10 Musicians Who Committed Real Crimes, Did Real Time - And Had Real Impact

Another Mississippi musician who spent time at Parchman Farm, Robert Lee Burnside did not actually become famous until his late '60s and '70s after the media picked up on him as one of the last surviving original bluesmen still alive in the 1990s.

Born in Mississippi in 1926, he learned guitar by watching others including Mississippi Fred McDowell. In the late 1940s he moved to Chicago, home of the electric blues, but returned to The Magnolia State two years later after a rush of violence in which his father, two brothers and an uncle were killed. Burnside didn’t manage to leave bloodshed behind though, and was sent to jail after killing a man over land or a dice game - opinions on which it was differ. What is recorded, however, is his response to a judge who asked if he had meant to leave the man dead, "It was between him and the Lord, him dyin'. I just shot him in the head."

After release Burnside spent much of his time as a farmer and fisherman, until he was signed by Fat Possum Records in the 1990s and finally came to widespread attention, collaborating with artists such as Kid Rock and Jon Spencer and producing a string of albums which sold well, earning him both money and wider renown until his death in 2005.