Robert Johnson

For other people named Robert Johnson, see Robert Johnson (disambiguation).

Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911 – August 16, 1938) is among the most famous Delta Blues musicians and arguably the most influential. He is an inductee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Considered by some to be the "Grandfather of Rock-and-Roll," his vocal phrasing, original songs, and guitar style influenced a range of musicians, including Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, U2, Jimi Hendrix, and Eric Clapton, who called Johnson "the most important blues musician who ever lived."

Of all the great blues musicians, Johnson was probably the most obscure. All that is known of him for certain is that he recorded 29 songs; he died young; and he was one of the greatest bluesmen of the Mississippi Delta.

There are only five dates in Johnson's life that can undeniably be used to assign him to a place in history: Monday, November 23; Thursday, November 26; and Friday, November 27, 1936, he was in San Antonio, Texas, at a recording session. Seven months later, on Saturday, June 19 and Sunday, June 20, 1937, he was in Dallas at another session. Everything else about his life is an attempt at reconstruction. As director Martin Scorsese says in his foreword to Alan Greenberg's play '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."

Life and career

Beginnings

Robert Johnson was born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi sometime around May 8, 1911, the 11th child of Julia Major Dodds, who had previously borne 10 children to her husband Charles Dodds. Born illegitimate, Johnson did not take the Dodds name.

Twenty two-year-old Charles Dodds had married Julia Major in Hazlehurst, Mississippi—about 35 miles from Jackson—in 1889. Charles Dodds owned land and made wicker furniture; his family was well off until he was forced out of Hazlehurst around 1909 by a lynch mob following an argument with some of the more prosperous townsfolk. (There was a family legend that Dodds escaped from Hazlehurst dressed in women's clothing.) Over the next two years, Julia Dodds sent their children one at time to live with their father in Memphis, where Charles Dodds had adopted the name of Charles Spencer. Julia stayed behind in Hazlehurst with two daughters, until she was evicted for nonpayment of taxes.

By that time she had given birth to a son, Robert, who was fathered by a field worker named Noah Johnson. Unwelcome in Charles Dodds' home, Julia Dodds became an itinerant field worker, picking cotton and living in camps as she moved among plantations. While she worked in the fields, her eight-year-old daughter took care of Johnson. Over the next ten years, Dodds would make repeated attempts to reunite the family, but Charles Dodds never stopped resenting her infidelity. Although Charles Dodds would eventually accept Johnson, he never would forgive his wife for giving birth to him. While in his teens, Johnson learned who his father was, and it was at that time that he began calling himself Robert Johnson.

Around 1914, Johnson moved in with Charles Dodds' family, which by that time included all of Dodds' children by Julia Dodds, as well as Dodds' mistress from Hazlehurst and their two children. Johnson would spend the next several years in Memphis, and it was reportedly about this time that he began playing the guitar under his older half-brother's tutelage.

Johnson did not rejoin his mother until she had remarried several years later. By the end of the decade, he was back in the Mississippi Delta living with his mother and her new husband, Dusty Willis. Johnson and his stepfather, who had little tolerance for music, did not get along, and Johnson had to slip out of the house to join his musician friends.

It is not known whether Johnson attended school in the Delta during this time. Some later accounts say that he could neither read nor write, while others tell of his beautiful handwriting. In any case, everyone agrees that music was Johnson's first interest, and that he had his start playing the Jew's harp and harmonica.

Bluesman

By 1930, Johnson had married and became serious about playing the guitar. During the time that he was married, he lived with his sister and her husband. However, his wife died in childbirth at the age of 16. By some accounts, Johnson briefly moved back with his mother and stepfather, where he encountered the same problems that he had found intolerable when he was growing up and soon left. In 1931, he married for a second time. By then, his fellow musicians were beginning to take note of his precocity on the acoustic guitar.

Johnson began traveling up and down the Delta, travelling by bus, hopping trains, and sometimes hitchhiking. When he arrived in a new town, he would play 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. Anything he earned was based on tips, not salary. With an ability to pick up tunes at first hearing, Johnson had no trouble giving his audiences what they wanted. Also working in his favor was an ability to establish instant rapport with his audiences. In every town he stopped, Johnson would establish ties to the local community that would serve him in good stead 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 [a] 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 a woman who was about 15 years older than himself—the mother of future musician Robert Jr. Lockwood. But Johnson reportedly also had someone—a woman—to look after him in all of the towns he played in. Johnson would reportedly ask young women living in the country with their families whether he could go home with them, and in most cases the answer was yes. At least until their husbands came home or Johnson was ready to move on.

