Wed 29 Oct 2008
Robert Johnson: Enough Already!
Posted by Jeff under Articles, Delta Blues
[7] Comments
OK, with the recent high profile articles in Vanity Fair I can honestly say that I’ve reached my limit regarding Robert Johnson. If you missed this I’m referring to Frank DiGiacomo’s Searching For Robert Johnson and his follow-up A Disputed Robert Johnson Photo Gets the C.S.I. Treatment which deal with a possible newly found Johnson photo. At this point more ink has been spilled on Robert Johnson than any other blues artist and while there has been plenty of quality research on the elusive bluesman it’s been largely buried in layers of hyperbole, mythology, speculation, romanticism and sheer nonsense. I have no idea if the new photo is Johnson, nor do I care all that much, and to be fair DiGiacomo’s articles are well written and don’t wallow in the kind of nonsense that usually makes the rounds. That’s no really the point. The point is the relentless scrutiny on Johnson at the expense of so many other worthy blues artists that never get a mention – AKA the Eric Clapton mentality – “he is the most important blues musician who ever lived.” Who appointed Clapton the authority on such matters anyway? By the time the Complete Recordings were issued in 1990 (going gold and selling over a million copies by 1994) “mythology had consumed reality” as Barry Lee Pearson and Bill McCulloch wrote in Robert Johnson: Lost And Found.
Unfortunately this obsession on every minutiae of Johnson’s life has taken away the focus on his very real talents and perhaps more importantly this lopsided focus on Johnson has obscured the fact that he was very much part of a tradition; his music firmly built on the artists who came before like Lonnie Johnson and Tampa Red who don’t get a shred of the acclaim that Johnson does. Johnson remains one of the blues great artists, his brilliance was in how he borrowed, reshaped, synthesized and added his own brilliance to the music of those who came before to create a powerfully individual style. It would be nice if this intense spotlight on Johnson spilled over to raise the awareness of other equally worthy early blues artists but this doesn’t seem to be the case. Instead this endless focus on unverifiable photos, the exact crossroads he sold his soul to the devil, etc. only trivializes his accomplishments while further obscuring those of his contemporaries and predecessors.
I hear you, Jeff. Well said.
Just a note on misuse above, though: you mean “expense”, not “expensive”.
I agree wholeheartedly. There were one or two other folks out there playing that music, but they didn’t get swallowed by White myth-making to be excreted as something unique and precious.
What’s the name of that guy who was every bit as good as Johnson on guitar, sang better, could play Country Blues covers and write originals, and do the same with electric Blues? Oh, yeah, Johnny Shines! But I forgot; nobody besides educated Blues fans knows who the Hell he is. Oh, yeah, and there’s also Blind Lemon Jefferson, J.T. “Funny Papa” Smith, Lonnie Johnson, Memphis Minnie, and about 250 other recorded artists.
Alittle late but I just ran across this post and had to respond. There are a lot of great artist that preceded Robert but I have yet to find one that had his skill on the guitar. He was one of the first to show that kind of skill. Of course dying young just enhances the image. Look at James Dean. Seriously though nobody came close to what he was doing then, not even the people who laughed at hm a year or two before, like Son House. A lot of his contemporaries like Johnny Shines and David “Honeyboy” Edwards have stated that Robert was the best they had ever heard.
Well all the guys you mentioned were in the ‘delta’ style. If you go outside those narrow confines and listen to say Lonnie Johnson, you would be hard pressed to find a better guitarist than Lonnie. Blind Blake’s another one who’s technical skills were formidable.
There is only one, and thats Johnson,all the rest are just that “the rest”,Can they play sure, can they sing,sure,,,and so what!
If it was not for Robert Johnson,we wouldn’t be talking about”the rest”