A Friend of the Devil

Remember when we dethroned Robert Johnson as King of the Blues and coronated Charley Patton in his place? Sure you do. We talked about the Pilgrims and Sandlot. It was a really great moment. I felt like we really connected. Anyway, this entry is going to be kind of like that. Because before Bobby, there was Tommy Johnson: the original friend of the devil.

If you know the name Tommy Johnson, it’s probably because you remember the character based on him from the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?


I'm right here, man

In the movie, Johnson’s character claims that he sold his soul at a crossroads in exchange for musical prowess. If that sounds familiar, it should. Because it’s pretty much the same story Robert Johnson would claim about a decade later.

"We are still trying to establish the correlation between the surname 'Johnson' and heathenism"

Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t but whatever he did, it worked.

Tommy Johnson was born in Terry, Mississippi in 1896. By 1914, he was starting to establish himself as a force to be reckoned with in the Delta Blues scene. While Charley Patton could give him a run for his money when it came to guitar playing--and guitar trickery--few other Delta Bluesmen could match his hand when it came to vocals. His range could go from a growl to a falsetto quicker than he could flip his guitar--which was pretty damn fast.

To put it simply: Tommy Johnson had game. Mad game. So, why is it that he only recorded for two years, from 1928 to 1930, when he was an active performer until his death in 1956? The answer to that lies in one of his most popular tunes: “Canned Heat.”

Canned Heat is actually a trademark for a certain brand of solid alcohol/paraffin fuel that is packed into small cans and used to heat food. Incidentally, it is also a trademark of an alcoholic--which Tommy Johnson unashamedly was. He was such an alcoholic that, when he signed a copyright deal to allow another group rights to one of his melodies, he was so drunk that he believed he had signed away his rights to record.

While we only have two years worth of his recordings at our disposal, that is not to say that any of his legacy has been lost. When he died in 1956, blues and rock musicians mourned and, because we need another reason to worship Bonnie Raitt, it should be noted that she paid for his headstone. Due to a land dispute the headstone was never actually placed on his grave. Instead, you can visit it at the Crystal Springs, Mississippi Public Library.

His legacy also lives on most notably in the 60s blues rock band that took their name from his hit and created the classic “On the Road Again,” inspired by his own “Big Road Blues.”

Twelve Strings and the Truth

“Lead Belly sang the blues wonderfully, but he was much bigger than that. He encompassed the whole black era, from square dance calls to the blues of the 30’s and 40’s” -Alan Lomax


Mozart began playing music at age four. Mozart--at least in prodigy status--has nothing on Huddie Ledbetter.


We get it. You're a kid. Playing the Piano. Real tight.

Huddie Ledbetter was born on January 20, 1889 in Mooringsport Louisiana. You probably don’t know him by that name though. You probably know him as Lead Belly--The King of the Twelve String Guitar.

He began playing music when he was only two years old--making him just slightly more prodigious than our dear Wolfgang.

Lead Belly quit school after the 8th grade and turned instead to the juke joints for his education. There he was a seasoned performer by the ripe old age of 14.

He mastered the guitar first with a little help from his uncle, but he didn’t stop there. He also learned the accordion, mandolin and piano--mastering them each in turn. And then, as if fated, he discovered his true love. Her name was “Stella” and she was a voluptuous twelve-stringed beauty who would stay with him for the rest of his career.

STELLLAAAAAA!


As a young man, Lead Belly traveled around the south picking cotton and playing music as he went. In 1918, he fought and killed a man in Dallas, landing him in prison for a would-be 25 year sentence. In 1925, he wrote a song asking the governor for a pardon. It was a ballsy move and, like most ballsy moves, it worked. Lead Belly was set free.

But before long he was at is again. The next altercation didn’t end with a death, but it did end with a sentence on Angola Farm prison. And it was there that he met the Lomax brothers.

They recognized greatness in him immediately and after his work term he followed them north and onward toward critical acclaim. He relocated to New York and became a regular on the folk circuit--frequently sharing the stage with the great Woody Guthrie--which is perhaps why it’s so easy to hear the folk influence in Lead Belly’s blues.

Lead Belly died in 1949 from Lou Gehrig’s disease but not before cataloguing over 500 songs--a prolific output.

Bob Dylan, Kurt Cobain, Keith Richards, Robert Plant--they all looked up to Lead Belly. Van Morrison said, “he wasn’t an influence. He was the influence.” As Odetta put it, “Lead Belly’s music still strikes a chord today, because it addresses our human condition.”

That it does, and as always, he and Stella can prove it better than I can:



And Kurt doesn’t do too bad himself:

Turnin' a Blind Eye

West of the Delta there’s a pretty big patch of land that’s know for a few things. It only has room for one star, but plenty of space for ten gallon hats. And, love it or hate it, you have to give it props for two things: (1) the Alamo and (2) being the birthplace of Texas Blues, fathered by none other than Blind Lemon Jefferson.

