Robert Johnson (musician)

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Robert Johnson
Robert Johnson's studio portrait, circa 1935—one of only two known photographs
Robert Johnson's studio portrait, circa 1935—one of only two known photographs
Background information
Born May 8, 1911(1911-05-08)
Hazlehurst, Mississippi, U.S.
Died August 16, 1938 (aged 27)
Greenwood, Mississippi, U.S.
Genre(s) Delta blues, country blues
Instrument(s) Guitar
Years active 1929–1938
Website www.deltahaze.com/johnson
Notable instrument(s)
Gibson L-1

Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911 – August 16, 1938) is among the most famous of Delta blues musicians. His landmark recordings from 1936–1937 display a remarkable combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that have influenced generations of musicians. Johnson's shadowy, poorly documented life and death at age 27 have given rise to much legend.

Considered by some to be the "Grandfather of Rock 'n' Roll", his vocal phrasing, original songs, and guitar style have influenced a broad range of musicians, including John Fogerty, Bob Dylan, Johnny Winter, Jimi Hendrix, The Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin, The Allman Brothers Band, The Rolling Stones, Paul Butterfield, The Band, Neil Young, Warren Zevon, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Robert Palmer and Eric Clapton, who called Johnson "the most important blues musician who ever lived".[1] He was also ranked fifth in Rolling Stone's list of 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.[2] He is an inductee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.[3]

Contents

[edit] Life and career

[edit] Problems of biography

Johnson's records were greatly admired by white jazz record collectors from the time of their first release, and efforts were made to discover his biography, with virtually no success. In 1941 Alan Lomax learned from a very shy Muddy Waters that Johnson had performed in the Clarksdale, Mississippi area.[4] By 1959, Samuel Charters could only add that Will Shade of the Memphis Jug Band remembered Johnson had once briefly played with him in West Memphis, Arkansas.[5] In 1961 the sleeve notes to the album King of the Delta Blues Singers included reminiscences of Don Law who had recorded Johnson in 1936. Law added to the mystique surrounding Johnson, representing him as very young and extraordinarily shy.

The success of the album led blues scholars and enthusiasts to question every veteran blues musician who might have know Johnson or seen him in performance. A relatively full account of Johnson's brief musical career emerged in the 1960s, largely from accounts by Son House, Johnny Shines, David Honeyboy Edwards and Robert Lockwood.

Still nothing was known of Johnson's early life. The noted blues researcher Mack McCormick began researching his family background, but he was never ready to publish. Eventually McCormick's research became as much a legend as Johnson himself. In 1982 McCormick permitted Peter Guralnick to publish a summary in Living Blues (1982), later reprinted in book form as Searching for Robert Johnson. [6] Later research has sought to confirm this account or to add minor details. A revised summary acknowledging major informants was written by Stephen Lavere for the booklet accompanying the compilation album Robert Johnson, The Complete Recordings (1990), and is maintained with updates at the Delta Haze website. [1] The documentary film "The Search for Robert Johnson" contains account by Mack McCormick and Gayle Dean Wardlow of what informants have told them, long interviews of David Honeyboy Edwards and Johnny Shines, and short interviews of surviving friends and family. These published biographical sketches achieve coherent narratives, partly by ignoring reminiscences and hearsay accounts which contradict or conflict with other accounts.

The two known images of Johnson were located in 1973, in the possession of the musician's half-sister Carrie Thompson, and were not widely published until the late 1980s.

These photographs and the royalties from the Complete Recordings were so remunerative as to make Johnson's biography a cause for litigation. Carrie Thompson's claim to be Robert's half-sister has been recognised under law, and Claud Johnson has been recognised as Robert's natural son and sole living heir.

Five significant dates from his career are documented: Monday, Thursday and Friday, November 23, 26, and 27, 1936 at a recording session in San Antonio, Texas. Seven months later, on Saturday and Sunday, June 19–20, 1937, he was in Dallas, Texas at another session. His death certificate was discovered in 1968, and lists the date and location of his death.[7] Two marriage licenses for Johnson have also been located in county records offices. The ages given in these certificates point to different birth dates, as do the entries showing his attendance at the Indian Creek School, Tunica, Mississippi. However, most of these dates can be discounted since Robert was not listed among his mother's children in the 1910 census.[8] Carrie Thompson claimed that her mother, who was also Robert's mother, remembered his birth date as May 8, 1911.

Other facts about him are less well established. Director Martin Scorsese says in his foreword to Alan Greenberg's filmscript Love In Vain: A Vision of Robert Johnson, "The thing about Robert Johnson was that he only existed on his records. He was pure legend."

