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| Or so they say... |
If you watch Netflix’s Robert Johnson: Devil at the Crossroads, you’ll get a taste of how much of the legendary blues artist’s reputation rests on a mix of rumor and projection. It’s worth the time, if for the interviews alone, but that documentary (part of their Remastered series?) also confirms most of what I read about Johnson around the web, but I’ll be damned if I can keep up with them for visuals…
The biggest surprise I found when researching Robert Johnson was how few recordings he left behind: Wikipedia puts the number at just 29 songs, if with 13 alternate takes over his entire career. That just builds the legend, of course, but the way people wax about both his voice and his playing points to something heard only by people with the right kind of ears. After a week plus with his catalog, I hear the singular voice, but I'm taking the rest on faith. (And Wikipedia has some good notes on his musicianship and the quality of his voice and his use of “microtonality” in the depths of its entry.) With that, time to introduce the man himself…
Robert Johnson was the 11th child in a family, most born out of wedlock, but he still had a good anchor in his life. Charles Dodds, the man who raised him, did pretty well for himself between managing land and making furniture - too well for prominent local whites in Hazelhurst, Mississippi. His success came at the right before one of those spikes of White resentment that, unfortunately, seem baked into the American DNA, so Dodds fled town on threat of lynching. He left behind his wife, Julia, who reconnected with Johnson’s biological father, Noah Johnson, but he stepped out of the picture again before long. Johnson eventually reconnected with Dodds wtih a move to Memphis, Tennessee. Having learned the terrible lesson of the times, Dodds had adopted a new identity as Charles Spencer. Johnson carried the Spencer name through his childhood.
Most sources agree Robert Johnson lived in Memphis for a while. Most also agree he had some decent state-provided education during that time, but only one source offers anything concrete that hints at his love for music: that’s Blackpast.org, who references people who remember him playing a diddley-bow, i.e., “…wire attached to nails sticking out of houses. A person could then hit the wire with a stick and use an empty bottle that slides along the wire to change the pitch.” The story picks up with Johnson following Son House and Blind Willie Johnson around the blues juke joint circuit asking for tips on how to play. Son House (covered earlier in this series) recalls that, while Johnson wasn’t too bad on the harmonica, he wasn’t so good on the guitar:
“such a racket you’d never heard!… ‘Get that guitar away from that boy,’ people would say, ‘he’s running people crazy with it.’”
Devil at the Crossroads paints a picture of Robert Johnson as a man who’d do anything to avoid field work, but it also notes that he gave up music and accepted life as a sharecropper when he met and married Virginia Travis at the young ages of 18 and 16, respectively. Travis was raised in a very religious home, so her family didn’t approve as it was, but, that was nothing compared to what happened when she died in childbirth with him still en route to see the birth of his first-born (the inspiration for “Love in Vain,” apparently). The Travis family put it all down on his love of secular music, aka, “selling his soul to the Devil”…which turns out to be a common phrase between church-goers and fans of blues in the late 1920s. That was a microcosm of a large low-key battle over the souls of husbands who spent their weekend nights in juke joints and ditched church versus the wives and preachers who showed up to church every Sunday with clear heads and open hearts. The blues drew the line between the two camps; booze and gambling dug the line deeper. That sucks the glamor out of the whole “he sold his soul to the Devil” mythos, which, of course, is what most people, myself included, want to know.
In another telling, Johnson left Greenwood, Mississippi (he lived north of Jackson then) to go on something like a walk-about. Two years later, he ran into Son House again. He sat down and proceeded to blow him away. As Son House later said (and this is from UDiscover Music):
“He was so good,” marveled House. “When he finished, all our mouths were standing open.”
The best legend says Johnson went to the crossroads of Highway 61 and Highway 49 and sold his soul to the Devil for fame as a blues star. The more plausible story is that Johnson's walkabout around northern Mississippi - which might have doubled as a search for his biological father - took him to a mentor, specifically, Isaac “Zeke” Zimmerman. Zimmerman’s technique came with some weird shit - e.g, he brought Johnson to cemeteries for practice in order to connect him to the departed, i.e., another hook in the legend of Johnson coughing up his soul - but, between the sources I read, Zimmerman strikes me as the likeliest accelerant for Johnson's technique.
