Another incendiary bluesman who might easily have been forgotten, David "Junior" Kimbrough didn't find much fame—or even release a full-length album—until close to the end of his life. For decades, Kimbrough ran a juke joint in his native Mississippi, where he hosted parties and belted out bawdy, gritty, grizzled electric blues with unflinching lyrics and buckets of dirt, but his legend didn't break out of the deep South until the early '90s. Kimbrough's first album, All Night Long, hit stores in 1992, the year he turned 62: It was released by Fat Possum Records, a label that made its name by righting historical wrongs in the world of authentic blues. He released a few more in the following years, but Kimbrough never got far from Mississippi, though musicians—including Bono and Iggy Pop—visited the legendary Junior's Place to pay tribute before Kimbrough's death in 1998.
Sunday Nights: The Songs Of Junior Kimbrough is a tribute in more tangible form: An impressive lineup of modern rock bands with blues connections—some obvious, some tenuous—reinterpret Kimbrough's simple, often primal compositions, and most do an admirable job of retaining the songs' urgency and life. Iggy & The Stooges, always a proponent of musky forthrightness, offers up two versions of "You Better Run," a delirious, deliberately shocking story-song that devolves into a singsong about rape, with no punches pulled. Both The Black Keys (which tackles "My Mind Is Ramblin'") and Blues Explosion ("Meet Me In The City") take the slow-burning route, choosing reverence over showmanship and proving, like most of the artists on Sunday Nights, that even white boys get the blues. For the entrancing, sexy "Do The Romp," Cat Power's Chan Marshall and Entrance's Guy Blakeslee trade lines over minimal guitar; The Fiery Furnaces takes a similar approach on "I'm Leaving," adding a clangy freak-out—the kind Kimbrough would probably appreciate.
The only real obstruction in keeping Kimbrough's spirit is the urge to polish: A few make that mistake, including Pete Yorn (who sucks much of the vitality from "I Feel Good Again") and, surprisingly, Jim White, who tries to hammer his quirky square pegs into round roles on "Done Got Old." Those slight wrinkles are easily outweighed by transcendent readings, like Mark Lanegan's murderous take on "All Night Long" and Thee Shams' screaming, Stones-y look at "Release Me." A surprisingly large chunk of Sunday Nights bucks the tribute-album tendency toward filler, probably because it's boosted by easy-to-use source material and a overwhelming desire to keep it believable and soulful, two traits that define Kimbrough's work.