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Robert
Johnson - The Complete Recordings
Original Release Date: 1990
Review
(by Tommy
Chung)
This
is where it all began - The ultimate, quintessential recording
of not only Country Blues but of the later electric Urban,
Uptown, Chicago, Memphis Blues and the rest. Robert Johnson,
the mystical figure, the legend, who sold his soul to the
devil at the "Crossroads" to learn playing the Blues, died
of poisoning by a jealous husband. The ultimate guitarist
who, according to his traveling companion and fellow Blues
guitarist /singer Johnny
Shines, could play instantly anything he
heard on the radio. Before the digital age, the LP cover of
his recordings released under Columbia showed a painting of
a man sitting on a chair playing his guitar seen from an elevated
angle. You could not see his face. The LP was called "King
Of The Delta Blues." I had some many dreams and
nightmares of what the man looked like in real life and was
led to believe no picture of him ever existed. Years later,
when I saw his picture, I did not know how to react. I couldn't
believe it and I photocopied it and kept it in my wallet so
I could look at it now and again. There are in fact two pictures
of Robert Johnson known to exist. One was taken at probably
a drug store with Robert Johnson looking mean and uninterested
with a cigarette in his and mouth and holding a guitar in
his octopus-like fingers. The other is the standard record
company snap short of Blues artists at the time. Robert was
wearing a pin-strip suit, a tie, a Stetson hat, sitting on
a chair with a guitar with a big grin on his face trying to
look friendly and welcoming. His black leather shoes were
obviously new, most probably borrowed for the photo session.
Robert Johnson looked completely out of his element in this
photo. To this day, I still carry his pictures in my wallet.
In
Country Blues, there were many giants, phenomenal musicians
each with their own idiosyncratic styles. To name a few, Charlie
Patton, Son House, Willie Brown, Leroy Carr, Sleepy John Estes
and the list goes on. But you have to hand it to Robert Johnson
if there ever were a King of the Delta Blues. The thing about
Robert Johnson's music is that there is almost nothing original
in his singing and playing. But what he did, and in an almost
magical way, was to combine the best qualities of all those
musicians who preceded him and make their styles his own.
He literally borrowed, or some say stole, the best licks,
harmonies, vocal lines from his peers and musicians he looked
up to. He copied Sleep John Estes' style and put it into "Hellhound
On My Trail." He stole the bottleneck lick from
Son House and transformed it into "Walking
Blues" and "Crossroads
Blues." He copied the melody lines from Leroy Carr's
"In The Evening Blues" and played and sang his "From
Four Until Late." There were countless other musicians
whom Johnson ripped off, licks and songs which he stole turned
them into his own.
But
take nothing away from the man, the man had class and style
and his technique was devilish. He wrote beautiful, poetry-like
lyrics, lyrics. His laid-back singing sounds so eerie it makes
your hair stand and gives you goosebumps. His guitar playing
is undoubtedly the most complicated and difficult guitar work
ever to emerge from the Blues. When you hear him sing and
play, you could almost feel you were hearing someone singing
from the grave. Listen to his "Come
On Into My Kitchen," "Hellhound On My Tail", you
could almost feel the devil sitting right beside you, that
death is round the next corner. Before Robert Johnson, Country
Blues music had no standard form, the number of stanzas in
a verse depends on the whim of the singer and how he felt:
one verse could be 15 bars long, another 10 bars long. What
Robert Johnson did was he more or less standardized the Blues,
all his songs were roughly 12 bars or 8 bar songs. His music
stands alone in all the recorded Country Blues music, he was
one of a kind, his music is unsurpassed. Without Robert Johnson,
I doubt very much the Blues would have developed the way it
did. When you listen to Robert Johnson for the first time,
you need to read the lyrics to the songs (provided in the
booklet of the Columbia two CD pack). Because only when you
do that you can fully appreciate the poetry, the vision and
the mind of the man. Robert Johnson died in 1938 when he was
26 years old. Had he lived to reach the age of the electric
guitar, I dare not image what he would do with an electric
guitar.
Don't
miss the book by Peter
Guralnick "Searching For Robert Johnson" published
by Belisk Dutton. This book is much more interesting than
any paperback thriller. If you want some visual, I highly
recommend the DVD "The
Search For Robert Johnson" released by Columbia Music
Video CVD 49113. This movie was narrated by John
Hammond Jr.
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