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R.L. Burnside was born on November 21, 1926, in either Harmontown, College Hill, or Blackwater Creek, all located in the rural part of Lafayette County, Mississippi. He passed away on September 1, 2005, in Memphis, Tennessee, and is buried at Free Springs Cemetery in Harmontown, MS. His first name is often given as R.L., Rural (as noted on his tombstone), Robert Lee, Rule, or Ruel. Growing up in a large family with his mother, grandparents, and several siblings, R.L. began playing harmonica and guitar at the age of 16, learning from Mississippi Fred McDowell. He credited Muddy Waters, Lightnin' Hopkins, and John Lee Hooker as significant influences on his music, with Muddy Waters being his cousin-in-law. After moving to Chicago in the late 1940s, R.L. faced personal tragedy when his father and two uncles were murdered in the same year, events that he often referenced in his songs. He returned to Mississippi and worked as a sharecropper and commercial fisherman throughout the 1980s, selling his catch door-to-door. It wasn't until the 1990s that he began to receive wider recognition for his music.

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