Once he sorted out how to find steady work in the juke joints, and however he attained it, Robert Johnson became an itinerant blues musician from 1931 forward. He didn't settle down entirely - UDiscover says he married again, this time to Colletta Craft who also died shortly they wed - but, whatever he did from 1928 to 1931, Johnson spent the next seven years, traveling, playing, and, according to legend, the thing that did him in, womanizing. From UDiscover:
“Johnson soon ventured beyond the Delta region, performing across the South, as well as in such blues hotspots as Chicago, New York, Detroit, and St. Louis. As legend has it, the artist often concentrated his performance on just one woman in the audience; a risky business in a world where men were happy to fight when they felt aggrieved.”
The details of the seven years between 1931 and Robert Johnson’s death don’t amount to much more than him playing all over the country - up to Chicago, of course, but also as far afield as New York City and into Canada. He still worked the Southern blues circuit, but regardless of venue, he was a talented, flexible entertainer, someone who learned songs quickly and who was willing to play what paid. And he could play most of it - covers blues tunes by Blind Lemon Jefferson and Blind Willie McTell, or singles by country artist Jimmie Rodgers, or even popular artists like Bing Crosby.
The biggest surprise I found when researching Robert Johnson was how few recordings he left behind: Wikipedia puts the number at just 29 songs, if with 13 alternate takes over his entire career. That just builds the legend, of course, but the way people wax about both his voice and his playing points to something heard only by people with the right kind of ears. After a week plus with his catalog, I hear the singular voice, but I'm taking the rest on faith. (And Wikipedia has some good notes on his musicianship and the quality of his voice and his use of “microtonality” in the depths of its entry.) With that, time to introduce the man himself…
Robert Johnson was the 11th child in a family, most born out of wedlock, but he still had a good anchor in his life. Charles Dodds, the man who raised him, did pretty well for himself between managing land and making furniture - too well for prominent local whites in Hazelhurst, Mississippi. His success came at the right before one of those spikes of White resentment that, unfortunately, seem baked into the American DNA, so Dodds fled town on threat of lynching. He left behind his wife, Julia, who reconnected with Johnson’s biological father, Noah Johnson, but he stepped out of the picture again before long. Johnson eventually reconnected with Dodds wtih a move to Memphis, Tennessee. Having learned the terrible lesson of the times, Dodds had adopted a new identity as Charles Spencer. Johnson carried the Spencer name through his childhood.
Most sources agree Robert Johnson lived in Memphis for a while. Most also agree he had some decent state-provided education during that time, but only one source offers anything concrete that hints at his love for music: that’s Blackpast.org, who references people who remember him playing a diddley-bow, i.e., “…wire attached to nails sticking out of houses. A person could then hit the wire with a stick and use an empty bottle that slides along the wire to change the pitch.” The story picks up with Johnson following Son House and Blind Willie Johnson around the blues juke joint circuit asking for tips on how to play. Son House (covered earlier in this series) recalls that, while Johnson wasn’t too bad on the harmonica, he wasn’t so good on the guitar:
“such a racket you’d never heard!… ‘Get that guitar away from that boy,’ people would say, ‘he’s running people crazy with it.’”
Devil at the Crossroads paints a picture of Robert Johnson as a man who’d do anything to avoid field work, but it also notes that he gave up music and accepted life as a sharecropper when he met and married Virginia Travis at the young ages of 18 and 16, respectively. Travis was raised in a very religious home, so her family didn’t approve as it was, but, that was nothing compared to what happened when she died in childbirth with him still en route to see the birth of his first-born (the inspiration for “Love in Vain,” apparently). The Travis family put it all down on his love of secular music, aka, “selling his soul to the Devil”…which turns out to be a common phrase between church-goers and fans of blues in the late 1920s. That was a microcosm of a large low-key battle over the souls of husbands who spent their weekend nights in juke joints and ditched church versus the wives and preachers who showed up to church every Sunday with clear heads and open hearts. The blues drew the line between the two camps; booze and gambling dug the line deeper. That sucks the glamor out of the whole “he sold his soul to the Devil” mythos, which, of course, is what most people, myself included, want to know.
