TUE., AUGUST 28, 2007
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Robert Johnson, Beyond the Crossroads
by John Morthland
When you take everything away from Robert Johnson except the music — when you ignore the myth that built for nearly half a century, the stories of going to the crossroads to sell his soul to the devil, his outlaw's death at age 27, the lack of even a photograph of the man until fairly recently — you are left not necessarily with a musical genius who revolutionized a genre, but with a probing songwriter (and arranger), an impassioned singer, and a brilliant guitarist and synthesizer of prevailing blues traditions who indeed added key innovations of his own. That's the musical lesson taken from The Road to Robert Johnson and Beyond, the new four-disc box that gathers the Delta bluesman's 29 sides (in 41 takes) sandwiched between the records that most influenced him, and those on which he in turn had the greatest impact. That lesson should be enough.
Johnson's two sessions — November 1936 in San Antonio, June 1937 in Dallas — came at a time when country blues (and specifically Delta blues) was fading in the marketplace. His music was broad enough to take in all the blues — urban and rural, vocal and instrumental — of the present and recent past, and also to point to the future (according to those who saw him in his last months before his 1938 death, he was experimenting with a trio format that mirrored the first wave of Chicago blues while retaining a jazzy, jump blues).
Johnson was a real songwriter. Where most country bluesmen strung together a series of verses from a pool they all dipped into — as he himself did on his hair-raising version of Son House's "Walkin' Blues" — Johnson wrote songs that evolved a theme and/or told a story with a beginning, middle and end. Which is not to say all his songs besides "Walkin' Blues" were entirely original, for he usurped other shared verses as much as the next guy; he usually just harnessed them differently. Consider the very first song he ever recorded, "Kind-Hearted Woman," which is based on urbane pianist Leroy Carr's "Mean Mistreater Mama" with a dollop of Kokomo Arnold, and which develops Johnson's relationships with women in considerable detail; or, better yet, consider "Love in Vain," one of the Johnson tunes revived by the Rolling Stones, which stunningly uses conventional blues imagery (some borrowed from Blind Lemon Jefferson) to tell a complete story. Or consider the striking imagery ("I can tell the wind is risin'/ The leaves tremblin' on the trees") of "Hellhound on My Trail," arguably the fullest realization of his favorite theme, that of the tormented, even doomed, outsider in a strange and hostile land.
Not only are these songs much more like the city blues of Johnson's day lyrically but, as Elijah Wald has pointed out, "Kind Hearted Woman" clearly has an arrangement; Johnson's guitar on the first verse resembles a Carr piano line, while on the second verse it resembles guitarist Scrapper Blackwell's riff from the original "Mean Mistreater Mama" and on the third combines Carr with Arnold. Another way to say Johnson consciously arranged his songs is to say that unlike most of his peers he was consciously making records as opposed to simply putting his music on wax (in this he benefited greatly from the superb job Don Law did recording him). When you listen to the way he varies his guitar parts within these songs — as well as within "Sweet Home Chicago," "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom" and "Stop Breakin' Down Blues," his three biggest contributions to the black blues catalogue, or the double-entendre "Terraplane Blues," his one and only hit in his day, and a modest one at that — it's apparent that Johnson was thinking less like a traditional musician than like a popular one.
Which brings us to his contributions as a guitarist. In Johnson's day, blues was still primarily a vocal music, but he's probably the first of the guitar heroes. Though his singing is impressively relaxed and confident on "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom," what really makes the song click are his stark, ringing guitar lines and the shuffling, boogie bass line that was perhaps his most profound musical contribution to blues (his uncanny ability to combine both led latter-day acolytes like Keith Richards to believe that there was a second guitarist on some Johnson records). That pattern had been used on record once previously, by Johnny Temple on "Lead Pencil Blues," but Johnson made it his own, reprising it on several more songs; it became a touchstone for modern bluesmen from Jimmy Reed on down. Similarly, the slide triplets Johnson first played on "Ramblin' on My Mind" were adapted by Elmore James for his thrilling, electrified version of "Dust My Broom," and became such a familiar element of postwar blues that they were dubbed "the Elmore James riff."
But Johnson certainly put as much care into his vocals as he did his guitar work. Again, that's evident from his first recording, "Kind Woman Blues," where his high, pinched voice modulates up still further into falsetto and Little Richard-like "oohs." Or compare the wordless final verse he moans to complete the emotional devastation in "Love in Vain Blues" to the devil-may-care tone of "Stop Breakin' Down Blues," or the jazzier stylings of "From Four Until Late" and "They're Red Hot." Or the exquisite phrasing that creates such a claustrophobic sense on "Hell Hound on My Trail," where you can almost feel real dogs bearing down on him even though they're only metaphor. Johnson's voice was as adaptable as his guitar, and he invariably pushed his emotions to their outer edges without overdoing it.