[edit] Early life

Robert Johnson was born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi probably on May 8, 1911, to Julia Major Dodds and Noah Johnson. Julia was married to Charles Dodds, a relatively propserous landowner and furniture maker to whom she had borne 10 children. Dodds had been forced by a lynch mob to leave Hazlehurst following a dispute with white landowners. Julia herself left Hazlehurst with baby Robert, but after some two years sent him to live in Memphis with Dodds, who had changed his name to Charles Spencer.[9]

Around 1919, Robert rejoined his mother in the area around Tunica and Robinsonville, Mississippi. Julia's new husband was known as Dusty Willis, and Robert was remembered by some informants as "Little Robert Dusty".[10] However, he was registered at the Indian Creek School in Tunica as Robert Spencer. Robert was at school in 1924 and 1927[11] and the quality of his signature on his marriage certificate[12] suggests that he studied continuously and was relatively well educated for a boy of his background. One school friend, Willie Coffee, has been discovered and filmed. He recalls that Robert was already noted for playing the harmonica and jew's harp.[13]

After school, Robert adopted the surname of his natural father, signing himself as Robert Johnson on the certificate of his marriage to sixteen-year-old Virginia Travis in February 1929. She died shortly after in childbirth.[14]

Around this time, the noted blues musician Son House moved to Robinsonville where his musical partner Willie Brown already lived. Late in life, House remembered Johnson as a boy who had followed him around and tried very unsuccessfully to copy him. He then left the Robbinsville area, but later reappeared after a few months with a miraculous guitar technique.[15] His boast is entirely credible. Johnson later recorded versions of "Preaching the Blues" and "Walking Blues" in House's vocal and guitar style. However, Son's chronology is questioned by Guralnick. When House moved to Robbinsville in 1930, Johnson was a young adult, already married and widowed. The following year, he was living near Hazelhurst, where he married for the second time.[16] From this base Johnson began travelling up and down the Delta as an itinerant musician.

[edit] Devil legend

According to a legend known to modern Blues fans, Robert Johnson was a young black man living on a plantation in rural Mississippi. Branded with a burning desire to become a great blues musician, he was instructed to take his guitar to a crossroad near Dockery's plantation at midnight. There he was met by a large black man (the Devil) who took the guitar from Johnson and tuned it, giving him mastery of the guitar, and handed it back to him in return for his soul. Within less than a year's time, in exchange for his everlasting soul, Robert Johnson became the king of the Delta blues singers, able to play, sing, and create the greatest blues anyone had ever heard.

This legend was developed over time, and has been chronicled by Gayle Dean Wardlow[17], Edward Komara [18] and Elijah Wald.[19] Folk tales of bargains with the Devil have long existed in African American and White traditions, and were adapted into literature by Washington Irving in "The Devil and Tom Walker" in 1824, and by and Stephen Vincent Benet in "The Devil and Daniel Webster" in 1936. In the 1930s the folklorist Harry Middleton Hart recorded many tales of banjo players, violinists, card sharps and dice sharks selling their souls at the crossroads, along with guitarists and one accordionist. The folklorist Alan Lomax considered that every African American secular musician was "in the opinion of of both himself and his peers, a child of the devil, a consequence of the black view of the European dance embrace as sinful in the extreme".[20]

In recorded Blues, the theme first appeared in 1924 in the record by Clara Smith "Done Sold My Soul To The Devil (And My Heart's Done Turned To Stone)". There is no evidence that the song influenced any other African American performers. The only known cover was recorded in 1937 by the white Western Swing band named after their business manager Dave Edwards.[21][22]

Johnson seems to have claimed occasionally that he had sold his soul to the Devil, but it is not clear that he meant it seriously. Son House once told the story to Pete Welding as an explanation of Johnson's astonishingly rapid mastery of the guitar. Welding reported it as a serious belief in a widely read article in Down Beat in 1966.[23] However, other interviewers failed to elicit any confirmation from House. Moreover, there were fully two years between House's observation of Robert as first a novice and then a master.

Further details were absorbed from the imaginative retellings by Greil Marcus[24] and Robert Palmer.[25] Most significantly, the detail was added that Johnson received his gift from a large black man at a crossroads. There is dispute as to how and when the crossroads detail was attached to the Robert Johnson story. All the published evidence suggests an origin in the story of Tommy Johnson. This story was collected from his musical associate Ishman Bracey and his elder brother Ledell in the 1960s.[26] One version of Ledell Johnson's account was published in 1971 David Evans's biography of Tommy,[27] and was repeated in print in 1982 alongside Son House's story in the widely read Searching for Robert Johnson.[28]

In another version, Ledell placed the meeting not at a crossroads but in a graveyard. This resembles the story told to Steve LaVere that Ike Zinnerman of Hazelhurst, Mississippi learned to play the guitar at midnight while sitting on tombstones. Zinnerman is believed to have influenced the playing of the young Robert Johnson.[29]

The crossroads detail was widely believed to come from Johnson himself, probably because it appeared to explain the discrepancy in "Cross Road Blues". Johnson's high emotion and religious fervour are hard to explain as resulting from the mundane situation described, unsuccessful hitchhiking as night falls. The crossroads myth offers a simple literal explanation for both the religion and the anguish.

