If I were in hell right now, catching a live, breathin’ Robert Johnson flesh out the devil’s music, my mortal soul would be aflame with the spirit as a primordial drive rocked my body into rhythmic sensations, most real and Biblical.
One hundred years ago, Robert Johnson, “King of the Delta Blues singers” was born in Hazelhurst, Mississippi on May 11, 1911, far as we know. The details of his life -- and death -- are muddy. http://www.msbluestrail.org/_webapp_1389781/Robert_Johnson_Birthplace http://www.mojohand.com/robertjohnsonbio.htm http://www.robertjohnsonbluesfoundation.org/ http://www.nps.gov/history/delta/blues/people/robert_johnson.htm
If I owned a Robert Johnson 78 rpm disc from the ‘30s, that’s the object I’d reach for if my house were on fire. There are collectors who own such treasures and I am covetous. I just don’t have $5,000 lying around that I can plunk down for an original wax pressing of “Terraplane Blues.” I’ll be happy to listen to the recently released CD – “Robert Johnson: A Centennial Collection,” a re-issue of the 49 songs Johnson is known to have recorded in his short life.
Delta blues thrived throughout the 1920s and ‘30s. http://www.pbs.org/theblues/roadtrip/deltahist.html A slew of artists were recorded for posterity – Bukka White, Skip James, Blind Blake, Tommy Johnson (no relation), Mississippi John Hurt, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Willy Brown, Son House… Robert Johnson’s recordings, made in 1936 and ’37 were the last hurrah for this era, but his music was delta blues at its pinnacle. He took it places it had never been to before.
Johnson incorporated a percussive sound, boogie-woogie bass line, ragtime, masterful “bottlenecking” techniques and drastic changes in pitch. Keith Richards has described his technique as almost “Bach-like,” in the way it sounded like more than one person playing. His lyrics were simple, poetic narratives of forlorn love, hard times and drifting. http://www.sibetrans.com/trans/a269/poetic-devices-in-the-songs-of-robert-johnson-king-of-the-delta-blues In songs like “Crossroad Blues,” his voice was low down and in “Kind Hearted Woman Blues,” it reached a jangling falsetto.
Johnson was said to be a mediocre guitarist when left Robinson, Miss., in around 1930, only to return around a year later with his uncanny talent. The myth, of course, is that he traded his soul for his talent. Supposedly, he went to the crossroads – the intersection of highways 61 and 49 outside Clarksville, Miss. and made a pact with the devil. http://crossroads.stormloader.com/
The “deal with the devil” story-line has precedence, stretching at least as far back as Medieval times. German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe used this theme for his play, “Faust,” in the 18th century, and the idea spread to America with Washington Irving’s “The Devil and Tom Walker” and Stephen Vincent Benet’s “The Devil and Daniel Webster.” Italian violinist, Niccolo’ Paganini – for only one example -- was rumored to have sold his soul to Satan.
There is a tendency, I guess, to explain away dazzling talent by attributing it to witchcraft and the diabolical. Maybe that seems more plausible than the possibility that someone worked his ass off.
The story of Robert Johnson’s deal with the prince of darkness was given legs by Son House, and Johnson, himself. Here’s what I think: Tommy Johnson (one of Robert Johnson’s mentors) was telling that story about himself back in the ‘20s. Robert Johnson just stole (or borrowed) that tale for himself and used it for his own PR.
He was ambitious and out to carve his niche. The few recordings he made showed he was serious. I think Johnson was a savvy artist who played on the devil theme with songs like “Preachin’ the Blues (Up Jumped the Devil)” “If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day” and “Me and the Devil Blues.” The “devil” in these songs, I believe, was a metaphor for a white-dominated system bent on holding the black man down – economically, socially, politically, psychologically and spiritually. Hell was the life he had to live on earth. The impending doom he sang about represented what might happen to a black man found on the street after dark. Lynch mobs were perfectly legal back then.
His early death at age 27 didn’t come about through a Faustian pact. It happened because he had a sweet tooth for women and booze, and one night he made love to the wrong woman and when her husband offered him an open bottle of whiskey, he foolishly accepted it. Unfortunately, the drink was laced with poison and he died three days later. (He died on Aug. 16, 1938 – exactly 39 years prior to the date when Elvis Presley would die in his Graceland bathroom.) If Johnson hadn’t died young, that story might not have caught on.
As it happened, the folk revival of the 1960s brought many of Johnson’s contemporaries out of obscurity, and while they finally received the acclaim due to them, Johnson’s fame was posthumous. If only Johnson had lived another 30 years…he could have played an electric guitar and jammed with Hendrix. It would have been natural. “Me and the Devil Blues” sounds just as haunting as “Voodoo Chile.”
No, Johnson’s not in some Dante-like inferno. Nor is he on a cloud, playing lily-white church pop on a harp. I think his body lies mouldering in a pauper’s grave. (His remains are disputed to be at three different locations.) http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20110515/FEATURES05/305150002/Bluesman-Robert-Johnson-remembered-Clarksdale-Mississippi-centennial-nears He’s at rest, awaiting the words, “Robert Johnson, rise up” and the kingdom come.
Those old 78’s are obscure, nearly impossible to find, but Robert Johnson and his joy-giving music belongs to all of us. He’s in our DNA – the waters that feed the Mississippi River, the wind that blows along U.S. 61 – our American mythology.
