Hill Country Blues

Hill country blues is the regional blues of the hill country of northern Mississippi, built on hypnotic one-chord vamps, droning guitar riffs and insistent dance rhythms rather than the chord changes of Delta or Chicago blues. Developed in the communities around Como, Senatobia and Holly Springs by musicians including *Mississippi Fred McDowell*, *Junior Kimbrough* and *R.L. Burnside*, it sustained local juke joints for decades before wider discovery. Its trance-like repetition, rooted partly in the region's fife and drum tradition, later proved highly compatible with garage rock, and its leading figures recorded into old age for labels such as #Fat Possum#.