The myth was established in mass consciousness in 1986 by the film Crossroads. There are now tourist attractions claiming to be "The Crossroads" at Clarksdale and in Memphis.[30] The film O Brother Where Art Thou? by the Coen Brothers incorporates the crossroads legend and a young African American blues guitarist named "Tommy Johnson", with no other biographical similarity to the real Tommy Johnson or to Robert Johnson.

[edit] Professional career

When Johnson arrived in a new town, he would play for tips on street corners or in front of the local barbershop or a restaurant. He played what his audience asked for — not necessarily his own compositions, and not necessarily blues. With an ability to pick up tunes at first hearing, Johnson had no trouble giving his audiences what they wanted, and certain of his contemporaries, most notably Johnny Shines, later remarked on Johnson's interest in jazz and country. (Many giants of the blues, including Muddy Waters, were not averse to playing the hit songs of the day.) Johnson also had an uncanny ability to establish a rapport with his audience — in every town in which he stopped, Johnson would establish ties to the local community that would serve him well when he passed through again a month or a year later.

Fellow musician Johnny Shines was 17 when he met Johnson in 1933. He estimated that Johnson was maybe a year older than himself. In Samuel Charters' Robert Johnson, the author quotes Shines as saying:

"Robert was a very friendly person, even though he was sulky at times, you know. And I hung around Robert for quite a while. One evening he disappeared. He was kind of peculiar fellow. Robert'd be standing up playing some place, playing like nobody's business. At about that time it was a hustle with him as well as a pleasure. And money'd be coming from all directions. But Robert'd just pick up and walk off and leave you standing there playing. And you wouldn't see Robert no more maybe in two or three weeks.... So Robert and I, we began journeying off. I was just, matter of fact, tagging along."

During this time Johnson established what would be a relatively long-term relationship with Estella Coleman, a woman who was about fifteen years his elder and the mother of musician Robert Lockwood, Jr.. Johnson, however, reportedly also cultivated a woman to look after him in each town he played in. Johnson supposedly asked homely young women living in the country with their families whether he could go home with them, and in most cases the answer was yes—until a boyfriend arrived or Johnson was ready to move on.

[edit] Recording sessions

Around 1936, Johnson sought out H. C. Speir in Jackson, Mississippi, who ran a general store and doubled as a talent scout. Speir, who helped the careers of many blues players, put Johnson in touch with Ernie Oertle, who offered to record the young musician in San Antonio, Texas. At the recording session, held on November 23, 1936 in rooms at the landmark Gunter Hotel which Brunswick Records had set up as a temporary studio, Johnson reportedly performed facing the wall. This has been cited as evidence he was a shy man and reserved performer, a conclusion played up in the inaccurate liner notes of the 1961 album King of the Delta Blues Singers. Johnson probably was nervous and intimidated at his first time in a makeshift recording studio (a new and alien environment for the musician), but in truth he was probably focusing on the demands of his emotive performances. In addition, playing into the corner of a wall was a sound-enhancing technique that simulated the acoustical booths of better-equipped studios. In the ensuing three-day session, Johnson played 16 selections, and recorded alternate takes for most of these. When the recording session was over, Johnson presumably returned home with cash in his pocket; probably more money than he'd ever had at one time in his life.

Among the songs Johnson recorded in San Antonio were "Come On In My Kitchen", "Kind Hearted Woman Blues", "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom", and "Cross Road Blues". "Come on in My Kitchen" included the lines: "The woman I love took from my best friend/Some joker got lucky, stole her back again,/You better come on my chest in my kitchen, it's going to be rainin' outdoors." In "Crossroad Blues", another of his songs, he sang: "I went to the crossroads, fell down on my knees./I went to the crossroads, fell down on my knees./I asked the Lord above, have mercy, save poor Bob if you please./Uumb, standing at the crossroads I tried to flag a ride./Standing at the crossroads I tried to flag a ride./Ain't nobody seem to know me, everybody pass me by."

