R.L. Burnside, 78; Mississippi Hill Country Bluesman and Blues-Techno Fusion Pioneer

R.L. Burnside, the son of a sharecropper who spent 40 years as a musician before his raw, edgy blues sound brought him fame far beyond his Mississippi hill country roots, has died. He was 78.

Burnside died Thursday at St. Francis Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., announced Fat Possum, his record label. No cause of death was given, but Burnside had suffered a heart attack in recent years.

During the 1970s and 1980s, he toured constantly with family members in a band called the Sound Machine, but his big break came in former journalist Robert Palmer’s 1991 documentary and accompanying soundtrack called “Deep Blues” on the music and culture of the Mississippi Delta.

At Palmer’s urging, the fledgling Fat Possum records in Oxford, Miss., signed Burnside. Palmer produced his debut album, “Too Bad Jim,” which became one of the influential blues albums of the 1990s.

The funky, low-down blues sounded -- and often were -- unrehearsed, giving the music an immediacy that more polished blues albums lacked. Burnside often recorded songs in a single take or an album in an afternoon.

“Too Bad Jim” brought him to the attention of alt-rocker Jon Spencer and the two became unlikely collaborators and friends, putting out a 1996 album, “A Ass Pocket of Whiskey.” The album combined Burnside’s early musical style and what he called his “old dirty stories” with Spencer’s industrial rock. A young, mostly white rock audience started taking notice.

Tom Rothrock, who produced Beck’s first album, put Burnside’s music in an electronica setting in the 1998 album “Come On In,” possibly the first known blues-techno fusion experiment. The remixed, sample- and loop-heavy recording was a hit.

The blues-electronica merger continued on Burnside’s album “Wish I Was in Heaven Sitting Down.” The sound was so disconcerting to blues purists, he and his record label received hate mail.

“It’s a collection that supports the liner notes’ boast that Burnside is ‘the last genuine performer of raw Mississippi hill country sound as well as the most cutting-edge crossover artist the blues has had in the past 30 years,’ ” Robert Hilburn, the Times’ pop music critic, wrote in 2001.

One of Burnside’s songs, “It’s Bad You Know,” was included in the HBO series “The Sopranos.” The show’s soundtrack album sold 400,000 copies and made him a grateful accidental blues legend.

“I’m just glad that all the young folks have discovered the blues,” Burnside told The Times in 2001. “All the rap kids and the rock kids are now trying to play the blues, because they realize that’s what started all of this.”

Robert Lee Burnside was born Nov. 23, 1926, in Harmontown, Miss., and spent much of his life in the rural, isolated hill country. He failed to master the harmonica, so he picked up a guitar at 16 and was performing in public by 21. His biggest influence was blues legend Mississippi Fred McDowell, who lived nearby.

“I never did have one lesson,” he told L.A. Weekly in 2001. “I just watched them old boys play and learnt it thataway.”

With the hope of getting better jobs, he migrated to Chicago with his family in the 1940s, but tragedy struck. Within a year, two uncles, two brothers and his father were killed in various incidents.

He worked in a glass factory and hung around in blues clubs with such legends as Muddy Waters, who had married his cousin, and Chuck Berry.

He did odd jobs for several years in Chicago and Memphis and a six-month stint in a Tennessee prison for shooting a man during a craps game. In 1959, he returned to Mississippi and worked as a farm laborer while developing a reputation performing at house parties and juke joints.

His music started to reflect the influence of such electric blues artists as Lightnin’ Hopkins of Texas and Mississippi native John Lee Hooker, both of whom he had heard in Chicago.

“R.L. is one of the artists I started Fat Possum for,” Matthew Johnson told The Times in 2001. “He has such a raw spirit, and it’s a spirit that’s kept him alive through a lot of corrupt places, like prison. His music can only come from the kind of life that he’s led. He really just blew me away.”

Burnside is survived by Alice Mae, whom he married in 1949, 12 children and many grandchildren.