Easy Eye Sounds – Memphis Flyer

When lung cancer claimed the life of drummer, guitarist, and singer/songwriter R.L. Boyce on November 9th, it left a gaping void in the heart of the North Mississippi blues. Indeed, over the course of his 68 years on earth, he emerged as one of our most powerful voices in that unique tradition, embodying its rhythms and harmonies with his very being.

When he was named a National Heritage Fellow by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) earlier this year, it only confirmed what many in the Mid-South already knew: that he was an integral player in the North Mississippi scene, having had a hand in some of its most distinctive music since at least the 1970s.

That was made clear soon after he passed away, when Dr. David Evans, who headed up the University of Memphis’ ethnomusicology program for many years, posted an image of a 15-year-old Boyce on social media.

R.L. Boyce (second from left) playing snare with Napoleon Strickland (left) in 1970. (Credit: David Evans)

Evans wrote that this image “might be the very first photo taken of him, at least in a musical setting,” adding that the occasion was a Labor Day weekend picnic at L. P. Buford’s place east of Senatobia, MS, on Sept. 4, 1970. “R. L., then aged 15, plays the snare drum,” wrote Evans, “with an unidentified bass drum player and Napoleon Strickland playing fife.”

His penchant for drums put him at the center of the vivid musical culture of North Mississippi for the decades that followed, as he played drum set for Jesse Mae Hemphill in the 1980s and ’90s, then bass drum and snare with fife master Othar Turner (whose wife Ada was R.L.’s relative).

He continued as part of the Turner drum corps for years, but also took to the guitar as this century dawned, and in recent years he was known primarily for his self-accompanied singing, releasing the albums Ain’t the Man’s Alright (Sutro Park, 2013), Roll and Tumble (Waxploitation Records, 2017), Rattlesnake Boogie (Waxploitation, 2018), and Ain’t Gonna Play Too Long (Waxploitation, 2018) under his own name, as well as being included on this year’s compilation Tell Everybody! on Easy Eye Sound.

Shanquisa Birge Boyce, Boyce’s daughter, remembers his guitar playing as an integral part of her life. “He had jobs as I was growing up, but music’s always been his passion,” she says. “Then, as he started getting older and stopped working, he went full time with his music.”

The music was something Boyce lived and breathed, according to Shanquisa. Even as he was nominated for Grammy Awards, Blues Music Awards, or named a National Heritage Fellow, it was the music that mattered most to him. “He was really excited [by such recognition] but the only thing he really wanted to do was play blues guitar,” she recalls. “If he didn’t make enough money, or would get down or sad or something, he’d pick up his guitar to bring up his spirits.”

R.L. Boyce with daughter Shanquisa. (Credit: Yancey Allison)

That took the form of many jam sessions in and around his home in Como, Mississippi. “There was always music in the yard,” says Shanquisa. “He’d start up in the yard and play day and night.”

Such festivities created many beloved memories for Boyce’s family over the years, even as his playing remains indelibly etched into the minds of the fans who witnessed his shows. This weekend his family will pay their respects — joined by the Como community and many the music lovers whose hearts he touched. Many around the world will pull out their R.L. Boyce albums to revisit his finely-wrought, rhythmic blues, and, as Shanquisa notes, that’s just what Boyce would have wanted. “I think he would like to be remembered as a Mississippi Blues Man.”

R.L. Boyce funeral service schedule details
Friday, November 17th
Visitation, 2 p.m. – 5 p.m.
Felix Cauthen Funeral Home
13653 MS-HWY 4
Senatobia, MS, 38668
662 562 8667

Saturday, November 18th
Visitation, 1 p.m. – 2:15 p.m.
Celebration of Life, 2:30 p.m.
Hunter Chapel MB Church
1654 Hunter Chapel Road
Como MS, 38619

Donations for flowers and other expenses can be made to Boyce’s GoFundMe page.

Monday, March 21 will mark the 120th year since the birth of Edward James “Son” House Jr. in Lyon, Mississippi, just north of Clarksdale. And just in time to celebrate one of the most stirring voices in blues history, today witnesses the release an album of previously unheard recordings by House on Easy Eye Sound, Forever On My Mind.

The bluesman’s distinctive vocals, paired with guitar licks that feel like he clawed them out of the earth itself, won House much acclaim during the blues Renaissance of the 1960s, when many artists were brought out of obscurity. After Folkways Records re-released House’s original 1930s tracks on Blues from the Mississippi Delta in 1963, Columbia Records made new studio recordings for its 1965 album, Father of Folk Blues, and House’s profile grew exponentially. He was even featured on the cover of Newsweek at the time.

But Forever On My Mind represents the time in between those two records, when Son House was rediscovering himself. In 1964, blues enthusiasts Dick Waterman, Nick Perls, and Phil Spiro tracked House down in Rochester, New York, but the then 62-year-old musician had not performed for decades. Yet he was persuaded, under Waterman’s management, to undertake a series of performances at folk music festivals and college campuses around the country that year.

After one such performance at Indiana’s Wabash College was recorded, the tapes were given to Waterman, and he sat on them for decades before Easy Eye Sound acquired them (along with many other tapes from Waterman’s collection). Now, released on the new album, they are a revelation.

Notably, the recordings transcend the limitations of most live performances on tape, being devoid of crowd noise, banter or other distractions. They sound as intimate as studio recordings, yet with a rawness and spontaneity that outshine the Columbia sessions of five months later.

If you’ve thrilled at the rugged descending bass figures of House’s “Empire State Express” from the Columbia album, listen to the version here for a rendition even more gutsy, as the guitarist’s hands seem to pull the notes from stone, his voice testifying with spiritual fervor.

The same could be said for nearly all these tracks, even if other versions have been known for years. Five of the eight songs heard on Forever on My Mind were represented in other forms on House’s Columbia LP. Another two songs, his versions of Charley Patton’s “Pony Blues” and the gospel blues standard “Motherless Children,” were recorded by the label but went unreleased until 1992.

The eighth number heard on the Easy Eye Sound release, the titular “Forever on My Mind,” was never attempted in a recording studio, though there is film footage of him playing it at the 1966 Newport Folk Festival. The version heard on the new album borrows from Willie Brown’s classic “Future Blues” and House’s own “Louise McGhee,” true to the improvisatory Delta blues tradition.

Son House, ca. 1964. (Photo courtesy Easy Eye Sound)

All in all, the album reflects a sharp musical focus that diminished in House’s later concert appearances and recordings. Waterman notes in a press release that “as [Son House] toured in ’65 and ’66 and ’67, he developed stories — they were self-deprecating stories, with humor and things like that. So, he became sort of an entertainer. But these first shows in ’64 were the plain, naked, raw Son House. This was just the man and his performance. He didn’t have any stories or anything to go with it.”

For Easy Eye Sound founder Dan Auerbach (of the Black Keys), this release has a personal dimension. “Easy Eye Sound makes blues records,” he notes, “and not many people make blues records anymore. This record continues where we started off, with our artists Leo Bud Welch and Jimmy ‘Duck’ Holmes and Robert Finley. It also is part of my history — some of the first blues music I heard was Son House. I was raised on his Columbia LP, Father of Folk Blues. My dad had that album and would play it in the house when I was a kid, so I know all those songs by heart.”

Hearing Waterman’s tapes for the first time, Auerbach was galvanized. “He sounds like he’s in a trance, and his singing is so nuanced here. He’s very playful with his phrasing, just right on the money with his singing and playing. It sounds so right to me — top form Son House.”