Searching for Robert Johnson by Peter Guralnick

Author:Peter Guralnick [Guralnick, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Secker & Warburg
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Near Port Gibson, Mississippi, August 1940.

MARION POST WOLCOTT. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, FSA.

He was called back to record in June 1937, this time in Dallas in a warehouse in the business district (perhaps the upstairs of a Buick showroom) on a Saturday and Sunday when the noise of traffic would not intrude so much. His recording this time was sandwiched in between the Crystal City Ramblers and Zeke Williams and His Rambling Cow-boys; he made three masters on the first day and ten on Sunday evening, of which eleven would be released within the next year. It was stifling inside the studio, which led to makeshift attempts at air-conditioning. Don Law described another session of the time in this manner. “To keep the street noises out, we had to keep the windows closed, so we worked shirtless with electric fans blowing across cakes of ice.” Safety takes were probably done on most of the numbers, though only four survive, and in each case the alternate is virtually identical to the original. As country star Roy Acuff said of his own first recording session: “By the time you went through the number, timed it out, and then did another number exactly like it—failed on three or four of them—you were simply wore out. . . . Undoubtedly the same circumstances applied on Robert Johnson’s session, but if his enthusiasm waned, there is no evidence of that on the recordings themselves.

The recordings that Robert Johnson made at his second session were, if anything, superior even to the first. Actually, these last dates included both his most inspired and his most derivative recordings. “Malted Milk” and “Drunken Hearted Man” were blatant imitations of Lonnie Johnson, then at the height of his popularity, and while they are professional enough, they only bear out Johnny Shines’s contention that Johnson, really idolized his more famous namesake. “Honeymoon Blues” is a rather slight, sentimental number, “Little Queen of Spades” fastens on to a tired blues metaphor, and even “Love In Vain”—perhaps Robert Johnson’s most familiar legacy to the rock age—is a less than startling takeoff on a Leroy Carr/Big Bill Broonzy theme. There are, in addition, some of his most lovely and most traditional songs. “From Four Until Late” is based on the old “Four O’Clock” blues melody; “Stop Breakin’ Down” (also recorded by the Rolling Stones) and ‘I’m A Steady Rollin’ Man,” while not extraordinary original compositions, have become staples on the Chicago blues scene. “Traveling Riverside Blues” is out of the “Rollin’ and Tumblin’” family, with a twist that kept it from being released at the time (“You can squeeze my lemon,” Johnson sang, in a line that thrilled later generations, “till the juice run down my leg”), and “Milkcow’s Calf Blues” sounds a little like a cross between Kokomo Arnold and Son House, on top of a “Terraplane”-like melody. “Stones In My Passway,” “Me And The Devil,” and “Hell Hound On My Trail,” however, are the cornerstones upon which Robert Johnson’s posthumous reputation is based.

“Stones

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.