When his records began appearing, Johnson made the rounds to his relatives and the various children he had fathered to bring them the records himself. The first songs to appear were "Terraplane Blues" and "Last Fair Deal Gone Down", probably the only recordings of his that he would live to hear. "Terraplane Blues" became a moderate regional hit, selling 5,000 copies.

In 1937, Johnson traveled to Dallas, Texas, for another recording session in a makeshift studio at the Brunswick Record Building, 508 Park Avenue.[31] Eleven records from this session would be released within the following year. Among them were the three songs that would largely contribute to Johnson's posthumous fame: "Stones in My Passway", "Me and the Devil", and "Hellhound On My Trail". "Stones In My Passway" and "Me And The Devil" are both about betrayal, a recurrent theme in country blues. The terrifying "Hell Hound On My Trail"—utilising another common theme of fear of the Devil—is often considered to be the crowning achievement of blues-style music. Other themes in Johnson's music include impotence ("Dead Shrimp Blues" and "Phonograph Blues") and infidelity ("Terraplane Blues", "If I Had Possession Over Judgement Day" and "Love in Vain").

Six of Johnson's blues songs mention the devil or some form of the supernatural. In "Me And The Devil" he began, "Early this morning when you knocked upon my door,/Early this morning, umb, when you knocked upon my door,/And I said, ' Hello, Satan, I believe it's time to go,'" before leading into "You may bury my body down by the highway side,/ You may bury my body, uumh, down by the highway side,/So my old evil spirit can get on a Greyhound bus and ride."

It has been suggested that the Devil in these songs does not solely refer to the Christian model of Satan, but equally to the African trickster god, Legba.[32]

[edit] Playing to the wall legend

[edit] Death legend

One of Robert Johnson's three tombstones
One of Robert Johnson's three tombstones

In the last year of his life, Johnson is believed to have traveled to St. Louis and possibly Illinois, and then to some states in the East. He spent some time in Memphis and traveled through the Mississippi Delta and Arkansas. By the time he died, at least six of his records had been released in the South as race records.

His death occurred on August 16, 1938, at the age of twenty-seven at a country crossroads near Greenwood, Mississippi. He had been playing for a few weeks at a country dance in a town about 15 miles (24 km) from Greenwood.

There are a number of accounts and theories regarding the events preceding Johnson's death. One of these is that one evening Johnson began flirting with a woman at a dance. One version of this rumor says she was the wife of the juke joint owner who unknowingly provided Johnson with a bottle of poisoned whiskey from her husband, while another suggests she was a married woman he had been secretly seeing. Researcher Mack McCormick claims to have interviewed Johnson's alleged poisoner in the 1970s, and obtained a tacit admission of guilt from the man. When Johnson was offered an open bottle of whiskey, his friend and fellow blues legend Sonny Boy Williamson knocked the bottle out of his hand, informing him that he should never drink from an offered bottle that has already been opened. Johnson allegedly said, "don't ever knock a bottle out of my hand". Soon after, he was offered another open bottle of whiskey and accepted it, and it was that bottle that was laced with strychnine. Johnson is reported to have started to feel ill into the evening after drinking from the bottle and had to be helped back to his room in the early morning hours. Over the next three days, his condition steadily worsened and witnesses reported that he died in a convulsive state of severe pain - symptoms which are consistent with strychnine poisoning. Strychnine was readily available at the time as it was a common pesticide, and although it is a very bitter-tasting substance it is extremely toxic, and a small quantity dissolved in a harsh-tasting solution such as whiskey could possibly have gone unnoticed, but (over a period of days due to the reduced dosage) still produced the symptoms and eventual death that Johnson experienced.

The precise location of his grave remains a source of ongoing controversy, and three different markers have been erected at supposed burial sites outside of Greenwood. Research in the 1980s and 1990s strongly suggests Johnson was buried in the graveyard of the Mount Zion Missionary Baptist church near Morgan City, Mississippi, not far from Greenwood, in an unmarked grave. A cenotaph memorial was placed at this location in 1990 paid for by Columbia Records and numerous smaller contributions made through the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund. More recent research by Stephen LaVere (including statements from Rosie Eskridge, the wife of the supposed gravedigger) indicates that the actual grave site is under a big pecan tree in the cemetery of the Little Zion Church north of Greenwood along Money Road. Sony Music has placed a marker at this site.

In 1938, Columbia Records producer John Hammond, who owned some of Johnson's records, sought him out to book him for the first "From Spirituals to Swing" concert at Carnegie Hall in New York. On learning of Johnson's death, Hammond replaced him with Big Bill Broonzy, but still played two of Johnson's records from the stage.[33] In 1992 Hammond's son, blues musician John P. Hammond, narrated a documentary called The Search for Robert Johnson.

