Remembering the blues legend Robert Johnson (May 8, 1911 – August 16, 1938) | DON’S TUNES

Since Robert Johnson’s death in 1938, he has become a cultural icon and has been referred to as the “King of the Delta Blues.” During his brief life and career, he traveled and performed throughout the Mississippi and Arkansas Deltas, and as his fame spread he began performing in St. Louis, Memphis, Detroit, Chicago, and New York. As a “walking bluesman,” Johnson sometimes traveled from town to town by train, hitched a ride, or even rode on the back of a farm tractor. When he arrived at his new destination, he performed on street corners, in front of barbershops and restaurants, town squares, or in local juke joints. According to a Johnson biographer, he chose the life of a walking blues musician because it was preferable to the backbreaking and monotonous work that sharecropping entailed. In doing so, Johnson gained the admiration of Delta blues musicians and black listeners. However, despite Johnson’s stellar reputation within the Delta blues circuit, his music never reached a wide audience during his lifetime. During his brief recording career (which began approximately two years before his death in 1938), Johnson recorded twenty-nine songs. Of Johnson’s discography, only his song “Terraplane Blues” achieved modest commercial success during his lifetime.

Despite Johnson’s small body of recorded blues, his “Hellhound on My Trail” (1937) is noted as one of blues music’s most terrifying songs, as well as a cornerstone of early blues music. In the song, Johnson agonizingly pines, “I’ve got to keep moving, I’ve got to keep moving, blues falling down like hail, blues failing down like hail . . . And the days keeps on ’minding me, there’s a hellhound on my trail.” Blues historians such as Robert Palmer (Deep Blues), and Johnson biographers,such as Elijah Wald (Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues), have interpreted “Hellhound on My Trail” in a variety of ways; however, the most popular interpretation is that the song evokes Johnson’s fabled deal with the Devil—a deal in which Johnson sold his soul in exchange for musical prowess. Per this interpretation, the hellhound featured in the song symbolizes the haunting presence of the Devil. While acknowledging that Johnson’s “Hellhound on My Trail” is multivalent and that there are dangers in assuming that Johnson’s lyrics are real-to-life biographical descriptions, I will argue that the impetus and context for Johnson’s “Hellhound on My Trail” may be partially biographical. Specifically, this essay’s premise is that Robert Johnson’s stepfather Charles Dodds’s near lynching and flight from the Mississippi Delta in 1909 is a plausible rhetorical context in which to understand the song. Rather than simply an ode to his deal with the Devil, Johnson’s “Hellhound on My Trail” can also be understood as a lynching ballad that describes grassroots responses to lynching, such as flight and the anxieties that arise from perpetually fleeing lynch mob violence.

By Karlos K. Hill - Study The South

Illustration by R. Crumb

Don's Tunes

JOHNNY WINTER on Open Tuning and playing Slide | GUITAR

Photo: Gai Terrell—the legendary Redferns Picture resource for music

 

Jas Obrecht: For a beginner, could you explain the advantages of playing in an open tuning versus standard tuning?

Johnny Winter: Well, when you’re playing with a slide, the advantages are that you’ve got that chord there. You can just barre the strings and you’ve got a chord to work with. That’s the advantage – that you’ve got an open chord to work with, and you can have that chord ring down in the bass notes while you play the top strings with your fingers – I do some of that. You know, I keep the bass going with my thumb and play lead with my fingers, especially if I’m playing by myself. That’s a big help. The notes are easier to go to. It’s easier to go to blues notes in those two tunings than it is if you’re just tuning to standard tuning. Duane Allman was about the best slide man at playing with a regular tuning. You just don’t get too many chords, especially if you don’t use your little finger [for the slide]. That’s pretty important.

I started out using my ring finger because it really feels weird playing with a slide on your little finger, but a guy from the Denver Folklore Society – I think his name was Dave Debetzer – he was a blues freak, and he got me my first National guitar for about a hundred-and-fifty bucks, and he really helped me a whole lot, man. He forced me to use that little finger. He said, “Man, you’re gonna be unhappy later on down the line if you don’t change.” It’s so hard to do at first.