All the ladies wanna squeeze my lemon.

Jefferson was born near Coutchman, Texas in September of either 1893 or 1894--depending on whether you ask his mother or his draft card. As his moniker suggests, he was blind from birth but that didn’t stop him from becoming one of the most influential blues musicians of the early 20th century.

He took up the guitar in his early teens and spent most of his time during those years as a street musician. He played in some pretty dodgy places in those formative years and, while he couldn’t actually see them, he internalized them and they served as inspiration for much of his music.

Around 1910 or so, Jefferson made his way to Dallas where he became an integral part of the Deep Ellum blues scene. There, he took up with fellow bluesman Leadbelly and learned a thing or two before he himself became the teacher. His devoted pupil was none other than the legend T-Bone Walker. Walker received guitar lessons in exchange for being Blind Jefferson’s guide around the city--not a bad deal, all things considered.

Jefferson’s comparatively high-pitched voice set him apart from the other forebearers, as did his guitar style. While some tunes adhered to the traditional, repetitive blues technique we’ve become familiar with, others threw out the concept of repetition almost entirely. A few more rhythm driven ones even had accompanying dances that went with them which is well, very Texan:


He also had a tendency to favor single note runs, which would later turn out to be pretty characteristic of Texas blues.

Again unlike many of the forebearers, Jefferson enjoyed quite a bit of commercial success in his time. His recordings for Paramount did well in sales and in the eyes of the critics. While his first recordings were Gospel tunes--somewhat uncharacteristic for someone who was otherwise regarded mostly as a poet of the people--recorded under the pseudonym Deacon L. J Bates, his first hits, “Booster Blues” and “Dry Southern Blues,” were under his own name. Another well known one was “I got the blues":

Not quite

More like this:


While not much survived in terms of photographic evidence, Jefferson’s legacy lives on in both his recordings and the recordings of those he influenced. Chief among them, T-bone Walker, Canned Heat, the Beatles, and what Texas blues would eventually become:

The House of the Rising Son

“By the time I was about 18, someone played me Son House; that was it for me.”
-Jack White

If you harken back to our first post, “The Blues & Chaos” you’ll find an interesting video. It’s a clip from Davis Guggenheim’s brilliant documentary It Might Get Loud, in which a fully grown Jack White explains, with the marveled tone and idolized grin of a school boy, just what gets him about Delta bluesman, Son House. “[Grinnin’ in Your Face] spoke to me in a thousand different ways. I didn’t know that you could do that, just singing and clapping. And it meant everything. It meant everything about rock and roll. It meant everything about expression, creativity, and art. One man against the world, in one song,” he said.

And that’s essentially what’s great about Son House: the attitude of the music. The sheer, basic grit of noise born in the shadows. As any fan of punk rock will tell you, that kind of sound can get to you. That’s the power. He wasn’t a showman like Patton or Johnson. He was just one man, against the world.



It's pretty much the same thing



House was born just outside of Lyon, Mississippi in 1902 and christened Eddie James House Jr. He began his career, not as a musician, but as a preacher boy--until the Devil got ahold of him in the form of an older woman. She had him by a decade, by his heart, and by that tributary that runs south through a young man’s delta waters. She was his fall from grace, and it’s lucky for us that she was--because the kind of blues we’re interested doesn’t come from a pulpit. The kind of blues we’re interested in comes from the dark places--the places you go when you’ve got nothing else but a few chords and a story to tell.



It's pretty much the same thing



After abandoning his dreams of joining the church, House began playing out in 1926--a guitar accompaniment to local Lyon bluesmen of little note. He matured quickly, picking up bits and pieces of technique from the musicians he came into contact with, including slide guitar in the style of Delta man Rube Lacy.

In 1928, the Devil got ahold of him yet again, this time helping him pull a trigger and end a man’s life. As the story goes, House had been playing in a juke joint when a man went on a shooting spree. He wounded House in the leg before House shot him dead on the spot. The act landed him with a 15 year sentence on Parchman Farm (a place that’s left its mark in blues lore many times, see previous post) of which he served two. A judge revisited the facts, set House free and advised him to leave town upon his release. He did just that, heading to Lula and into the world of Charley Patton. Patton took House into his fold and got him his first recording experience, helping mold him into the legend we know today.