Robert Johnson has a son, Claude Johnson, and grandchildren who currently reside in a town near Hazlehurst, Mississippi.

Eric Clapton, a living credit to Johnson's greatness and frequent proclamant of the immeasurable significance of Robert Johnson to all music stemming from his generation, admits he "did not take to Robert Johnson immediately... He frightened me."

[edit] Discography

Eleven Johnson 78s were released on the Vocalion label during his lifetime, with a twelfth issued posthumously. All songs copyrighted to Robert Johnson, and his estate.

Track Recorded Catalogue Released Song Title Time
1. 11/23/36 Vocalion 3416 1936 Kind Hearted Woman Blues 2:29
2. 11/23/36 Vocalion 3416 1936 Terraplane Blues 3:01
3. 11/26/36 Vocalion 3445 1936 32-20 Blues 2:50
4. 11/27/36 Vocalion 3445 1936 Last Fair Deal Gone Down 2:39
5. 11/23/36 Vocalion 3475 1936 I Believe I'll Dust My Broom 2:57
6. 11/27/36 Vocalion 3475 1936 Dead Shrimp Blues 2:29
7. 11/23/36 Vocalion 3519 1936 Ramblin' On My Mind 2:57
8. 11/27/36 Vocalion 3519 1936 Cross Road Blues 2:29
9. 11/23/36 Vocalion 3563 1936 Come On In My Kitchen 2:52
10. 11/27/36 Vocalion 3563 1936 They're Red Hot 2:56
11. 11/27/36 Vocalion 3601 1936 Walkin' Blues 2:30
12. 11/23/36 Vocalion 3601 1936 Sweet Home Chicago 2:57
13. 6/19/37 Vocalion 3623 1937 From Four Until Late 2:22
14. 6/20/37 Vocalion 3623 1937 Hellhound On My Trail 2:37
15. 6/20/37 Vocalion 3665 1937 Malted Milk 2:20
16. 6/20/37 Vocalion 3665 1937 Milkcow's Calf Blues 2:17
17. 6/19/37 Vocalion 3723 1937 Stones In My Passway 2:28
18. 6/19/37 Vocalion 3723 1937 I'm A Steady Rollin' Man 2:35
19. 6/20/37 Vocalion 4002 1937 Stop Breakin' Down Blues 2:21
20. 6/20/37 Vocalion 4002 1937 Honeymoon Blues 2:16
21. 6/20/37 Vocalion 4108 1937 Little Queen Of Spades 2:16
22. 6/20/37 Vocalion 4108 1937 Me And The Devil Blues 2:34
23. 11/27/36 Vocalion 4630 1938 Preachin' Blues 2:52
24. 6/20/37 Vocalion 4630 1938 Love In Vain 2:20

After their initial run in the late 1930s, his recordings remained out of print until the appearance of the first Johnson album on Columbia Records in 1961, King of the Delta Blues Singers, compiled at the instigation of John Hammond. It contained three previously unissued tracks. A sequel LP, assembling the rest of the master recordings, an unreleased alternate take and two additional unreleased songs, was issued in 1970 as King of the Delta Blues Singers, Vol. II. In the UK, both albums were issued as a two-LP set by Blue Diamond Records in 1985 under the same name, King of the Delta Blues Singers. An omnibus two-CD set, The Complete Recordings, was released in 1990 containing 41 known recordings of 29 songs. Johnson's additional five credited compositions to the 24 issued on Vocalion are "If I Had Possession Over Judgement Day", "When You Got A Good Friend", "Traveling Riverside Blues", "Phonograph Blues", and "Drunken Hearted Man."

On September 15, 1998, Columbia/Legacy reissued King of the Delta Blues Singers remastered for compact disc, with the second volume appearing on August 10, 2004. They reproduce the original albums, without the alternates and false starts found on the box set Complete collection. The first volume includes an alternate take of "Traveling Riverside Blues" heretofore undiscovered and previously unissued, which brings the number of known Johnson recordings to forty-two.

[edit] Pitch speed question

 This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims.
Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (January 2008)

Johnson's recorded work has become more widely heard since the Columbia double CD release, and some have opined that the recordings run too fast. Support for this comes from passages of Johnson's songs that some believe his guitar playing sound constrained, and some of his vocals sound odd and robotic. Thus the claim is that some (or all) of Johnson's songs were intentionally or accidentally sped up before or after the recording process. Speeding up recordings has been a common practice in the recording industry, as it tends to make things sound more energetic. However, there has been a lack of definitive proof as to whether or not the recordings have actually been sped up, and this may be a matter of subjective explanation.