In another telling, Johnson left Greenwood, Mississippi (he lived north of Jackson then) to go on something like a walk-about. Two years later, he ran into Son House again. He sat down and proceeded to blow him away. As Son House later said (and this is from UDiscover Music):
“He was so good,” marveled House. “When he finished, all our mouths were standing open.”
The best legend says Johnson went to the crossroads of Highway 61 and Highway 49 and sold his soul to the Devil for fame as a blues star. The more plausible story is that Johnson's walkabout around northern Mississippi - which might have doubled as a search for his biological father - took him to a mentor, specifically, Isaac “Zeke” Zimmerman. Zimmerman’s technique came with some weird shit - e.g, he brought Johnson to cemeteries for practice in order to connect him to the departed, i.e., another hook in the legend of Johnson coughing up his soul - but, between the sources I read, Zimmerman strikes me as the likeliest accelerant for Johnson's technique.
Once he sorted out how to find steady work in the juke joints, and however he attained it, Robert Johnson became an itinerant blues musician from 1931 forward. He didn't settle down entirely - UDiscover says he married again, this time to Colletta Craft who also died shortly they wed - but, whatever he did from 1928 to 1931, Johnson spent the next seven years, traveling, playing, and, according to legend, the thing that did him in, womanizing. From UDiscover:
“Johnson soon ventured beyond the Delta region, performing across the South, as well as in such blues hotspots as Chicago, New York, Detroit, and St. Louis. As legend has it, the artist often concentrated his performance on just one woman in the audience; a risky business in a world where men were happy to fight when they felt aggrieved.”
The details of the seven years between 1931 and Robert Johnson’s death don’t amount to much more than him playing all over the country - up to Chicago, of course, but also as far afield as New York City and into Canada. He still worked the Southern blues circuit, but regardless of venue, he was a talented, flexible entertainer, someone who learned songs quickly and who was willing to play what paid. And he could play most of it - covers blues tunes by Blind Lemon Jefferson and Blind Willie McTell, or singles by country artist Jimmie Rodgers, or even popular artists like Bing Crosby.
Most of the details from this period come from another blues musician, a guy named Johnny Shines. There’s also general agreement that Johnson embraced the idea that he’d sold his soul, both in the themes in his music - e.g., “Me and the Devil Blues,” “Cross Road Blues,” “Hellhound on My Trail” - and in his openly dissolute lifestyle. Looking back from peak rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle - e.g., just google “Led Zeppelin,” “fish,” and “groupie” - Johnson presents as a familiar type. On the other hand, that “type” didn’t exist in the 1930s. Johnson also shacked up with a succession of women, both in the Delta area and on the road. One night, back in his familiar stomping grounds of Mississippi, while playing a juke joint in Greenwood, MS, a place attached to the Three Forks Store, the then-27-year-old Johnson flirted too openly with the storekeeper’s wife. According to one legend, the wounded husband poisoned Johnson’s drink - and with something nasty. He died in pain and coughing blood three days later. Other accounts point to running out of time on congenital syphilis - hardly a major curve given the times and his lifestyle, and also what showed on his birth certificate when it surfaced about thirty years later - still others mention something called Marfan Syndrome, while some suggest he was simply shot (Blackpast).
Johnson’s sudden death came just as a much larger world took notice of him. He missed what became a right of passage for Southern rural musicians: a recording session with Alan Lomax, the famous musicologist showed up nearly three years too late. And, as noted in the previous chapter on Big Bill Broonzy, Johnson was John Hammond’s first choice for his 1938 From Spirituals to Swing event at Carnegie Hall; they honored Johnson by putting a phonograph under a spotlight and playing some of his recordings for the audience, but Broonzy headlined the “blues” segment of the show - and also went on to introduce Europe, and the UK in particular, to Delta Blues.
Despite Broonzy’s prolific work as a composer and repeated European tours during the 1950s, it was Johnson who became the guiding light for England’s most famous blues aficionados - e.g., Keith Richards and Eric Clapton. A (very) short biography on the Robert Johnson Blues Foundation website praises his work:
“Johnson took the intense loneliness, terrors and tortuous lifestyle that came with being an African-American in the South during the Great Depression, and transformed that specific and very personal experience into music of universal relevance and global reach.”
