Hypnotic Boogie: Re-discovering the Hill Country Blues
Release Date: 11/04/2025
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The Hill Country Blues is, in effect for many of us, a form of early american music that is hiding in plain site. Take one part, fife and folk from the british isles,another part west african polyrhythms. Mix european balladeering with caribbean hypnotic rhythms. What begins as drum and fife music deep in the hills of northern Mississippi and Alabama blended with other blues from the region then heavily influenced the likes of Rock legends like Bo Diddley. We're re-discovering what Hill Country blues is all about. I'm joined by 2025 Massachusetts beat poet...
info_outlineThe Hill Country Blues is, in effect for many of us, a form of early american music that is hiding in plain site. Take one part, fife and folk from the british isles,another part west african polyrhythms. Mix european balladeering with caribbean hypnotic rhythms.
What begins as drum and fife music deep in the hills of northern Mississippi and Alabama blended with other blues from the region then heavily influenced the likes of Rock legends like Bo Diddley.
We're re-discovering what Hill Country blues is all about. I'm joined by 2025 Massachusetts beat poet laureate Joshua Michael Stewart.
Josh's Field Notes: A primer for you to engage the Hill Country Blues
YOU SEE ME LIGHTNIN’: LAST OF THE HILL COUNTRY BLUESMEN (Documentary)
HILL COUNTRY BLUES Josh's (Spotify Playlist)
the originators:
RL BURNSIDE: see my jumper hanging on the line
MISSISSIPPI FRED MCDOWELL: shake ‘em on down
JUNIOR KIMBROUGH: lonesome in my home
ROBERT BELFOUR: my baby’s gone
Women pioneers:
ROSA LEE HILL: rollin & tumblin
JESSIE MAE HEMPHILL: streamline train
Fife & drum:
OTHAR TURNER: lay my burden down
Youngins keepin the flame alive:
RISING STAR FIFE AND DRUM BAND: Mississippi (sound like a pop band)
NORTH MISSISSIPPI ALLSTARS: meet me in the city (example of contemporary fife & drum)
KENNY BROWN: you don’t know my mind
THE BLACK KEYS: coal black mattie (from Akron Ohio. Have a wide national following)
HANK WILLIAMS JR: Georgia woman (influence on country music)
OTIS TAYLOR: huckleberry blues (influence on new forms: Trance Blues)
Current record labels that record & promote HCB Artists:
FAT POSSUM RECORDS
EASY EYE SOUND
Joshua Michael Stewart is the author of Break Every String, The Bastard Children of Dharma Bums, and Love Something. His work has appeared in Modern Haiku, Massachusetts Review, Brilliant Corners, New Flash Fiction Review, and Best Small Fictions 2025. His latest book is Welcome Home, Russell Edson—a graphic novel & prose poem hybrid created in collaboration with illustrators Bret M. Herholz and Aaron J. Krolikowski.https://joshuamichaelstewartauthor.com
What they say about JMS:
There’s a fearlessness in Joshua Michael Stewart's poetry—tough, tightly written narratives and monologues about living poor with broken people (some of whom are your closest relatives) in hard times. This heartfelt gritty work reminds me of the hardscrabble accounts of humanity in some of our best poets—the work of Ai, Bruce Weigel, and Linda McCarriston's landmark book, Eva-Marie. Stewart exercises the courage of truth telling and takes the revenge of real poetic craft. As Bruce Weigel says "Say it clearly and you make it beautiful, no matter what." Or as Stewart says, "Poets are the battered spouses of hope." You can't help but respect the maker of these streamlined vehicles, for his guts and his unsentimental, vivid poems. -Tony Hoagland