House’s influence, like most of the fore-bearers', was much vaster than his recordings. His early studio work got swallowed by the great depression, and the Lomax recordings of the early '40s got swallowed by the Library of Congress, leaving House to live in relative obscurity until the American folk blues revival of the early 1960s. But, despite his lack of commercial success, a slew of great musicians cite his influence. His autobiographic “Preachin’ the Blues Part I & II” essentially became Robert Johnson’s “Preaching Blues” and “Walking Blues.” Bonnie Raitt, John Hammond, Canned Heat... the list goes on. Most of them are obvious but, like all true greats, sometimes his influence has been known to show up even in the least likely of places:

Patton Pending: The Real King of the Delta

We’ve spent a lot of time trying to put our finger on just where the blues began but, the fact of the matter is that it really can’t be done. The Delta Blues, much like the region it comes from, has tributaries. We’ve already talked about a few of them, but there are many others that fed into what would become the relentless torrent we call The Blues. We talked about the man who “discovered the blues” as well as its reigning monarch, but there is more to the story.

Let’s look at blues lore in terms of elementary school history. We covered Christopher Columbus (W.C. Handy) and the pilgrims (Robert Johnson) but we’ve skipped over Jamestown because it’s dark and less family friendly. But now, you’re in college and it’s time for the truth. Robert Johnson isn’t the King of the Delta Blues--at least not fully. Awhile back someone at Columbia Records gave him that designation, but most blues scholars will tell you that someone else deserves the distinction: Charley Patton. For a full biography of Patton, told in a pretty interesting format you can go here but I'll give you the cliff notes.

Patton was born in southern Mississippi in 1900 and moved north to the Delta around age 9. By 19, he was a seasoned performer and songwriter. He learned the blues from his mentor, Henry Sloan, who some like to speculate was that lone traveler that Handy overheard that fateful Delta night--but it really doesn’t matter, because no one could teach Patton how to become the legend he became. He had it within himself and if he had any help from the Devil, it’s only because he had a bit of that in himself as well.

Patton was a womanizer and a no-good vagrant who could spin a yarn and sing a tune that could win over nearly any one he came into contact with--including Robert Johnson. Now, when we last left our hero he was a satanic showman, literally poisoned to death for being too much of a threatening badass heart-throb. But, in 1926 Robert Johnson was little more than an annoying kid that thought he could hang with the big boys and who stuck to Patton and his friends well, like this:They practically laughed him out of town and into the arms of the Devil.

But what made Charley Patton worthy of such idolatry? Part of it was his playing style: expert poly-rhythmic picking, employing the body of the guitar as rhythmic accompaniment. The kind of playing we usually attribute to guys like this: Yeah, Patton invented it.

Another factor that made Patton a legend was his showmanship. You know that behind the back, through the legs, guitar trickery we usually credit to guys like Chuck Berry, Jimi Hendrix, and T-Bone Walker:

Yeah, Patton invented that too. Son House called it Charley’s way of “clowning,” for our purposes we’ll call it Charley’s way of “being a complete badass.” Which, incidentally brings us to our next point: Charley Patton unwittingly invented the archetype of a rock star, simply by being himself.

He lived a hard, fists-up, no-holds-barred kind of existence. Which shows up quite a bit in his music. If you listen to his recordings done for Paramount in the late 1920s--all issued on 78s and harder to find in a record store than a black cat bone, thanks to the kindness of audiophiles the digital copies are pretty easy to come by... at least until SOPA passes--the words are barely intelligible. That is mostly because Patton didn’t exactly cater to the headphones crowd. He played good time, juke-joint-on-a-saturday-night, out-into-the-streets-fightin’ music. And he tackled such subjects as prison and hard drugs--sometimes in the same tune:

At the risk of sounding like a complete Clapton fangirl, I feel compelled to point out that the above tune served as inspiration, in part, for both of these:



Patton, like Johnson, is important for what he did, but mostly for what he started. No other blues figure served as a blueprint for rock ‘n’ roll, or for other blues musicians, quite like Patton. Perhaps a new coronation is in order.

Standin' at the Crossroads

The time has come.

North of Clarksdale, Mississippi there is a crossroads. Highways 61 and 49 intersect, amidst a background of barley and blues lore. For it is here where a young man made a deal with the devil. That young man was Robert Johnson, King of the Delta Blues.

As the story goes, Johnson sold his soul in exchange for the ability to play the guitar unlike anyone who came before.

As journalist and blues enthusiast Debra DeSalvo described in her book The Language of the Blues, the process goes something like this:

Get yourself a black cat bone. Cut your nails to the quick and put the trimmings in a small bag with the black cat bone. During a full moon, bring the bag and your instrument to a lonely crossroads a few minutes before midnight. Kneel in the middle of the crossroads and chant six times: “Attibon Legba, open the gate for me.”

Now sit cross-legged and play your best song. At the stroke of midnight, you will hear footsteps. Do not look up until they stop in front of you and a hand reaches down to take your guitar. Standing before you will be a tall man dressed in a sharp black suit. Do not speak to him. He will take your guitar, tune it, and play a song. When he hands it back to you, the deal is done and your soul belongs to him.