Recording Sessions

Around 1936, Johnson met H. C. Spier in Jackson, Mississippi, who ran a music store and doubled as a talent scout. Spier put Johnson in touch with Ernie Oertle, who offered to record the young musician in San Antonio, Texas. At the recording session, Johnson was too shy to perform in front of the musicians in the studio, so played facing the wall. [Playing into the corner of a wall was in fact a recording technique popular in the 1930s]. In the ensuing three-day session, Johnson played 16 selections. When the recording session was over, Johnson presumably returned home with several hundred dollars in his pocket—probably more money than he, had 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," "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom and "Cross Roads 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 in my kitchen, it's going to be rainin' outdoors." In "Cross Roads Blues," another of his great 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 a bove, 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.

In 1937, Johnson traveled to Dallas, Texas, for another recording session. 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 "Hell Hound 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).

Interestingly, although not unsually, 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. [[1]]

Primary Compilations of Johnson's Work

Johnson's recordings have remained continuously available since John Hammond convinced Columbia Records to compile the first Johnson LP, King of the Delta Blues Singers, in 1961. A sequel LP, assembling the rest of what could be found of Johnson's recordings at that time, was issued in 1970. An omnibus two-CD set (The Complete Recordings) was released in 1990 [Sony/Columbia Legacy 46222], containing all 41 known recordings of his 29 compositions.

A 1996 plastic jewel-case remaster of the "Complete" set [Sony/Columbia Legacy 64916] corrected fidelity and pitch problems from the cardboard-packaged box. The more recent CD re-releases of "King of the Delta Blues Singers" Volumes 1 & 2 improve the sound quality far more dramatically, but don't include 10 alternate takes (and two accidental introductions) found on "Complete." Volume 1 includes a recently discovered alternate take of "Traveling Riverside Blues" which is not included on the "Complete" collection. This now brings the number of known Johnson recordings to 42.

Recording pitch question

Johnson's recorded work has become more widely heard since the Columbia double CD release. Some musicians have opined that the recordings run too fast. Johnson mainly used open tunings like open G and open E, and often used a capo to change the pitch of the song. This means that some passages would be played very high upon the neck of the guitar, which would make them very difficult to execute, or in some cases impossible to play at all (for example, the intro of "Walkin' Blues, which should be played on the 16th fret of a 12-fret-to-the-body-guitar). Some passages of Johnson's guitar playing sound constrained and not natural to the modern ear (as modern music would sound when it is speeded up), and some of his vocals sound out of tune and robotic. When Johnson's music is slowed down (one article [[2]] even states slowed down 20%), Johnson's music sounds more natural, his guitar sounds warmer and fuller and more in line with other recordings from the late 1930's. His voice becomes more expressive although it loses some of Johnson's trademark emotional "whine". Speeding up recorded music is common in popular music, as it makes music sound fresher and it ads punch and energy.

Death at the Crossroads

Robert Johnson's tombstone

In the last year of his life, Johnson is believed to have traveled to St. Louis and possibly Illinois. 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.

His death occurred on August 16, 1938, at the approximate age of 27 at a little country crossroads near Greenwood, Mississippi. He had been playing for several weeks at a country dance in a town about 15 miles from Greenwood when, by some accounts, he was given poisoned whiskey at the dance by the husband of a woman he had been secretly seeing.

Another account is that he had been flirting with the girlfriend of the bartender at a club when he was offered an open bottle of whiskey. Before he could take a drink from it, somebody knocked the bottle out of his hand, informing him that he should never drink from an offered bottle that has already been opened. Robert Johnson allegedly said, "don't ever knock a bottle out of my hand" again. A minute later, he was offered an open bottle and accepted it. That bottle came from the bartender and was laced with strychnine. Ironically, Robert Johnson is said to have survived that poisoning only to succumb to pneumonia later, in his weakened state.

David Connell, in an article in the British Medical Journal in 2006 entitled Retrospective blues: Robert Johnson — an open letter to Eric Clapton, has suggested that the cause of Johnson's death may have been Marfan's syndrome, which is a connective tissue disorder. The most obvious symptoms Johnson had were his long fingers, legs and arms. Other symptoms are curved spine, eye problems (Johnson was said to have 'one bad eye') and a slim body.

Johnson was buried in the graveyard of a small church near Morgan City, Mississippi, not far from Greenwood, in an unmarked grave. His life would be short but his music would serve as the root source for an entire generation of blues and rock and roll musicians.

Among the Mississippi Delta bluesmen believed to have exerted the strongest influences on Johnson's music are Charley Patton, Willie Brown, Howlin' Wolf, Tommy Johnson, and Son House. Peter Guralnick, in Searching for Robert Johnson, quotes Son House, "We'd all play for the Saturday night balls, and there'd be this little boy standing around. That was Robert Johnson. He was just a little boy then. He blew harmonica and he was pretty good with that, but he wanted to play guitar."

Influence

Johnson is widely cited as "the greatest blues singer of all time" or even the most important musician of the 20th century, but many listeners are disappointed by their first encounter with his work. This reaction may be because of their unfamiliarity with the raw emotion and sparse form of the Delta style or because of the thin sound of the recordings when compared to modern music production standards. Johnson's guitar work was adroit and his voice was high-pitched.

