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.

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...)