Geoff Dyer

How I fell in love with the blues

Only in his early sixties, through an introduction to the trance blues of R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough, did Geoff Dyer finally enter the zone

By the time R.L. Burnside became famous, in the early 1990s, he was in his sixties, old and plump enough to play sitting down, rocking hard in the still centre of the beat. Photo: Jack Vartoogian / Getty Images
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I was never into the blues that much. I listened to a bit of Roy Buchanan and Rory Gallagher but only as accidental overspill from rock. I knew the Rolling Stones’s sound came out of their love of the blues but what they added was more important (to me) than what they took.

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