A Brief History of the Blues #2: August '07

And the blues grabbed mama’s child
And tore it all upside down
Blues grabbed mama’s child
And they tore me all upside down
Travel on, poor Bob,
Just can’t turn you ‘round

From ‘Preaching Blues’
Robert Johnson


More myth seems to surround Robert Johnson than known fact but one thing remains clear, it’s hard to talk about Delta blues without mentioning him in the first five minutes. Many blues legends credit Johnson as having a major influence on them, including Son House, Willie Brown, Muddy Waters, B.B. King and John Lee Hooker. House and Brown were already well known players and singers in the Mississippi delta region when Johnson was a young turk just learning to play the guitar and yet both would later say that Johnson managed to eclipse them both in just a few short years. Rumors of other worldly ‘assistance’ were thrown about but more about that a little farther along.

Johnson was born in Hazelhurst, Mississippi in 1911 and there remain plenty of avenues tracing his heritage. That aside, Johnson’s mother moved him to Robinsonville when he was seven. Johnson began showing an interest in music early, graduating from the jews harp to the harmonica to the guitar in a relatively short period of time. As was wont to happen, he tagged along with local musicians Willie Brown and Charlie Patton when they were in town, learning as much as they were willing to teach him. In 1929, Johnson met and married a local 16-year-old girl named Virginia Travis and was eeking out a living as a farmer during the day and a musician at night. He seemed to be settled with Virginia and the life they were carving out for themselves until Virginia died in childbirth in 1930. Within a few months, Johnsons’ life changed and the legend began to grow. Son House had moved to Robinsonville and Johnson became infatuated with the almost larger than life ‘growler’. House played the local scene with Patton and Brown and Johnson willingly and gladly tagged along to the gigs. There are plenty of stories that House, Brown and Patton verbally abused the young Johnson when they had been drinking but Johnson stuck close, watching, learning and listening.

After a few months, Johnson disappeared.

Some accounts are that he was gone a few months but it is more likely that he had left Robinsonville for approximately a year and when he returned, he played with such finesse and stunning technique that many folks started telling the story that ‘Robert must have sold his soul at the crossroads’ in an effort to explain his almost supernatural ability.

The truth, it seems, is much less harrowing and not quite the stuff of legend. Johnson left Robinsonville to return to Hazelhurst in search of his real father. While there, he married an older woman and studied under Ike Zinnerman, an Alabama guitarist who once claimed to have learned how to play by sitting on tombstones in a local cemetery. Legendary guitarist Tommy Johnson was also living in the area at the same time and many researchers claim that Robert may have studied with him as well during his time in Hazelhurst.

Johnsons reputation took off when he returned to Robinsonville and he soon found himself playing every weekend at various juke houses, picnics, hoedowns and house parties in and around the area to growing acclaim. As his fame and his abilities grew, Johnson and old friend Willie Brown took to the road, wandering all over Mississippi and Arkansas. The duo made their way to Chicago, Detroit, New Jersey and New York and back through Memphis. Johnson, as Brown told the story, had a bad case of the ‘jimmy legs’ and would often just leave his traveling partner in the middle of the night and start heading ‘somewhere’ and it was up to Brown to figure out where Johnson had gone and catch up.

Throughout his life, Johnson had developed a certain weakness for whiskey and the ladies, both of which ended up costing him dearly. In 1936, field researchers had heard of Johnson and had sent for him to come to San Antonio, Texas, which he did to record. The results of these various sessions are all that remain of the genius that was Robert Johnson. When released initially in 1961, the package sold a modest 20,000 copies. When re-released in 1990, it sold 500,000 copies making it one of the largest sellers of the year. Johnson became a superstar almost 40 years after his death.

Johnson’s died as a result of pneumonia that he contracted while in bed recuperating from being poisoned. Prior to his last gig, Johnson had been ‘involved’ with the wife of the club owner who had discovered the same. Johnson having played a set, was sitting at the bar with harmonica legend Sonny Boy Williamson, catching some refreshment prior to the next set. During this interlude “someone” had sent over an open bottle of whiskey to Johnson. Before he could drink it, Williamson knocked the bottle from his hand and told Johnson “Never drink from an open bottle in places like this’. Williamson knew of the trouble brewing between Johnson and the owner of the club. Johnson laughed it off and when the next open bottle arrived, Johnson pulled a long drink from it. Returning to the stage, Johnson began to play. Halfway through a number, Johnson stopped and left the stage, wandering outside. The patrons all thought little of this action since Johnson was known for turning his back on the audience and often stopping his play in the middle. (Researchers suggest that Johnson was hiding his technique and odd tunings from the prying eyes of the other musicians in the audience.) But Johnson had been poisoned. As noted, he lingered for two weeks and thought to be on the road to recovery when he caught pneumonia and passed away.

He was 28 years old at the time of his death.

Johnson is still often times considered the father of the blues but the truth is a not quite as one would like to believe. By the time Johnson had become a musician, the blues had been being played and enjoyed for over thirty years. But Johnson became legendary. If you listen to the surviving recordings, it’s easy to hear why. An eerie falsetto, dark and foreboding lyrics (you can’t help but wonder if the crossroads stories were correct or if Johnson himself were in on the joke), the strange tunings and fingerings, his music remains practically a trip back in time to listen to and yet difficult to play well.

On a side note, Johnson was not the first musician to have been accused of selling his soul for musical prowess. At the turn of the 19th century, Niccolo Paganini, Italian violin virtuoso, was accused of the same thing for his seemingly ‘other worldly’ abilities. He may have shared another trait with Johnson, both may have suffered from Marfans Syndrome which is characterized by exceptionally limber joints and thin, long fingers. If you see either of the two known photographs of Johnson, you can’t help but be amazed by the length of his fingers. As a matter of fact, Johnson isn’t even the first blues player named Johnson accused of selling his soul. Several years before Robert picked up the guitar, the same rumor had been attached to Tommy Johnson, an occasional instructor for Robert Johnson and exceptional blues singer. If Tommy Johnson had made the ‘deal’, he came up short. His guitar technique was rudimentary at best.

Robert Johnson’s music is rife with images, illusions, pain, fear and gallows humor. He may not have been the ‘father of the blues’ but he may have been one of the blues first real legends.