As all blues fans know, Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil in exchange for superhuman skill on the guitar. The deal was made on the stroke of midnight at a crossroads somewhere in the Mississippi Delta, 1930. Johnson got what he wanted, but Satan drove a hard bargain: in less than 10 years he called the marker in and Johnson was silenced, dead at age 27.
Johnson left behind 29 recorded songs and a lot of unanswered questions. Scholars and fans are still trying to fill in the details of his life and still arguing over his rank in the Blues Pantheon.
Nothing feeds legend like scant information, an untimely death and a hint of the supernatural. Regardless of his significance in the history of the blues, Johnson continues to fuel the imagination.
I was thinking about Johnson while reading "Delta Blues," a new crime anthology featuring Southern mystery authors and blues-infused stories. John Grisham, James Lee Burke, Ace Atkins and Charlaine Harris are among the 19 authors who find new material in the familiar symbols of this land and its music: merciless heat, cotton, prison farms, poverty, love betrayed, and, of course, the devil waiting at the crossroads.
The anthology inspired me to find the Nick Travers mystery series by Atkins. Nick was a pro-football player whose career came to a premature end when he threw his coach to the ground and poured a keg of Gatorade over him. Now he's Dr. Travers, a blues historian at Tulane University.
The first book in the series is "Crossroad Blues." Yes, it's about Johnson. A Tulane colleague doing research in the Delta goes missing and, as the local police don't seem interested, Nick is asked to investigate.
Johnson scholars and fans get very excited over two possibilities. One is conclusive evidence as to how he died and the other is the oh-please-yes discovery of new recordings. As Nick talks to his contacts in the Delta, he begins to suspect his colleague may have stumbled onto both.
Atkins is clearly a blues fan, and he seamlessly weaves in a remarkable number of anecdotes about Johnson and the Delta blues without stalling the action. With a pro-footballer leading the way, there is indeed plenty of action and physical contact. A psychopathic Elvis look-alike and a gorgeous red-headed singer named Virginia Dare round out the story.
At this point I was curious enough to look for more information. All histories of the blues have to address Johnson; the one I found most interesting was "Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues" by Elijah Wald.
Wald finds that much of the controversy surrounding the evaluation of Johnson's "importance" is based on the fact that his recordings did not sell well until their reissue in the 1990s. In other words, he was apparently not popular with his contemporaries nor did his music influence the evolving blues scene in America.
On the other hand, Johnson traveled widely and made money, despite his short life. Though his records didn't sell, people paid to hear him play and stories of his amazing skill abound. Perhaps his audience found his music a little too visceral to comfortably take home.
My favorite blues novel remains Walter Mosley's "R.L.'s Dream." Soupspoon Wise is an aging bluesman who once played with Robert "R.L." Johnson. Sick with cancer, he finds himself evicted onto the streets of New York City. Kiki Waters, a young white woman, scoops him up and takes him in. The two forge a strange partnership; both are refugees from the South, fleeing demons from the past.
As in Mosley's Easy Rawlins novels, there are many layers here and no sentimentality. He works in blues lyrics, plays a few riffs of his own, and relentlessly reveals the simple humanity of those who face a harsh reality.
Most important, Mosley understands the music:
"Robert Johnson with his evil eye looking around the crowd for a woman. His fingers so tight that they could make music without strings. Music in his shoulders and down in his feet. Words that rhyme with the ache in your bones and music so right that it's more like rain than notes; more like a woman's call than need. Not that pretty even stuff that they box in radios and stereos. Not even something that you can catch in a beat. It's the earth moving and babies looking from side to side."
"R.L.'s Dream" is a story of redemption. Like the blues, there is "the ache in your bones" but also the possibility of joy. Perhaps the devil didn't win after all.
Johnson left behind 29 recorded songs and a lot of unanswered questions. Scholars and fans are still trying to fill in the details of his life and still arguing over his rank in the Blues Pantheon.
Nothing feeds legend like scant information, an untimely death and a hint of the supernatural. Regardless of his significance in the history of the blues, Johnson continues to fuel the imagination.
I was thinking about Johnson while reading "Delta Blues," a new crime anthology featuring Southern mystery authors and blues-infused stories. John Grisham, James Lee Burke, Ace Atkins and Charlaine Harris are among the 19 authors who find new material in the familiar symbols of this land and its music: merciless heat, cotton, prison farms, poverty, love betrayed, and, of course, the devil waiting at the crossroads.
The anthology inspired me to find the Nick Travers mystery series by Atkins. Nick was a pro-football player whose career came to a premature end when he threw his coach to the ground and poured a keg of Gatorade over him. Now he's Dr. Travers, a blues historian at Tulane University.
The first book in the series is "Crossroad Blues." Yes, it's about Johnson. A Tulane colleague doing research in the Delta goes missing and, as the local police don't seem interested, Nick is asked to investigate.
Johnson scholars and fans get very excited over two possibilities. One is conclusive evidence as to how he died and the other is the oh-please-yes discovery of new recordings. As Nick talks to his contacts in the Delta, he begins to suspect his colleague may have stumbled onto both.
Atkins is clearly a blues fan, and he seamlessly weaves in a remarkable number of anecdotes about Johnson and the Delta blues without stalling the action. With a pro-footballer leading the way, there is indeed plenty of action and physical contact. A psychopathic Elvis look-alike and a gorgeous red-headed singer named Virginia Dare round out the story.
At this point I was curious enough to look for more information. All histories of the blues have to address Johnson; the one I found most interesting was "Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues" by Elijah Wald.
Wald finds that much of the controversy surrounding the evaluation of Johnson's "importance" is based on the fact that his recordings did not sell well until their reissue in the 1990s. In other words, he was apparently not popular with his contemporaries nor did his music influence the evolving blues scene in America.
On the other hand, Johnson traveled widely and made money, despite his short life. Though his records didn't sell, people paid to hear him play and stories of his amazing skill abound. Perhaps his audience found his music a little too visceral to comfortably take home.
My favorite blues novel remains Walter Mosley's "R.L.'s Dream." Soupspoon Wise is an aging bluesman who once played with Robert "R.L." Johnson. Sick with cancer, he finds himself evicted onto the streets of New York City. Kiki Waters, a young white woman, scoops him up and takes him in. The two forge a strange partnership; both are refugees from the South, fleeing demons from the past.
As in Mosley's Easy Rawlins novels, there are many layers here and no sentimentality. He works in blues lyrics, plays a few riffs of his own, and relentlessly reveals the simple humanity of those who face a harsh reality.
Most important, Mosley understands the music:
"Robert Johnson with his evil eye looking around the crowd for a woman. His fingers so tight that they could make music without strings. Music in his shoulders and down in his feet. Words that rhyme with the ache in your bones and music so right that it's more like rain than notes; more like a woman's call than need. Not that pretty even stuff that they box in radios and stereos. Not even something that you can catch in a beat. It's the earth moving and babies looking from side to side."
"R.L.'s Dream" is a story of redemption. Like the blues, there is "the ache in your bones" but also the possibility of joy. Perhaps the devil didn't win after all.
Photo by Natalie Maynor (from Creative Commons)
No comments:
Post a Comment