All of this comes together in "Come On in My Kitchen," which derives from Skip James' "Devil Got My Woman." (James, whose ethereal sensibility hovers over much of Johnson's best work, was, tellingly, the only major influence who was as obscure in that era as Johnson; Carr, Arnold and Peetie Wheatstraw were all mainstream stars). From its startling intro of voice-like slide tightly bound to guitar-like, wordless vocalisms through its strung-together verses delivered spellbindingly in everything from a rumble to a whisper to a cry, with the guitar always seconding the emotions and silent spaces always emphasizing them, "Come on in My Kitchen" lives up to every weighty claim ever made for Johnson. And romanticized mystique has nothing to do with it.
Johnson's two sessions — November 1936 in San Antonio, June 1937 in Dallas — came at a time when country blues (and specifically Delta blues) was fading in the marketplace. His music was broad enough to take in all the blues — urban and rural, vocal and instrumental — of the present and recent past, and also to point to the future (according to those who saw him in his last months before his 1938 death, he was experimenting with a trio format that mirrored the first wave of Chicago blues while retaining a jazzy, jump blues).
Johnson was a real songwriter. Where most country bluesmen strung together a series of verses from a pool they all dipped into — as he himself did on his hair-raising version of Son House's "Walkin' Blues" — Johnson wrote songs that evolved a theme and/or told a story with a beginning, middle and end. Which is not to say all his songs besides "Walkin' Blues" were entirely original, for he usurped other shared verses as much as the next guy; he usually just harnessed them differently. Consider the very first song he ever recorded, "Kind-Hearted Woman," which is based on urbane pianist Leroy Carr's "Mean Mistreater Mama" with a dollop of Kokomo Arnold, and which develops Johnson's relationships with women in considerable detail; or, better yet, consider "Love in Vain," one of the Johnson tunes revived by the Rolling Stones, which stunningly uses conventional blues imagery (some borrowed from Blind Lemon Jefferson) to tell a complete story. Or consider the striking imagery ("I can tell the wind is risin'/ The leaves tremblin' on the trees") of "Hellhound on My Trail," arguably the fullest realization of his favorite theme, that of the tormented, even doomed, outsider in a strange and hostile land.
Not only are these songs much more like the city blues of Johnson's day lyrically but, as Elijah Wald has pointed out, "Kind Hearted Woman" clearly has an arrangement; Johnson's guitar on the first verse resembles a Carr piano line, while on the second verse it resembles guitarist Scrapper Blackwell's riff from the original "Mean Mistreater Mama" and on the third combines Carr with Arnold. Another way to say Johnson consciously arranged his songs is to say that unlike most of his peers he was consciously making records as opposed to simply putting his music on wax (in this he benefited greatly from the superb job Don Law did recording him). When you listen to the way he varies his guitar parts within these songs — as well as within "Sweet Home Chicago," "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom" and "Stop Breakin' Down Blues," his three biggest contributions to the black blues catalogue, or the double-entendre "Terraplane Blues," his one and only hit in his day, and a modest one at that — it's apparent that Johnson was thinking less like a traditional musician than like a popular one.
Which brings us to his contributions as a guitarist. In Johnson's day, blues was still primarily a vocal music, but he's probably the first of the guitar heroes. Though his singing is impressively relaxed and confident on "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom," what really makes the song click are his stark, ringing guitar lines and the shuffling, boogie bass line that was perhaps his most profound musical contribution to blues (his uncanny ability to combine both led latter-day acolytes like Keith Richards to believe that there was a second guitarist on some Johnson records). That pattern had been used on record once previously, by Johnny Temple on "Lead Pencil Blues," but Johnson made it his own, reprising it on several more songs; it became a touchstone for modern bluesmen from Jimmy Reed on down. Similarly, the slide triplets Johnson first played on "Ramblin' on My Mind" were adapted by Elmore James for his thrilling, electrified version of "Dust My Broom," and became such a familiar element of postwar blues that they were dubbed "the Elmore James riff."
But Johnson certainly put as much care into his vocals as he did his guitar work. Again, that's evident from his first recording, "Kind Woman Blues," where his high, pinched voice modulates up still further into falsetto and Little Richard-like "oohs." Or compare the wordless final verse he moans to complete the emotional devastation in "Love in Vain Blues" to the devil-may-care tone of "Stop Breakin' Down Blues," or the jazzier stylings of "From Four Until Late" and "They're Red Hot." Or the exquisite phrasing that creates such a claustrophobic sense on "Hell Hound on My Trail," where you can almost feel real dogs bearing down on him even though they're only metaphor. Johnson's voice was as adaptable as his guitar, and he invariably pushed his emotions to their outer edges without overdoing it.
All of this comes together in "Come On in My Kitchen," which derives from Skip James' "Devil Got My Woman." (James, whose ethereal sensibility hovers over much of Johnson's best work, was, tellingly, the only major influence who was as obscure in that era as Johnson; Carr, Arnold and Peetie Wheatstraw were all mainstream stars). From its startling intro of voice-like slide tightly bound to guitar-like, wordless vocalisms through its strung-together verses delivered spellbindingly in everything from a rumble to a whisper to a cry, with the guitar always seconding the emotions and silent spaces always emphasizing them, "Come on in My Kitchen" lives up to every weighty claim ever made for Johnson. And romanticized mystique has nothing to do with it.
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