Come friends: let’s sit around the bonfire on this Halloween night.
I have for you a story of souls sold to the Devil, of mysteries and murders.
Ready?
In the sky there are stars, they make it unique and magical, they shine with their own light and remain for a long time and then there are comets: brilliant, fiery, unique.
They leave a very short mark, but even more brilliant.
They leave just as they came, with a luminous trail, between mystery and divine.
Here in the world of music there are stars, those that make the firmament beautiful and then there are comets that give it that aura of magic and poetry.
Robert Johnson was a comet, among the most beautiful and fascinating of all.
He left in the world of art and music in a few, very few years, a luminous trail that still captures us and enraptures us, leaves us with that sense of wonder that only those touched by something supernatural can leave us.
Robert Johnson was born in 1911 in Hazelhurst, Mississippi, or at least, that is the year that almost all scholars of his incredible life agree was his birth year.
Yes, because every fact related to his life, from his birth to his death, is shrouded in a blanket of mystery and legend, which only increases the desire to know more with each story.
An illegitimate son, he lived in a difficult and dangerous historical period and place for a black man, especially if he had a rebellious nature like him.
He would have done anything, except ruin his hands on a cotton plantation as a slave.
It is said that he first learned to play the harmonica from his brother Charles Leroy, who later became a blues pianist quite appreciated in the South, but then he directed his interest to the guitar, his only true love.
Not everything was easy at the beginning and that is where the legend was born, the one that made him immortal along with his extraordinary music.
In the South of the United States at that time the only place where the plantation slaves could go after the devastating days of non-stop work were the juke joints: places where they drank, met, danced, but above all played the blues.
Among the most famous and imitated musicians there were certainly Son House and Willie Brown and precisely these two, more than once, have told of this boy who between one show and another, would sneak on stage and try to strum their guitars, with results, according to them, embarrassing, so much so that the audience asked to stop the torment by throwing out that little guitarist who was so little gifted.
That boy answered to the name of Robert Johnson.
Of that period, the end of the 30s, it is known that his character and his existence, already severely tested, were upset by the umpteenth test to which life had subjected him: he lost his young wife, Virginia Travis, and their son in childbirth.
From then on, they say, women were only useful to him to be supported and for sex. A cruel and cynical way perhaps of seeing his life, which from then on became extremely insane, but not so far from the truth, given how it ended.
We were talking about his documented poor ability with the six strings: well, in that period RJ disappeared for about a year, the chronicles tell, and, upon his return to Mississippi, he showed off an unseen talent and an incredible ability that no one would have ever imagined.
But what happened during that year away from everything and everyone? How did an unimaginative, untalented guitarist become virtually the most copied and admired bluesman in the history of Mississippi Delta music?
There are moments and facts that cannot be explained immediately rationally.
Well, in those moments people prefer to rely on the supernatural, on mystery and oral tradition magnifies everything, a haze of mystery and real facts that merge and transform into legend.
If we add that good Robert rode it all, then it becomes history.
Seeing him play the Devil’s Music in that way, the public began to tell that only with a pact with the Devil himself could he become this phenomenon in such a short time.
Johnson confirmed this story several times, even in his lyrics, in a very clever way: he told that in the open countryside at a crossroads one night he sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for the ability to play the guitar.
A pact that then took its toll with his violent and premature death, they say.
Here is the legend that everyone knows and that is still passed down in those parts.
And what if we didn’t want to believe these stories of the supernatural and demons, fascinating yes, but obviously without any basis in reality?
There would be another story, also very fascinating and with some basis in historical truth, but also with an aura of mystery and magic that never abandons the life of the great Robert.
They say that during his absence he met a blues master in a club near Martinsville, a certain Ike Zimmermann, who took a liking to him and invited him to his house.
There are testimonies of all this, through Ike‘s family: he taught him everything he knew about the blues and the art of infuriating the crowds.
The air of mystery remains because there is nothing recorded about this Zimmermann, a blues master.
