Blues: A Homegrown Story VIII

Under the aegis of the 92Y

“Tonight, we’re going to primarily look at one musician, the fellow who’s probably the most mythologized artist to come out of the Mississippi Delta – Robert Johnson – vocalist, guitar player, songwriter…but first a few songs from Son House,” says our host, Louis Rosen. House, aka Eddie James, 1902-1988, came from musical heritage. His father, Eddie House, Sr. played the tuba and guitar in a band. When his parents divorced, his mother took him to Louisiana where he might’ve soaked up blues like a sponge. In those days, however, the boy considered himself “churchified.” Blues were a sin.

By 15, he was preaching. At 19, he wed and was hired by a church but drinking and womanizing won. House ran away with an older, likely married woman. It didn’t work out. He took menial jobs. At this point he saw his first bottleneck guitar playing, changed his mind, and was hooked. The first song we hear tonight “My Black Mama” was learned from Willie Wilson. “Well, you see my milk cow, tell her to hurry home./I ain’t had no milk since that cow been gone…” The sound is twang and slide; repeated lyric, staccato chords, howl with a tremolo.

“The thing about Son House,” Rosen comments, “is that when he says, Lord have mercy on my wicked soul, he means it. House represented all the sinful things – not working, traveling, not settling down with one woman, the blues.” The latter provided even the religious with what author Albert Murray calls “the Saturday Night function.” Everyone would raise hell Saturday night and go to church on Sunday, except the musicians.

House received 15 years at the Mississippi State Penitentiary for shooting back at a man in a bar, but served only two, then hot-footed it out of town. In Lula, Mississippi, he met Charlie Patton, who asked him to join his group. He recorded with Patton in 1929/1930. About ten years younger than the others, he was a dynamic, expressive player, more primitive that those we’ve heard. The strumming of chords is off the beat. Nothing came of the work.

In pursuit of Robert Johnson, musicologist Alan Lomax discovered House playing with friends at a country store in 1941. He initially had no idea of the musician’s history. Recordings were made for The Library of Congress for which House was paid $5 a side. He then became a railroad porter in Rochester, where was rediscovered in 1964. A third recording (and live) career flourished during the folk revival.

“This isn’t a blues, but it captures the merging of preacher and bluesman,” Rosen notes, introducing a recording of “John the Revelator” from the 1960s. It’s a capella with rhythmic clapping and House’s powerful, gritty voice. One visualizes him at the pulpit. “Son House figures into the story of Johnson,” Rosen tells us.

“Robert Leroy Johnson (1911-1938) is going to start doing things on guitar blues singers hadn’t done.” Unlike most blues singers, the musician spent nine years of his childhood in Memphis as an educated city boy. When his mother remarried and they moved to a plantation, he continued school. Johnson married 16 year-old Virginia Travis who died in childbirth. He was told the tragedy was divine punishment for his secular songs. Several people interviewed for biographies conjectured this was the turning point that made the young man quit farming and pursue music full time.

We’re shown the only two photographs that exist. In one, the artist is dapper in a pinstriped suit and tilted hat. In the other, he’s in shirtsleeves, prehensile fingers prominently on guitar strings. Johnson had deep set eyes, a broad nose and large lips.

“His is the quintessential myth,” Rosen begins. ” There are crossroads in the Mississippi Delta with nothing on all four sides. The idea would be for you to go. A big Black man will walk up to you and tune your guitar. You’ve just sold your soul to the devil for unparalleled virtuosity.”

Apparently Johnson came across Son House and friends at a juke joint and asked to play with them. He couldn’t keep up and was mocked off the stage. A year later, he returned. The band took a break and was shocked at the skill and imagination of his musicianship. Some say he’d intensively studied with blues guitarist Isaiah “Ike” Zimmerman, others that Johnson had been to the crossroads. House believed the latter.

Johnson shifted between Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas as a “walking musician.” He married again, but left his wife, staying with welcoming women along the way. As he identified himself differently in different places, employing at least eight surnames, it’s not surprising the musician could rarely be found. Interviews state he played contemporary tunes rather than his own compositions in order to earn busking tips.

