is a blues song that has been recorded by numerous blues and other artists. It is believed to have originated as a Delta blues in the 1920s and be related to earlier songs, such as "Black Snake Blues" by Victoria Spivey and "Black Snake Moan" by Blind Lemon Jefferson.
Paul "Wine" Jones was an American contemporary blues guitarist and singer.
Hill country blues is a regional style of country blues. It is characterized by a strong emphasis on rhythm and percussion, steady guitar riffs, few chord changes, unconventional song structures, and heavy emphasis on the "groove", which has been characterized as the "hypnotic boogie".
Calvin Jackson was an American drummer from north Mississippi. He is considered an innovator in the Hill country blues style of drumming, having incorporated elements of the regional Fife and drum bands style in the blues band setting.
Robert Finley is an American blues and soul singer-songwriter and guitarist. After decades of performing semi-professionally followed by time away from music, Finley made a comeback in 2016. He released his debut album, Age Don't Mean a Thing, later in the year, which was met positively by critics.
Come On In is a remix album by Delta blues guitarist R. L. Burnside, released by the label Fat Possum in 1998. Largely produced by Tom Rothrock, the album was a departure for Burnside in that it fuses his blues guitar work with dance and electronic music, incorporating sampling and looping techniques. Burnside was originally skeptical of the idea, but enjoyed the finished product. Although the album's fusion of styles was deemed unusual by critics, it received acclaim from music journalists and showed respectable sales, becoming the best-selling album distributed by Epitaph Records in early 1999. The album's sound was explored by Burnside in his later works.
Delta Kream is the tenth album by American rock duo the Black Keys, released through Easy Eye Sound and Nonesuch Records on May 14, 2021. It is a cover album of hill country blues songs. It was preceded by the April 15 release of a cover of "Crawling Kingsnake", based on Junior Kimbrough's rendition.
Black Bayou is the fourth full-length studio album from American blues musician Robert Finley, released in 2023. It has received positive reviews from critics and builds upon his earlier style to incorporate soul music.
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