Junior Kimbrough

History

Kimbrough was born in Hudsonville, Mississippi and lived in the North Mississippi Hill Country near Holly Springs.

In the late 1950s Kimbrough began playing the guitar in his own style, using mid-tempo rhythms and a steady droneplayed with his thumb on the bass strings. This style would later be cited as a prime example of hill country blues. His music is characterized by the tricky syncopation between his droning bass strings and his midrange melodies. His soloing style has been described as modal and features languorous runs in the middle and upper registers. The result was described by music critic Robert Palmer as "hypnotic".

With his band, the Soul Blues Boys (then consisting of bassist George Scales and drummer Calvin Jackson), he recorded in the 1980s for High Water, releasing "Keep Your Hands off Her" // "I Feel Good, Little Girl" in 1982. The label also recorded a 1988 session with Kimbrough and the Soul Blues Boys, releasing it in 1997 as "Do the Rump!"

He received notice after live footage of him playing "All Night Long" in one of his juke joints appeared in the film documentary Deep Blues: A Musical Pilgrimage to the Crossroads, directed by Robert Mugge and narrated by Robert Palmer. This performance was recorded in 1990, in the Chewalla Rib Shack, a juke joint he opened in that year east of Holly Springs to divert crowds from his packed house parties. Beginning around 1992, Kimbrough operated Junior's Place, a juke joint in Chulahoma, near Holly Springs, in a building previously used as a church.

Kimbrough died of a heart attack following a stroke in 1998 in Holly Springs, at the age of 67. He is buried outside his family's church, the Kimbrough Chapel Missionary Baptist Church, near Holly Springs. The rockabilly musician Charlie Feathers, a friend of Kimbrough's, called him "the beginning and end of all music"; this tribute is written on Kimbrough's tombstone.