In 1938, A & R god John Hammond was putting together a Carnegie Hall concert called From Spirituals to Swing. He owned some of Johnson’s records. (There were 29 created at two sessions in 1936/37.  Most were released as 10-inch, 78rpm singles. Considered race music, they weren’t distributed up north.) He instructed producer Don Law to look for the artist, only to discover Johnson had been poisoned by a jealous husband – whiskey laced with strychnine. “When he signed Bob Dylan to Columbia Records in 1961/62, Hammond gifted him the complete recordings of Robert Johnson. Dylan was blown away,” Rosen notes.

“It was a proto-rock style and became a template for young men of that generation who were seeking something other than watered down pop. Jimmy Page, Keith Richards, and Eric Clapton built a lot of their style on his work,” the host adds. We listen.

“Last Fair Deal Gone Down” finds groove riding guitar with melody coming in half way through. Vocal is elastic. There’s a rhythm shift from shuffle to something else. We’re hearing a level of variety in accompaniment for which he was also known. It’s a conversation between instrument and voice. There’s desolation in what he writes. “Me and The Devil”: “Me and the Devil was walkin’ side my side/And I’m goin’ to beat my woman until I get satisfied…” is a case of possession. 

“Johnson’s vision was a world without salvation, redemption, or rest. His greatest fear seems to be becoming a demon himself,” Rosen observes. He quotes: “These men, who had to renounce the blues to be sanctified, who often sneered at preachers in their songs, were the ones who really believed in the devil; they feared the devil most because they knew him best. They understood, far better than preachers, why sex was man’s original sin, and they sang about little else.” Greil Marcus from Mystery Train.

“Terraplane Blues” is full of raunchy double entendres having to do with car engines. (The Terraplane was a low priced modern sedan made by the Hudson Motor Car Company) “Who been drivin’ my Terraplane now for you-hoo since I been gone?/ Coils ain’t buzzin’/Little generator won’t get the spark/ You gotta have these batteries changed…” Rosen tells us “The Stop Breakin’ Down Blues” was about Johnson’s experience of sexual impotence. It would have been dangerous to sing more explicit lyrics.

“Blues made the terrors of the world easier to endure, but also made those terrors real.” Marcus declared. The author blames everything on the Puritans who had profound inability to make peace with the world the way they found it and set the devil lose in a land of failure. As William Faulkner wrote, “You run without moving from a terror in which you cannot believe, toward a safety in which you have no faith.” 

“Johnson was at the end of a line of lone troubadours with which most of America wasn’t familiar. In 1941/42, a mechanized cotton picker was invented and even the lowliest sharecropping jobs became obsolete. Those who went north wanted to leave the south behind (including its sounds),” Rosen remarks. Much of the familiarity we have with Robert Johnson is from other artists. The host plays a 1968 version of “Crossroad Blues” by The Cream. It’s loud, hard, and dense.

As an example of blues mainstreaming, we watch a celebration of singer Buddy Guy at the Obama White House. A stage full of musicians including Guy, Mick Jagger, B.B. King, and Jeff Beck sing and play Robert Johnson’s “Sweet Home Chicago.” The President even takes a turn at the mic.

“For every action, there’s a reaction. These blues for outsiders could be brought into The White House. Forces of reaction are hardly spent. We’ll see what happens,” the host says in closing.

All unattributed quotes are Louis Rosen

“The Blues is the purest home-grown music that America ever produced, a complex, profound expression of life’s essential desires and struggles. It came from places as varied as the Mississippi Delta, the Texas panhandle, New Orleans, Chicago, the Eastern Seaboard and New York City. It is the essential musical language of artists as diverse as Bessie Smith, Robert Johnson, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Jimmy Rodgers, Woody Guthrie, Muddy Waters, Hank Williams, Howlin’ Wolf, B.B. King and Bob Dylan. Louis Rosen

This is a subscription Series from the 92Y

Photo of Mr. Rosen courtesy of Louis Rosen
Opening picture from Shutterstock