Some claim that when Johnson's music is slowed down (one article even states slowed down 20%), Johnson's music sounds more "natural."[34] The guitar sounds warmer, more full, and more in line with other recordings from the late 1930s. His voice becomes more expressive, although it loses some of Johnson's trademark emotional "whine." Conversely, when some songs are slowed down (5-10%), Johnson's guitar playing begins to sound sloppy, and he seems to make tempo mistakes that a professional player would not make at slower speeds, and so there seems to be a lack of clarity about whether the claim is that all or only some of the songs that have been sped up.

A supporting argument for the sped up view is that in many of Johnson's songs, he would be playing extremely high up on the neck of the guitar, and in some cases he is said to be playing higher than there are frets on the guitar. For example, the intro of "Walkin' Blues" sounds like it is played at the fifteenth fret of a guitar in standard tuning. The argument here is that acoustic guitars generally do not have that many frets. This would seem to indicate that the recordings are sped up, since it would be difficult or impossible for Johnson to play this high. However this view is mistaken, because most guitars made since 1910 have at least sixteen frets, and Johnson's Gibson L-1 had 18 frets. It is also quite possible that he tuned his guitar higher than concert pitch. For playing slide guitar, the extra tension from tuning sharp can be an advantage.

This theory also does not take into consideration aspects of how slide guitar is played. By using a slide, the strings do not use frets to make sound, the pitch of the sound is determined by where the slide is placed on the strings, and so a slide guitarist can play extremely high notes that are impossible to play with traditional fretting technique. "If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day" is an example.

The strongest argument against the position that his work was consistently sped up (or slowed down) is that it would have been impossible: it couldn't have happened at all of the original sessions due to equipment failure, since the sessions were months apart. And it couldn't have happened in some version of post-production, since the tracks were released over the course of years, and many of them were never released on 78 at all. So if there indeed are speed anomalies, they should be consistent only within one session or for a particular group of releases--and the proponents of the speed controversy are all claiming there is some consistent alteration.

There is also controversy over whether the original recording masters were transferred from "wax" onto analog tape before being digitally restored. If this were the case, the tape machine used could quite easily have been out of calibration, thus pitching up the notes and increasing the tempo.

There is a strong possibility that this speed controversy comes from an attempt to explain the tonally tinny, hyper-treble end product of a sub-standard studio recording from the 1930s.

A 1996 plastic jewel-case remaster of the Complete set [Sony/Columbia Legacy 64916] corrected fidelity and pitch problems from the cardboard-packaged box.

[edit] Selective awards and recognitions

[edit] Grammy Awards

Year Category Title Genre Label Results
1990 Best Historical Album The Complete Recordings Blues Sony/Columbia Legacy Winner

The Complete Recordings: A double-disc box set was released on August 28, 1990, containing everything Robert Johnson ever recorded, contains all 29 recordings, including 12 alternate takes.[35]

[edit] Grammy Hall of Fame

Year Recorded Title Genre Label Year Inducted
1936 Cross Road Blues Blues (Single) Vocalion 1998

[edit] National Recording Registry

The Complete Recordings of Robert Johnson (1936-1937) was included by the National Recording Preservation Board in the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry in 2003.[36] The board selects songs in an annual basis that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

[edit] Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame listed four songs by Robert Johnson of the 500 songs that shaped rock and roll.[37]

Year Recorded Title
1936 Sweet Home Chicago
1936 Cross Road Blues
1937 Hellhound on My Trail
1937 Love in Vain

[edit] The Blues Foundation Awards

Robert Johnson: Blues Music Awards[38]
Year Category Title Result
1991 Vintage or Reissue Album The Complete Recordings Winner

[edit] Honors and inductions

On September 17, 1994 the U.S. Post Office issues a Robert Johnson 29 cents commemorative postage stamp.

Year Title Results Notes
2006 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award Winner accepted by son Claud Johnson[39]
2000 Mississippi Musicians Hall of Fame[40] Inducted
1986 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inducted Early Influences
1980 Blues Hall of Fame Inducted

[edit] Influence

Blues musician and historian Elijah Wald feels that Johnson's major influence is on rock. He has made the controversial appraisal that "As far as the evolution of black music goes, Robert Johnson was an extremely minor figure, and very little that happened in the decades following his death would have been affected if he had never played a note."[41] Assessments such as Eric Clapton's of Johnson as "the most important blues musician who ever lived", says Wald, are perfectly appropriate, but relate to Johnson's reputation and influence after the appearance of the first LP of his work in 1961. Wald argues that Johnson, although well traveled and always admired in his performances, was little heard by the standards of his time and place, and his records even less so. ("Terraplane Blues", sometimes described as Johnson's only hit record, outsold his others but was still a minor success.) If one had asked black blues fans about Robert Johnson in the first twenty years after his death, writes Wald, "the response in the vast majority of cases would have been a puzzled 'Robert who?'" Musical associates such as Johnny Shines also stated that in live performances, Johnson often did not focus on his dark and complex original compositions, but instead pleased audiences by performing more well-known pop standards of the day.