There are only two photos and then the lessons were given at night in the local cemetery, where no one could complain about the noise or maybe would have participated in the party.
Even the Devil?
Between truth and legend, one thing remains certain and that is his talent on the guitar, his fingerpicking (without a pick) which became a reference for all lovers of the six strings, was incredible.
Never had anything like it been seen, a technique favored by his very long fingers.
According to the legendary Keith Richards (founding member of the Rolling Stones and crazy lover of his music) “he seemed like a group of 2 or 3 guitars, while instead he was alone”.
The imaginative and ghostly lyrics were precursors of everything that would come years, decades later.
Perhaps this is why his legends fascinate us even now.
The recordings that have reached us are only 29, you understood correctly, and the result of 5 recording sessions organized by Ernie Oartle, talent scout of the ARC who was enraptured, after having witnessed one of his evening forays into the clubs.
The first three took place in a room of the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio, Texas in November 1936 and the last two in Dallas, Texas in June 1937 on the third floor of a building at 508 Park Avenue.
After these sessions, Robert Johnson’s wild and dangerous life continued throughout the South and his talent reached the keen ears of John Hammond, more than a legendary producer and musician from New York, who was organizing a concert that would make history at Carnegie Hall entitled “From Spirituals to Swing”.
He heard him on those recordings and had to have him on the evening of December 23, 1938, without discussion.
Unfortunately, we were saying, life continued in the South and brought RJ to his appointment with the collection of his tribute to the Devil.
In August 1938, they say, he used to play often at the Three Forks, a juke joint in Greenwood, Mississippi, together with Honeyboy Edwards.
In this place he also used to entertain himself insistently, with the wife of the owner of the place, who thought it a good idea to make the blues musician pay by poisoning the whiskey she had served him.
They say that he died in an atrocious way, in 3 days, where he frighteningly resembled the demonic hounds of his songs, screaming and almost howling.
Death came on August 16, 1938.
A death, however, shrouded in mystery and doubt, in fact no one was ever accused.
The founding member of the 27 Club had laid the foundations of a legacy linked to music by dying tragically at just 27 years old, as happened to others, also touched by an extraordinary talent, but who disappeared early, precisely at that age like RJ: Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Brian Jones, Amy Winehouse.
He was the first in this case too, as in playing in that way, with his piercing falsetto singing and his scary and magical lyrics. A precursor in life and after death.
John Hammond therefore never managed to make him play in New York, but he solved it by putting a gramophone on stage and putting those recordings on the turntable.
The audience was so enthusiastic that they pushed him to publish the famous album “King of the Delta Blues“, which kept the spotlight on this extraordinary musician for a while.
His true rebirth, however, occurred with the boom of British blues in the 60s and so he became the putative father of modern rock.
Everyone was inspired by him for better or for worse, in blues and rock music in every guitarist, there was a bit of him: Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, John Mayall, Keith Richards, Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck and we could continue with an infinite list adding all his proselytes in the blues that then flowed into electric and modern blues, first of all Muddy Waters.
Many records or collections containing his songs have been released, but currently the most complete on those 5 legendary sessions, which are now a heritage of humanity, is the album released for the centenary of his birth in 2011, namely “The Centennial Collection: The Complete Recordings”.
The 29 songs and the various takes that bring back to history a mysterious and jealous man of his talent, so jealous that he played with his back turned (even during those famous takes) so as not to be copied or judged.
The most important and talented exponent of the Devil’s Music, to which his soul obviously belongs eternally.
Put his music on the turntable and let yourself be transported back in time, to the distant 30s.
Go with your mind down there in Mississippi and imagine yourself sitting at the table of an old juke joint listening to a man with his back turned, among clouds of smoke and the taste of whiskey, who plays as if he were possessed by the Devil and who enchants the audience, just like the one to whom his immortal soul belongs: you believe it too, right?
Happy Halloween my friends.
Trex
