ENGLISH ARTICLES

Robert Johnson

There is little information available about the legendary blues guitarist Robert Johnson, and the information that is available is as much rumor as fact. What is undisputable, however, is Johnson’s impact on the world of rock and roll. Some consider Johnson the father of modern rock; his influence extends to artists from Muddy Waters to Led Zeppelin, from the Rolling Stones to the Allman Brothers Band. Eric Clapton, arguably the greatest living rock guitarist, has said that “Robert Johnson to me is the most important blues musician who ever lived. [ . . . ] I have never found anything more deeply soulful than Robert Johnson.” While the impact of Johnson’s music is evident, the genesis of his remarkable talent remains shrouded in mystery. For Johnson, born in 1911 in Hazelhurst, Mississippi, music was a means of escape from working in the cotton fields. As a boy he worked on the farm that belonged to Noel Johnson—the man rumored to be his father. He married young, at age 17, and lost his wife a year later in childbirth. That’s when Johnson began traveling and playing the blues. Initially Johnson played the harmonica. Later, he began playing the guitar, but apparently he was not very good. He wanted to learn, however, so he spent his time in blues bars watching the local blues legends Son House and Willie Brown. During their breaks, Johnson would go up on stage and play. House reportedly thought Johnson was so bad that he repeatedly told Johnson to get lost. Finally, one day, he did. For six months, Johnson mysteriously disappeared. No one knew what happened to him.

When Johnson returned half a year later, he was suddenly a firstrate guitarist. He began drawing crowds everywhere he played. Johnson never revealed where he had been and what he had done in those six months that he was gone. People had difficulty understanding how he had become so good in such a short time. Was it genius? Magic? Soon, rumors began circulating that he had made a deal with the devil. Legend has it that Johnson met the devil at midnight at a crossroads and sold his soul to the devil so he could play guitar. Johnson recorded only 29 songs before his death in 1938, purportedly at the hands of a jealous husband. He was only 27 years old, yet he left an indelible mark on the music world. There are countless versions of “Walkin’ Blues,” and his song “Cross Road Blues” (later retitled “Crossroads”) has been recorded by dozens of artists, with Cream’s 1969 version of “Crossroads” being perhaps the best-known Johnson remake. Again and again, contemporary artists return to Johnson, whose songs capture the very essence of the blues, transforming our pain and suffering with the healing magic of his guitar.

There are more than fifty types of blues music, from the famous Chicago and Memphis Blues to the less familiar Juke Joint and Acoustic Country Blues. This rich variety comes as no surprise to those who recognize the blues as a fundamental American art form. Indeed, in its resolution to name 2003 the Year of the Blues, the 107th Congress has declared that the blues is “the most influential form of American roots music.” In fact, the two most popular American musical forms—rock and roll and jazz—owe their genesis in large part (some would argue entirely) to the blues.

The blues—a neologism attributed to the American writer Washington Irving (author of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”) in 1807— evolved from black American folk music. Its beginnings can be traced to songs sung in the fields and around slave quarters on southern plantations, songs of pain and suffering, of injustice, of longing for a better life. A fundamental principle of the blues, however, is that the music be cathartic. Listening to the blues will drive the blues away; it is music that has the power to overcome sadness. Thus “the blues” is something of a misnomer, for the music is moving but not melancholy; it is, in fact, music born of hope, not despair.

The blues began to take shape as a musical movement in the years after emancipation, around the turn of the century when blacks were technically free but still suffered from social and economic discrimination. Its poetic and musical forms were popularized by W. C. Handy just after the turn of the century. Handy, a classical guitarist who reportedly heard the blues for the first time in a Mississippi train station, was the first to officially compose and distribute “blues” music throughout the United States, although its popularity was chiefly among blacks in the South. The movement coalesced in the late 1920s and indeed became a national craze with records by blues singers such as Bessie Smith selling in the millions. The 1930s and 1940s saw a continued growth in the popularity of the blues as many blacks migrated north and the blues and jazz forms continued to develop, diversify, and influence each other. It was at this time that Son House, Willie Brown, and Robert Johnson played, while the next decade saw the emergence of the blues greats Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, and Johnny Lee Hooker.

After rock and roll exploded on the music scene in the 1950s, many rock artists began covering blues songs, thus bringing the blues to a young white audience and giving it true national and international exposure. In the early 1960s, the Rolling Stones, Yardbirds, Cream, and others remade blues songs such as Robert Johnson’s “Crossroads” and Big Joe Williams’ “Baby Please Don’t Go” to wide popularity. People all across America—black and white, young and old, listened to songs with lyrics that were intensely honest and personal, songs that told about any number of things that give us the blues: loneliness, betrayal, unrequited love, a run of bad luck, being out of work or away from home or broke or broken hearted. It was a music perfectly suited for a nation on the brink of the Civil Rights movement—a kind of music that had the power to cross boundaries, to heal wounds, and to offer hope to a new generation of Americans.