The claims made for Johnson's originality and even his influence are often greatly exaggerated. He certainly did not invent the blues, which had existed on record for over fifteen years before he recorded. His primary influence was the inimitable Son House who, more than anyone else (except his friend Charley Patton), can claim to have heavily influenced what is now considered the mainstream of the Delta blues, with his rough voice and searing slide guitar riffs played on a steel-bodied National guitar.

But Johnson added to this the keening whimsy of then-obscure Skip James and the jazzy inventiveness of Lonnie Johnson. Indeed, a couple of his songs are nothing other than imitations of his famous namesake. Johnson had also listened to Leroy Carr, who was probably the most popular male blues singer of the time, and based several songs on the records of the urban blues recording stars Kokomo Arnold (source for both "Sweet Home Chicago" and "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom") and Peetie Wheatstraw.

What Johnson did with these and other diverse influences was create a new sound that was at once immediate and artful. His use of the bass strings to create a steady, rolling rhythm can be heard on songs like "Sweet Home Chicago". His penchant for strange snatches of melodic invention on the upper strings, mingling with a quite different vocal line, appears on "Walking Blues". Johnson played with the young Howlin' Wolf and Sonny Boy Williamson II, and allegedly trained his own stepson, Robert "Junior" Lockwood, as well.

There is a direct line of influence from Johnson to rock music. Blues musician and historian Elijah Wald feels that Johnson's major influence is on rock itself—particularly on white 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. Assessments such as Eric Clapton's of Johnson as "the most important blues musician who ever lived," Wald demonstrates convincingly, came with the best of intentions to expand Johnson's reputation past its enormous impact on rock. The truth was 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 very minor success at best.) 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?'"

Years after his death, however, Johnson's recordings saw a wide release and a fan club grew around them, including rock stars such as Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones 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 blues rock/psychedelic 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.

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 [3]

Major artists influenced by Johnson

Many artists have recorded Johnson's songs. The following musicians have been heavily influenced by him, as evidenced by recording several of his songs:

• Eric Clapton released in 2004 an album consisting solely of covers of Johnson's songs, Me and Mr. Johnson. In addition, he had previously performed or recorded I'm a Steady Rolling Man, Cross Road Blues, Malted Milk, Walkin' Blues, From Four Until Late, Crossroads, If I had Possession over Judgement Day, and Ramblin' On My Mind.
• Led Zeppelin (Traveling Riverside Blues)
• Cream (Four Until Late, Crossroads)
• The Rolling Stones (Love in Vain, Stop Breaking Down)
• Bob Dylan (Kindhearted Woman Blues, Milkcow's Calf Blues, Rambling On My Mind, I'm A Steady Rolling Man)
• Grateful Dead Walking Blues was a regular feature of the Dead's live repertoire in the 1990s, as arranged and sung by Bob Weir. Recorded versions appear on Without A Net (1990), Dozin' At The Knick (1996), Terrapin Station (Limited Edition) (1997), Dick's Picks, Vol. 17 (2000) and Truckin' Up To Buffalo (2005 - CD and DVD). Weir's band Ratdog also covers Walking Blues, and numerous recorded versions have been released by direct CD marketing.[[4]]
• Fleetwood Mac (Hellhound On My Trail, Kind Hearted Woman, Preachin' Blues, Dust My Broom, Sweet Home Chicago)
• Peter Green Splinter Group (all 29 songs)
• Keb' Mo (Come On In My Kitchen, Last Fair Deal Gone Down, Kindhearted Woman Blues, Love In Vain)
• John Hammond Jr. (32-20 Blues, Milkcow's Calf Blues, Traveling Riverside Blues, Stones In My Passway, Crossroads Blues, Hellbound Blues [Hellhound On My Trail], Me And The Devil Blues, Walking Blues, Come On In My Kitchen, Preaching Blues, Sweet Home Chicago, When You Got A Good Friend, Judgement Day, Rambling Blues)
• Rory Block released in 2006 an album consisting solely of covers of Johnson's songs, The Lady and Mr. Johnson. In addition, she had previously performed or recorded Come On In My Kitchen, Hellhound On My Trail, If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day, Rambling On My Mind, Walking Blues, Cross Road Blues, Walking Blues, Kindhearted Man [Kindhearted Woman Blues], Terraplane Blues, When You Got a Good Friend, Me and the Devil Blues, Stones in my Passway, Last Fair Deal Gone Down and Traveling Riverside Blues
• Robert "Junior" Lockwood (32-20 Blues, Stop Breakin’ Down Blues, Little Queen Of Spades, I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom, Ramblin’ On My Mind, Love In Vain Blues, Kind Hearted Woman Blues, Walking Blues, I’m A Steady Rollin’ Man, Sweet Home Chicago)
• The Red Hot Chili Peppers covered "They're Red Hot" as the last track on their 1991 album Blood Sugar Sex Magik. John Frusciante, the guitarist of the group, has said that he listened to Johnson every single night throughout the writing and recording of the album. It had a heavy influence on his subsequent solo work in particular.
• The White Stripes covered "Stop Breaking Down Blues," dropping "Blues" in the title, on their eponymous debut album. They have also recorded Stop Breaking Down Blues as the b-side to their 2002 single, Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground. They have covered many Robert Johnson songs on stage, including Stones In My Passway.

