Not many facts about Robert Johnson are known, even with recent discoveries and the narratives of musicians who knew him, but one thing is certain, and that is: he did NOT meet the Devil, or any incarnation of the Devil, at any crossroads whether in Mississippi or anywhere else.
This truly hoary cliché is trotted out every time someone writes about Johnson or makes a documentary about him and it’s always in the context of explaining how he went from being a poor guitar player. mocked by his elder peers, to being by far the best, most innovative blues guitarist of his time with an influence that spread further and wider than almost any of his contemporaries or successors.
The explanation is obvious and simple. He left his stomping grounds, where he was known and under rated, and spent time elsewhere practising hard and acquiring the skills and nous, and developing the creativity that made him the legend his is today. In every generation there are a few musicians who transcend their contemporaries, such as, for example, Jimi Hendrix, who came to England and absolutely astonished his fellow musicians and audiences not with his, to them, otherworldly guitar playing yet nobody has every seriously suggested that he, too, had sold his soul to the Devil. Hendrix got good because he practised a lot an played a lot, and was astonishing because the English audiences allowed him to be the freak his creativity demanded he should be to be innovative beyond the limitations of the blues and R & B roots he came from.
This must be true for Robert Johnson too. He practised hard and gained experience away from the scrutiny of the people who knew him as a struggling guitarist and had no chance to see him develop gradually as would have been the case if he’d stayed around. The change in his abilities was more awe inspiring because of the time spent away than if the audiences and other musicians had observed the incremental changes and improvements that would have occurred over time. It‘s like someone going away with a full head of hair and returning bald, simply because of male pattern baldness that nobody had anticipated.
And, my guess is, once Johnson had achieved technical mastery, his enquiring mind and inquisitiveness, creativity if you will, led him to bend and break the rules of what blues playing was supposed to be. It’s a cliché of art that the artist must learn the rules and techniques of craftsmanship, composition and colour before discarding them, and I would imagine the same would apply to musicianship. Blues is a very traditional music and can be somewhat hidebound, and formally restricted, and many blues musicians are capable of doing no more than learning the formal requirements and playing the same thing and in the same way all the time, once mastered. Some of the most brilliant classically trained musicians will never improvise regardless of the peerless abilities they may possess and it’s doubly true for most mediocre musicians who never stray beyond the formal strictures of whatever music they play. They can’t imagine that there is another way and they don’t have the technical ability and sense of what if, to think outside of the musical box they find themselves in.
Typically, a musician would learn (some originals, whether completely so or reworked standards, and some well known songs by other artists) enough songs for an hour or two of playing time and then sustain this repertoire throughout his or her career, being the most popular, in demand tunes every audience would want to hear. Recording artists had to write or find new material more often to avoid repetition but even so, in performance, relied on the greatest hits.
This is where Johnson was different and if he hadn’t had the technical expertise too, might never have achieved the fame he has, part of which, no doubt, is down to his early, mysterious death and mostly unknown life. There are 29 known Johnson compositions and all of them, some in different takes, are available on record. This canon represents some of the best known and most often performed blues songs ever and are claimed to be at the root of a great deal of what came to be known as rock and roll and the early death must at least be partly the cause of Johnson’s celebrity and high regard in which these few songs are held.
King of the Delta Blues Singersis the record that brought the musician to the attention of and inspired so many young Whit blues musicians in the Sixties. Before its release only avid, obsessive record collectors would have known of Johnson because the music was available only on 78s and then rarely. After its release, he truly became the legend he is today. When John Hammond searched for Johnson in the late Thirties he was already dead but not yet legendary; many of the older bluesmen who’d recorded in the Twenties and Thirties, and then faded away, were rediscovered by blues detectives and became famous, at least amongst White blues aficionados, but Johnson was long gone and therefore elevated into godlike status, unlike, say Son House, who was as influential in his day but very much alive to play his trademark tunes to White college audiences.
I bought King of the Delta Blues Singerswhen I was in my late teens or very early twenties, because is was very interested in the blues albeit the electric blues of Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf, John Lee Hooker and Elmore James. I’d read about Johnson and this record and when I saw it at a discounted price in some record store, I grabbed it. At the time I was not ready for what I heard as a crude, grating somewhat primitive acoustic sound. The loud, energetic, exciting ensemble sound of the Muddy Waters band was more to my taste. I did not like folk type music much in the first place then, preferring faster, louder, and it was many years and much musical growth later (and on the way I began appreciating all kind of other folk bluesmen) that I developed more of an affinity and appreciation for Johnson’s music.
I’m no musician and cannot comment on any of the strictly musical aspects of what Johnson did and accomplished but I can dig the way he plays and the structure of the tunes and the intriguing lyrics of some of the best songs, even if so many of the tropes might have been in the folk tradition already or were repeated, in many variations, by songwriters who followed. Even so, he is not my favourite bluesman and I still find It somewhat hard work to listen to his songs and especially a whole album of them. That one record is still the best exposure to the oeuvre and I’ve never been tempted to buy the double CD release of all the recorded versions (alternate takes) of his songs. Listening to a bunch of Johnson’s performances at one time is still hard work for me.
Many blues musicians have done their takes on the classic Johnson tunes (Fleetwood Mac’s piano driven version of “Hellhound on my trail” is a particular favourite) and the likes of Peter Green’s Splinter Group with The Robert Johnson Songhookand Eric Clapton with Me and Mr Johnson, represent the best, with Clapton edging out Peter Green mostly because the Splinter Group’s versions seem a tad too jolly and slick. In his heyday, Green would have been the perfect Johnson interpreter because his vocal tones and inflections had more of the deep blues about them than Clapton has achieved.
I don’t understand why the myth of the deal with the Devil at the crossroads persists. It must be clear to everyone that Johnson got better, just like every other musician, by practising hard and long, and that he was a very creative, original songwriter, and shone in comparison to the many journeymen, unimaginative bluesmen around him at the time. I’d also bet that the myth of the crossroads, apparently quite an old tale, was applied to him after his death at a relatively young age, to add to the mystery and legend for the sake of commercial interests.
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