'Sheer raw talent': Tommy Burroughs, beloved Memphis musician, has died at age 62

In a town noted for piano pounders, horn blowers and electric-guitar twangers, Tommy Burroughs was different. He mastered the fiddle and the mandolin as well as the guitar — and became one of the city's most beloved, respected and sought-after musicians in the process.

“He was a prodigy who could just play anything with strings,” said veteran Memphis music producer and engineer Jeff Powell. “I don’t know if I ever worked with anybody with the amount of sheer raw talent that he had.”

"There was no-one like 'T-bone,'" said singer/guitarist Jimmy Davis of the bluegrass-oriented Riverbluff Clan and the 1980s hard rock band Jimmy Davis & Junction, both of which showcased Burroughs' talents. (Davis said "T-bone" was one of Burroughs' nicknames.)

A musical savant who had wowed listeners since he was a child with his stringed-instrument virtuosity, Burroughs, 62, died Tuesday at his mother's home in Collierville, according to his sister, Millington resident Laura Burroughs.

The former World Champion Mandolin Player had been struggling with cancer for five years, but had only stopped playing music for audiences in clubs about two weeks before his death.

Burroughs is perhaps best remembered for his stints in the Riverbluff Clan, a bluegrass-folk-country outfit that formed when Burroughs was a young teenager and reunited in the 1990s, defying trends to become arguably Memphis' most popular band at a time when punk-style rock and hip-hop were ascendant.

"My mother used to say, ‘You don’t go to church,’ and I said, ‘Yes we do — we go every Sunday to the Poplar Lounge to see the Riverbluff Clan, and they take the roof off the place,’” said Ronny Russell, co-founder of Memphis’ Madjack Records label. “It was quite a scene.”

“They just blew the roof off every Sunday," confirmed Powell, who produced the band's 1998 album, "Two Quarts Low," at Ardent Studios.

"They were one of the hottest if not the hottest band in Memphis," he said. "There was nobody on the planet better at mandolin or fiddle than Tommy. If you could get him on the fiddle, he'd practically saw the damn thing in half."

'Rockin' Raleigh' music scene, Libertyland and beyond

Thomas Joe Burroughs was the son of guitarist Willie Burroughs, a founding member of the Tennessee Gentlemen, a bluegrass band that regularly played festivals across the country. The world-famous Lester Flatt of Flatt & Scruggs — the bluegrass duo popularly known for their appearances on "The Beverly Hillbillies" — was a cousin. As a result, Burroughs was around music — and musical instruments — all his life.

"Tommy was constantly getting daddy's guitar out of its case when daddy wasn't looking, so daddy taught him the chords," Laura Burroughs said. "He never had a real lesson. He played it by ear at 6, 7 years old."

Burroughs was born in Memphis, but his family moved to Dayton, Ohio, and then to Detroit before returning to the Bluff City in 1969. The Tennessee Gentlemen played at the old Lucy Opry in Lucy, Tennessee, and at other venues, and soon Tommy was playing there, too.

Before Burroughs was old enough to drive, he was part of the "Rockin' Raleigh" music scene in Raleigh-Bartlett, where his high-school classmates included Jimmy Davis. But while other kids were idolizing Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page, Tommy's idol, according to his sister, was mandolinist Sam Bush of New Grass Revival, a progressive bluegrass band.

By 13, Burroughs was playing in the original incarnation of the Riverbluff Clan with musicians who were in their early 20s. By 14, he was the World Champion Mandolin Player, according to the Memphis Press-Scimitar newspaper. By 16, he was a star performer at the newly opened Libertyland amusement park at the Fairgrounds.

By the late 1970s, even the Pentagon was impressed: The federal government sent the Riverbluff Clan (originally and still sometimes written as "River Bluff Clan," and occasionally stylized as "RiverBluff Clan") on a tour of U.S. military bases in Europe.

"I really kind of think that Tommy may have had a photographic memory for music," said Riverbluff Clan guitarist Bill Yearwood, 69, who first started performing with Burroughs when Tommy was 13. "He could hear it and reproduce it. I've been playing guitar forever, but when I heard Tommy, I would think, 'This is magic.' I'd say, 'How can you do that?' Today I wish I could play one instrument as well as Tommy could play at 13."

'He wanted to stay in Memphis doing what he loved'

In the 1970s and '80s, Burroughs and the Riverbluff Clan regularly played such Overton Square and Highland Strip-area clubs as Solomon Alfred's and Across the Tracks, alongside such bands as Good Question, Portrait and Nexus.

"We were all trying to get record deals," said Davis, 62, who now lives in Wimberley, Texas. "One Christmas Eve, me and Tommy ended up sitting out in the car and listening to each other's demos, and I went, 'Dude, if me and you went in together, we would rock this town like it hasn't been rocked in a long time... and we did it.” The band they formed, Jimmy Davis & Junction, was signed to MCA and scored a minor hit in 1987 with "Kick the Wall."

Davis joined the Riverbluff Clan for its popular 1990s revival, and he and Burroughs signed as songwriters with Sony, working with Bernie Leadon of the Eagles to pen Restless Heart's 1992 hit "Blame It on Love," among other efforts.

Said Davis: "These songwriter types would come from Nashville to get together with us at somebody's home, and there would be all of us redneck Raleigh types, cooking a pig."

Burroughs spurned offers to move to Nashville. "He probably could have been a first-call guy" and made a lot of money doing studio sessions, Powell said, but "he wanted to stay in Memphis doing what he loved." Here, he remained busy, playing in clubs and on records, with old comrades and with such relative newcomers as Paul Taylor and Eric Lewis. Along the way, he won the Memphis Premier Player award in the Stringed Instrument category seven times. He even spoofed his own fast-fingered roots-music virtuosity when he titled his 2001 solo album "Hillbilly Speedball."

"In addition to being an exceptionally talented musician, he was funny as could be," Powell said. "He was funny as hell," added singer Susan Marshall. "And if you ever saw him on stage, he left nothing behind. Every night he elevated the audience."

Attempting to summarize his friendship and collaborations with Burroughs, Davis said, simply: "We made music. Our music, our town... I don't have to explain that, right?"

In addition to his sister, Burroughs leaves his mother, Wanda Burroughs, of Covington; and a brother, Tim Burroughs, of Looxahoma, Mississippi. Funeral arrangements are incomplete at this time, but Laura Burroughs said a public "Celebration of Life" is planned.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Tommy Burroughs, beloved Memphis musician, has died