Junior Kimbrough: You Better Run: The Essential Junior Kimbrough

Just about five years ago, David “Junior” Kimbrough was watching TV in a Holly Springs, Mississippi housing project when a heart attack struck and killed him. In addition to his common law wife and 36 children, the 67-year-old guitarist-singer left behind several recordings, which he’d cut, mostly in the ’90s, at the Fat Possum label. And though You Better Run: The Essential Junior Kimbrough provides just a pinhole glimpse into his lifelong musical career, it does manage to capture the noisy, rhythmic élan that made this native of North Mississippi one of contemporary blues’ bright beacons.

Many of the album’s 12 tracks, each one penned by Kimbrough, feature the electrified ‘gutbucket’ sound he liked to make in his juke joint “Junior’s Place” with friends, family, and walk-on musicians. “Nobody But You”, for instance, was recorded live with his son Kenny on drums and R.L. Burnside’s son Garry behind the bass. The song begins with a slinking, raw run of guitar notes, followed by an onslaught of percussive riffs as the singer’s growling voice blasts over the heads of the shouting and laughing people in the audience: “Baby, I’m gonna need you / I’m begging you, baby / Don’t even leave”. In contrast, “All Night Long” slides along like a snake as Kimbrough seduces the crowd with his sprawling voice, simulating a conversation between two lovers in the bed. Gradually, the rhythms grow faster and the playing louder, mounting with a tension that finally peaks after five, hard minutes. “Old Black Mattie” is equally dazzling. In it, the band attacks the singer’s murmuring voice, augmenting its misery with an onslaught of harsh, rocking beats.

Several songs showcase Junior’s ability to work out emotive grooves alone, as well. For example on “Meet Me in the City”, he drums at his guitar, picking out notes and hitting chords simultaneously. Above the simple, relentless music, his nasally voice marches along, sometimes moaning, sometimes pleading: “Please, please don’t leave me, right now, girl / Oh, no, ohh, ohhhh”. “Done Got Old” throbs with similar force. Using what sounds like an acoustic guitar run through a damaged amp, he sets a dark mood quickly with a rumbling, low harmony. And as Kimbrough describes what’s happened to him, that “I don’t look like I used to”, his delivery is calm and plaintive. But when he addresses his lover and tells her, “I can’t do the things that I used to do”, his voice flares, as if old age has finally undone the thing that matters most.

Sadly, Kimbrough — like Asie Payton and John Hurt — didn’t begin to record full-length albums until late in his life. The son of a sharecropper, he spent a big chunk of time farming and working on cars. But when he could, legend has it, he was playing the blues around the South, and, now and then, recording singles. Unfortunately, none of these studio songs appear here, although one live (and rough) juke joint track from 1969 does. A duet with Charlie Feathers (a white, rockabilly semi-star who scored a hit with “Knoxville Girl”), “Release Me” features an electric guitar playing off of an acoustic one. The two men, wailing at each over their instruments, sound ragged and young — and happy — as they jam the piece with a litany of licks pulled from pop and blues and bluegrass.

It’s a shame — and a sin — that the recording industry overlooked Kimbrough for so many years. (No doubt Jim Crow played a role.) And thus Fat Possum, a label that was started to preserve the ‘real’ blues, deserves a lot of credit — and gratitude — for getting as much of his music on wax as it has. Let’s only hope that this album, with a large label like Epitaph organizing its distribution, wins him more followers. And maybe then — like Vincent Van Gogh, Zora Neale Hurston, and Orson Welles — this underrated genius can enjoy some of the prestige and affection that evaded him in life.