Although little known to the African American mass market, Johnson was known and admired by small but influential group of white record collectors and writers involved with the New Orleans Jazz Revival. This group included John Hammond, who attempted to book Johnson for his first Spirituals to Swing concert. Hammond loaned his Robert Johnson records to Alan Lomax at the Library of Congress, who included them in a published list of records of interest to folklore scholars. Johnson was quoted by jazz critic Rudi Blesh in 1946, and in 1959 the jazz writer Samuel Charters included a chapter on Johnson in his pioneering book The Country Blues, otherwise devoted to singers who had enjoyed more commercial success. Published with the "English Edition" (sic) of the book in 1960 was an album also titled The Country Blues (RBF 1), which included Johnson's "Preachin' Blues".

Thus there was already considerable interest in Johnson among white jazz and blues enthusiasts when Columbia Records issued the album King of the Delta Blues Singers compiled from Johnson's recordings. The album (and subsequent bootleg recordings) introduced his work to a much wider audience and kick-started a renewal of his influence, this time to a body of largely white fans in the US and in Britain. This new fan base included future rock stars such as Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, and Eric Clapton. When Keith Richards was first introduced to Johnson's music by his band mate Brian Jones, he replied, "Who is the other guy playing with him?", not realizing it was all Johnson playing on one guitar. Clapton described Johnson's music as "the most powerful cry that I think you can find in the human voice." The song "Crossroads" by British psychedelic blues rock band Cream is a cover version of Johnson's "Cross Road Blues", about the legend of Johnson selling his soul to the Devil at the crossroads, although Johnson's original lyrics ("Standin' at the crossroads, tried to flag a ride") suggest he was merely hitchhiking rather than signing away his soul to Lucifer in exchange for being a great blues musician.

"Robert Johnson, to whom we all owed our existence, in some way."—Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin, on NPR's Fresh Air, recorded in 2004.

An important aspect of Johnson's singing, and indeed of all Delta Blues singing styles, and also of Chicago blues guitar playing, is the use of microtonality—his subtle inflections of pitch are part of the reason why his singing conveys such powerful emotion.

John P. Hammond (the son of the aforementioned John Hammond) produced a documentary in the early 1990s about Johnson's life in the Delta area.

In the summer of 2003, Rolling Stone magazine listed Johnson at number five in their list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.[2]

[edit] Songs

Most of the collection, minus one song, is available on The Complete Recordings (1990, 1996)

[edit] Films

  • Crossroads (1986) which is loosely based on the theme of a blues artist selling his soul to the devil and, more specifically, about a young white blues guitarist's search for Johnson's 'missing' thirtieth song (there are only 29 individual songs in Johnson's recorded repertoire). Johnson is played by Tim Russ, while Joe Seneca plays Willie Brown (a contemporary of Johnson's mentioned in the song "Cross Road Blues"). Some scenes in the movie are meant to portray moments in Johnson's career as flashbacks, e.g. a recording session at the very start of the movie, and a portrayal of the "selling his soul to the devil"—events which are part of the legend about him. Johnson's music for the film was played & orchestrated by Ry Cooder and Steve Vai, and in some cases Johnson's actual recordings are heard in the film. While the film is almost entirely a fictitious creation based on the crossroads myth associated with Robert Johnson, those associated with it especially director Walter Hill have remarked that it was made with complete respect and admiration for the legend of the real performer.[citation needed]
  • The Search for Robert Johnson (1992)
  • Can't You Hear the Wind Howl? The Life and Music of Robert Johnson (1997)
  • Hellhounds On My Trail: The Afterlife of Robert Johnson (2000, directed by Robert Mugge)
  • Eric Clapton – Sessions for Robert Johnson (2004, documentary)
  • Supernatural – Crossroad Blues (2006)