So you were initially wearing the slide on your ring finger, like Duane did.

Yeah. That’s what feels natural at first, but when you do that, you really can’t play chords. You can fret with those free fingers if you put the slide on your little finger. You can do a lot of fretwork with those three fingers. If you put the slide on the middle, it pretty much screws you up. You can’t do much chord work that way. So I have the slide halfway up my little finger, not all the way on it, but halfway up to where I can still bend that little finger.

What were your favorite slide cuts? What would be essential for a young player to check out?

It’s good to start with someone like Son House, because Son played real simple. Robert Johnson, without a doubt, though, is the best of those Delta guys. He’s so far above everybody else that it was scary. Robert Johnson, without a doubt. Either one of those Columbia Robert Johnson albums – the first one and King of the Delta Blues. That stuff is just great. That’s really where I learned most of my first stuff. Well, actually the first slide I heard was Muddy Waters. It was off this album The Best of Muddy Waters, on Chess. And I didn’t know what it was. I remember hearing it for the first time, and at first I thought it was a steel guitar. And then I could tell for sure there was one cut on there that was just one guy playing, and he would fret the guitar sometimes and sometimes he would use the slide. I didn’t know what it was for a long time.

I just kept buying albums, and I’d hear somebody else. I don’t really remember how I finally found out what it was – I think probably from some album liner notes. But as soon as I found out what was going on, I started experimenting with different things and trying to get the right tuning.

First I was trying slide without tuning my guitar different at all, and I knew that wasn’t right. And then you just got to where you could hear it by listening over and over. You could hear this must be tuned to this chord, and I would just tune my guitar where I thought was right and then I would play along with it. I started being able to copy what was on the record, so then I figured, “Well, this must be right.” That’s the way I learned it.

Later on, after the Muddy Waters stuff, I found the Son House album on Columbia, right when he had been rediscovered and he’d just put this album out. I think it was The Legendary Son House. It was definitely on Columbia. It was right when he first got rediscovered.

©2024 Jas Obrecht. 

Photo: Gai Terrell—Redferns

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Don's Tunes

Remembering Robert Johnson by Reggie Ugwu, NY Times (Robert Crumb illus.)

 ROBERT JOHNSON

Remembering Robert Johnson (May 8, 1911 – August 16, 1938)

In a 1965 interview with the writer and academic Julius Lester, cited by Pearson and McCulloch, Son House recalled Johnson’s habit of commandeering the stage during intermissions in order to play songs of his own. Chastened by House — and the howls of his audience — Johnson reportedly left town. But he returned six months later eager to perform again, this time asking for House’s permission.

“He was so good!” House said of the new and improved playing style Johnson exhibited on the night of his re-emergence. “When he finished all our mouths were standing open. I said, ‘Well, ain’t that fast! He’s gone now!’ ”

Variations on House’s story — a mysterious sojourn, sudden virtuosity — are the source of the myth that Johnson, like Faust, sold his soul in exchange for his genius.

But friends of Johnson have given conflicting testimonies as to whether the singer himself ever endorsed the tale. And the two of his songs most often associated with the story, “Cross Road Blues” and “Hell Hound on My Trail,” make no mention of an unholy encounter. Historians now suggest that Johnson’s real benefactor may have been a guitarist in the Hazlehurst area named Ike Zinnerman (sometimes spelled Zimmerman).

What is true is that the guitar playing on Johnson’s recordings was unusually complex for its time. Most early Delta blues musicians played simple guitar figures that harmonised with their voices. But Johnson, imitating the boogie-woogie style of piano playing, used his guitar to play rhythm, bass and slide simultaneously, all while singing.

Another innovation associated with Johnson, as noted by the critic Tony Scherman in 2009 in The New York Times, is the boogie bass. Appearing on the Johnson songs “Ramblin’ on My Mind” and “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom,” the boogie bass — a low, ambling rhythm that evokes a swaggering strut — became a building block of both Chicago blues and rock ’n’ roll in the hands of the Johnson apostles Muddy Waters and Elmore James.

Reggie Ugwu, NY Times

Illustration by R. Crumb