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.”

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.