Songs

The entire collection, minus one song, is available on The Complete Recordings (1990, 1996)

• ".32-20 Blues"
• "Come on in My Kitchen" [two versions]
• "Cross Road Blues" [two versions]
• "Dead Shrimp Blues"
• "Drunken Hearted Man" [two versions]
• "From Four Till Late"
• "Hellhound on My Trail"
• "Honeymoon Blues"
• "I'm a Steady Rollin' Man"
• "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom"
• "If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day"
• "Kind Hearted Woman Blues" [two versions]
• "Last Fair Deal Gone Down"
• "Little Queen of Spades" [two versions]
• "Love in Vain" [two versions]
• "Malted Milk"
• "Me and the Devil Blues" [two versions]
• "Milk Cow's Calf Blues" [two versions]
• "Phonograph Blues" [two versions]
• "Preachin' Blues (Up Jumped The Devil)"
• "Rambling on My Mind" [two versions]
• "Stones in My Passway"
• "Stop Breakin' Down Blues" [two versions]
• "Sweet Home Chicago"
• "Terraplane Blues"
• "They're Red Hot"
• "Traveling Riverside Blues" [two versions--only one appears on "Complete" collection]
• "Walkin' Blues"
• "When You Got a Good Friend" [two versions]

References

• Blues World - Booklet No.1 - Robert Johnson - Four Editions, First published 1967
• Booklet accompanying the Complete Recordings box set, Stephen LaVere, Sony Music Entertainment, 1990
• Love in Vain: A Vision of Robert Johnson, Alan Greenberg, Stanley Crouch, Martin Scorsese, 1994, ISBN 0-306-80557-X
• Searching for Robert Johnson, Peter Guralnick , 1998, ISBN 0-452-27949-6
• Robert Johnson: Lost and Found, Barry Lee Pearson, Bill McCulloch, 2003, ISBN 0-252-02835-X
• Hellhound on My Trail: The Life of Robert Johnson, Bluesman Extraordinaire, Robert Wolf, 2004, ISBN 1-56846-146-1
• Robert Johnson, Mythmaking, and Contemporary American Culture, Patricia R. Schroeder, 2004, ISBN 0-252-02915-1

Films about Robert Johnson

• 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). Robert Johnson is played by Tim Russ, while Joe Seneca plays Willie Brown (a contemporary of Johnson's mentioned in the song Crossroads 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"-event which is part of the legends about him)

• 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.

Other

• The song "The Wasteland" by Elton John mentions Robert Johnson in the chorus.
• "Back to the Crossroads: The Roots of Robert Johnson," a CD from Yazoo records, includes many of the records Johnson himself heard and learned from.
• Currently, a manga running in the Japanese magazine Afternoon called 俺と悪魔ブルーズ(Me and the Devil Blues) is clearly influenced by events of Johnson's life, and the protagonist is named "RJ". However, it is not attempting to be a biography.

• The Coen Brothers film O Brother, Where Art Thou? contains a character named Tommy Johnson, an amalgam of Robert Johnson, the real-life Tommy Johnson and their contemporary Skip James.
• The Sherman Alexie novel "Reservation Blues" has a fictional account of Robert Johnson faking his death and hiding out on an Indian reservation.
• The webcomic Achewood has portrayed Robert Johnson as a resident of Hell, performing nightly in the Brookside Lounge of Hell's Best Western, despite its being closed. [5]
• British rock band Thunder's eighth album (released October 2006) is entitled Robert Johnson's Tombstone as is the title track of the album.
• The legend of Robert Johnson selling his soul to the devil is featured and portrayed in season 2 episode 8 of Supernatural, "Crossroad Blues."

External links

• The Official Robert Johnson Website
• A Revolutionary Critique of Robert Johnson
• The Greenwood Blues Heritage Museum & Gallery (dedicated to the Life and Music of Robert Johnson)
• Website at the University of Virginia
• Currently available recordings
• 'Trail of the Hellhound' website by the National Park Service
• Use of microtones in the vocals of Robert Johnson
• Site for "Escaping the Delta," with links to related material
• Delta Guitar Player Robert Johnson
• Robert Johnson at Find-A-Grave
• 1980 Blues Foundation Hall of Fame induction