But don’t get carried away. Finding a black cat bone is much harder than you think, and even should your Hoodoo succeed, you will never be Robert Johnson. There can only be one.

His recordings are meager--his entire discography consists of just 29 songs recorded in the space of about a year from 1936 to 1937. His biography is even sparser. Most of what we know about him we can thank blues researcher Steve LaVere for. In the early 1970s, LaVere managed to track down Johnson’s family and obtain the only photographs we have of Johnson, previously unknown recordings, and a few facts. And I mean few.

We know that he was born in Mississippi in 1911 and died there--poisoned by a jealous boyfriend--in 1938, making him the first member of the “27 Club.” We know he had good tastes in headwear, as evidenced by the photo above. And we know he could play the guitar.

Here is a video of perhaps his most famous recording, “Crossroad Blues”:


Don’t get caught up in how basic that riff is on the surface. Listen closely. At points it sounds as if there are two guitars playing at once. But it is only Johnson--he had an understanding of how the instrument worked on the most basic level and he could command and manipulate the sounds he produced merely by channeling this understanding. This isn’t rare for talented musicians. But no one had done this before in this way, until Johnson. And therein lies the magic--and perhaps the roots of the satanic myth.

Now, not everyone is quite so respectful of Mr. Johnson. Infamous music journalist Chuck Klosterman, in his book Killing Yourself to Live, admits that Johnson’s recordings make him “sleepy” and claims, “even the songs that are technically different sounded identical to all the others. I like blues-based rock, but I hate the fucking blues; it was more fun to play Let it Bleed and look at Johnson’s photograph on the front of the box. He certainly had a stellar hat.”

Klosterman has a point. The music isn’t showy or even technically astounding. And no, it’s not what Guitar Hero makes you think devil-driven-music should sound like. But there is a raw energy to it--an aching, rough beauty that musicians and music lovers alike have discovered within Johnson’s work.

As Eric Clapton once said, “I have never found anything more deeply soulful than Robert Johnson.” How’s that for God complimenting the Devil?

Actually, better yet how’s this:


It turns out, if you take “Crossroad Blues,” speed it up a bit and add Ginger Baker’s steady hand, Jack Bruce’s ego and his relentless bass mastery, and Eric Clapton’s general prescense and divine guitar prowess, you get one of the greatest examples of Blues-rock ever recorded.

Give them a little over 30 years, and it gets even better:


And that’s part of what’s so great about Robert Johnson. Not just what he did, but what he started. (Cyndi Lauper even recorded a version of “Crossroads” which really isn’t so bad--especially when one considers that Cyndi Lauper recorded it...)

A Handy Discovery

The thing you have to know about the blues is that, at least when we’re talking about the forebears, it’s about 1% music and 99% myth.

Don’t let that upset you. The music is unquestionably the foundation and worthy of appreciation in its own context. The problem is: There is so little of it recorded.

Alan Lomax (left) did his best--traveling around for the Library of Congress, collecting recordings from various early blues musicians in the 1930s and early 1940s for the Archive of American Folk Song. But he couldn’t get to everyone and, even if he could have, recording equipment wasn’t then what it is today. Nevertheless, his contribution is laudable--albeit incomplete--in it’s own right and remains the lusty acquisition of audiophiles everywhere.

But again, we run into a problem: The blues didn’t suddenly exist the moment Lomax whipped out his microphone. It’s origins lie much earlier and our friend Alan, who--though he did it fashionably--was late to the party.

This is where the blues began:

It began at a crossroads (no, still not THAT crossroads. We’ll get to that one, I promise.)

This crossroads exists in the music itself, “where the Southern cross the Dog”--that is to say, in Moorhead, Mississippi at a railroad junction where the north and south bound trains cross the east and westbound trains.

The year was 1903 and it was another humid Delta night in nowhere Mississippi and a weary traveler sat waiting for a train. The weary traveler was none other than W.C. Handy, but at this point in time, he was no more than another schmuck on layover, forced to wait out the night. Little did he know that what he would overhear that night in the Tutwiler station would soon change, not only his own life but, the course of musical history forever.

For it was there, in that train station, that W.C Handy “discovered the blues.”

A black man, lean and lonesome, whose name is lost to time, sat playing slide guitar with a knife. “Goin’ to where the Southern cross the Dog,” he lamented. The sound was likely harsh, mean, brilliant, and unforgettable. Handy recognized it instantly for what it was and would build his legend on it.

That is where the blues began.

The less romantic version--that the blues was born out of the blending of various folk traditions and first showed up in the south in the 1890s or early 1900s, the product of solo singers accompanied by their own stringed instruments--can be cited, but it can’t be exalted.

No, the explanation that a genre so steeped in legend needs and deserves is the Handy account in which a lone figure disappeared into a train car, destined both never to be known and yet never to be forgotten.