[edit] Samples

[edit] See also

List of cover versions of Robert Johnson songs

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Booklet accompanying the Complete Recordings box set, Stephen LaVere, Sony Music Entertainment, 1990, Clapton quote on p. 26
  2. ^ a b "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time", Rolling Stone, August 27, 2003. 
  3. ^ Robert Johnson – inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He is most famous for his song "The Crossroads". Induction year: 1986. Induction category: Early Influence.
  4. ^ Lomax (1993)
  5. ^ Charters (1959)
  6. ^ Guralnick
  7. ^ Wardlow and Komara, 1998, p. 87
  8. ^ Freeland (2000)
  9. ^ Guralnik pp. 10-11
  10. ^ Guralnik p.11
  11. ^ Freeland (2000)
  12. ^ Wardlow (1998) p. 201
  13. ^ Hellhounds on my Trail: The Afterlife of Robert Johnson quoted in Wald (2004) p.107
  14. ^ Wald (2004) p. 108
  15. ^ Guralnick p.15
  16. ^ Guralnick p.16-17.
  17. ^ Wardlow pp. 196-201
  18. ^ Wardlow pp 203-4
  19. ^ Wald. pp 265-276
  20. ^ Lomax p.365.
  21. ^ Komara in Wardlow (1998) p. 202-4.
  22. ^ Russell (2004)
  23. ^ Whelan
  24. ^ Marcus (1975)
  25. ^ Palmer (1981)
  26. ^ Wardlow (1998)
  27. ^ Evans (1971)
  28. ^ Guralnik (1982)
  29. ^ Wardlow (1998) p. 197
  30. ^ Wardlow (1998) p. 200
  31. ^ Eric Clapton - Sessions for Robert Johnson, 2004 documentary
  32. ^ Bhesham S. Sharma, Poetic devices in the Songs of Robert Johnson, King of the Delta Blues Transcultural Music Review #3 (1997).
  33. ^ Jazz by Mail - Various Artists (From Spirituals to Swing)
  34. ^ Robert Johnson's recordings are 80% too fast - Acoustic Guitar Forum
  35. ^ Grammy Award list
  36. ^ 2003 National Recording Registry choices
  37. ^ 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll
  38. ^ The Blues Foundation Database
  39. ^ Claud Johnson (son) accepts Lifetime Grammy
  40. ^ Mississippi Musicians Hall of Fame
  41. ^ Wald, 2004

[edit] References

  • Blues World - Booklet No.1 - Robert Johnson - Four Editions, First published 1967
  • Blesh, Rudi (1946) "Jazz Begins" quoted in Marybeth Hamilton (below).
  • Charters, Samuel B (1959). The Country Blues. Rinehart.
  • Charters, Samuel B (1967). The Bluesman. The story of the music of the men who made the Blues Oak Publications.
  • Charters, Samuel B (1973). Robert Johnson. Oak Publication. ISBN 0-8256-0059-6
  • Evans, David( 1971). Tommy Johnson. Studio Vista. SBN 289 70150
  • Freeland, Tom (2000). Robert Johnson: Some Witnesses to a Short Life in Living Blues no. 150 March/April 200 p.49
  • Greenberg, Alan (1983). Love in Vain: The Life and Legend of Robert Johnson. Doubleday Books, ISBN 0-385-15679-0
  • Guralnick, Peter (1989). Searching for Robert Johnson (1989). E. P. Dutton hardcover: ISBN 0-525-24801-3, Plume 1998 paperback: ISBN 0-452-27949-6
  • Marcus, Greil (1975). Mystery Train. E.P. Dutton.
  • Hamilton, Marybeth (2007). In Search of the Blues. Black Voices, White Visions. Jonathan Cape. ISBN 0-224-06018-X
  • Lomax, Alan (1993). The Land Where the Blues Began. Methuen. 0-413-67850-4
  • Palmer, Robert (1982) paperback edition. Deep Blues. Macmillan, ISBN 0-333-34039-6
  • Pearson, Barry Lee; McCulloch, Bill (2003). Robert Johnson: Lost and Found. University of Illinois Press, ISBN 0-252-02835-X
  • Schroeder, Patricia R. (2004). Robert Johnson, Mythmaking, and Contemporary American Culture. University of Illinois Press, ISBN 0-252-02915-1
  • Russell, Tony (2004). Country Music records, A Discography, 1921-1942. Oxford. ISBN 0-19-513989-5
  • Wald, Elijah (2004). Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues. Amistad. ISBN 0-06-052423-5
  • Wardlow, G., & Komara, E. M. (1998). Chasin' that devil music: searching for the blues. San Francisco, Calif: Miller Freeman Books. ISBN 0879306521
  • Welding, Pete (1966). Robert Johnson. Hell hound on his trail. In Down Beat Music '66: 73-76, 103
  • Wolf, Robert (2004) Hellhound on My Trail: The Life of Robert Johnson, Bluesman Extraordinaire. Mankato, MN: Creative Editions. ISBN 1-56846-146-1

[edit] External links

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