Posts tagged "Robert Johnson"

Robert Johnson Beats the Devil?

Here’s some brief footage of someone who looks just like Robert Johnson. The footage was filmed in 1942. Johnson died in 1938.

The film was brought to light by a gentleman known as Tater Red, who had a kickin’ radio show in Memphis for a while. He owns a shop where he sells voodoo stuff to tourists on Beale Street.

I’d say it was jut silliness except for one thing — look at those hands when he plays that guitar.

Nah, that can’t be Robert Johnson.

Just couldn’t be.

Could it?

Robert Johnson: The Ghost of the Blues

The specter of Robert Johnson haunts American music. He is an imp, a hoodoo man. His music slides between the notes; jumps in and out of time. He manages to be gutbucket and ethereal simultaneously.

Johnson is a minstrel and a poet:

When the train, it left the station
with two lights on behind
When the train, it left the station
with two lights on behind
Well, the blue light was my blues
and the red light was my mind
All my love’s in vain

(Download the tab to Love in Vain.)

His music echoes in the playing of Howling Wolf with its lycanthropic hoodoo and and in the playing of Jimi Hendrix with its other-worldly essential sadness. Jimmy Page was obviously influenced.

He is the stuff of legend, the man who sold his soul at the crossroads, than man whose grave is unknown, the man who died young under mysterious circumstances.

No one really knows much about him. Information is sketchy and anecdotal.

All we have is 29 songs and two photographs that invoke him in our minds.

And that is enough.