Wikipedia, meanwhile, sums up his legacy nicely:
“His landmark recordings in 1936 and 1937 display a combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that has influenced later generations of musicians. He is now recognized as a master of the blues, particularly the Delta blues style.”
About the Sampler
Because he sat for only two recording sessions - San Antonion in 1936, Dallas in 1937, both managed by a producer named Don Law - Robert Johnson’s was one of the tidier catalogs to review. Still, grabbing a couple of his more famous songs felt obvious - e.g., “Cross Road Blues” (link above) and “Sweet Home Chicago” - but the rest was a lot of pulling in anything that I heard and liked. To list a dozen, in no particular order: “32-20 Blues” (vocals slay on that one), “Come on in My Kitchen,” “Drunken Hearted Man,” “Kind Hearted Woman Blues,” “Phonograph Blues,” “Walkin’ Blues,” “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom,” “If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day,” “Last Fair Deal Gone Down,” “Terraplane Blues,” “I’m a Steady Rollin’ Man,” and, personal favorite (and tonal outlier), “They’re Red Hot.”
After listening to and learning about a couple blues artists (Broonzy's another) who survived into the 1950s and adopted new styles and influences, it was sort of fascinating listening to a man who’s death and limited output sort of froze him in time. There’s an accidental purity to it, if from a time and place genre perspective, but whether I started hearing something special or just got talked into it by the hagiography, I move closer to hearing something special with each listen. It’s not something you should listen to once, in other words.
Till the next one…
Johnson’s sudden death came just as a much larger world took notice of him. He missed what became a right of passage for Southern rural musicians: a recording session with Alan Lomax, the famous musicologist showed up nearly three years too late. And, as noted in the previous chapter on Big Bill Broonzy, Johnson was John Hammond’s first choice for his 1938 From Spirituals to Swing event at Carnegie Hall; they honored Johnson by putting a phonograph under a spotlight and playing some of his recordings for the audience, but Broonzy headlined the “blues” segment of the show - and also went on to introduce Europe, and the UK in particular, to Delta Blues.
Despite Broonzy’s prolific work as a composer and repeated European tours during the 1950s, it was Johnson who became the guiding light for England’s most famous blues aficionados - e.g., Keith Richards and Eric Clapton. A (very) short biography on the Robert Johnson Blues Foundation website praises his work:
“Johnson took the intense loneliness, terrors and tortuous lifestyle that came with being an African-American in the South during the Great Depression, and transformed that specific and very personal experience into music of universal relevance and global reach.”
Wikipedia, meanwhile, sums up his legacy nicely:
“His landmark recordings in 1936 and 1937 display a combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that has influenced later generations of musicians. He is now recognized as a master of the blues, particularly the Delta blues style.”
About the Sampler
Because he sat for only two recording sessions - San Antonion in 1936, Dallas in 1937, both managed by a producer named Don Law - Robert Johnson’s was one of the tidier catalogs to review. Still, grabbing a couple of his more famous songs felt obvious - e.g., “Cross Road Blues” (link above) and “Sweet Home Chicago” - but the rest was a lot of pulling in anything that I heard and liked. To list a dozen, in no particular order: “32-20 Blues” (vocals slay on that one), “Come on in My Kitchen,” “Drunken Hearted Man,” “Kind Hearted Woman Blues,” “Phonograph Blues,” “Walkin’ Blues,” “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom,” “If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day,” “Last Fair Deal Gone Down,” “Terraplane Blues,” “I’m a Steady Rollin’ Man,” and, personal favorite (and tonal outlier), “They’re Red Hot.”
After listening to and learning about a couple blues artists (Broonzy's another) who survived into the 1950s and adopted new styles and influences, it was sort of fascinating listening to a man who’s death and limited output sort of froze him in time. There’s an accidental purity to it, if from a time and place genre perspective, but whether I started hearing something special or just got talked into it by the hagiography, I move closer to hearing something special with each listen. It’s not something you should listen to once, in other words.
Till the next one…
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