http:\/\/www.torontosun.com\/2011\/05\/06\/icon-robert-johnson-remembered<\/a>)<\/p>\n[content_box_grey width=”75%”]Johnson was born out of wedlock on May 8, 1911, in Mississippi. He spent his youth moving between parents, homes and towns, going by various surnames. Unlike many peers, he went to school. By 18, he was married. By 20, he was widowed. After his young wife died in childbirth, he abandoned family life for music. He had been playing harmonica since childhood and guitar since his teens. According to Delta blues legend Son House, Johnson was an embarrassingly bad guitarist. Then he left town — and came back with supernatural abilities. The legend — which Johnson wisely did little to refute — was that he gained his talent by selling his soul to Satan at a midnight crossroads.<\/p>\n
The Devil didn’t toss fame and fortune into the deal. Johnson lived as an itinerant bluesman, roaming from town to town, playing juke joints, levee camps, streetcorners. He travelled to St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit and perhaps Windsor. He became a skilled performer with a keen ear, winning over audiences with pop hits of the day.<\/p>\n
His own work was often darker and more complex — tales of devils and hellhounds, love in vain and his rambling life, voiced in his keening tenor and offset by his intricate guitar work. Remarkably, his recorded output consists of three sessions in late 1936 and early 1937. Over five days, he cut 29 original songs that would become cornerstones of blues: Sweet Home Chicago, Love in Vain, Ramblin’ on My Mind, Come on in My Kitchen, Cross Road Blues. He performed facing the corner in a San Antonio hotel room. Some claimed he was shy.<\/p>\n
Dickinson and Bowman insist he was searching for a sound.<\/p>\n
“I think he stumbled into it somehow, that playing into the corner of the room was going to give him much more presence on the record,” says Bowman. “And it does. Compared to other recordings from ’36 and ’37, those songs just leap out of the grooves.” Dickinson concurs: “He definitely knew what he was doing.”<\/p>\n
He never did it again. Little over a year later, on Aug. 16, 1938, he died near Greenwood, Miss. As the story goes, he was given whiskey laced with strychnine — poisoned by the jealous husband of a woman he was wooing. He was 27. He was likely buried in a pauper’s grave; his exact resting place is disputed. Only two verified pictures of him exist. He could easily have been forgotten. Fate, however, had other plans.<\/p>\n
Johnson’s records sold poorly during his life. But they found their way into the hands of Columbia Records producer John Hammond. In 1938, Hammond had tried to book Johnson for a Carnegie Hall revue, only to learn of his death. In 1961, he finally found a way to bring the bluesman to the masses: He convinced Columbia to release the LP King of the Delta Blues Singers.<\/p>\n
“Hammond made sure that everyone he knew was hip to this album,” says Bowman. “Word quickly filtered from musician to musician and connoisseur to connoisseur that here was a guy who was a notch or two above his contemporaries. That got his songs circulating within the folk and blues revival scene, and eventually manifested itself in the wealth of covers performed in the late ’60s and early ’70s by a host of contemporary blues singers, as well as a whole lot of rock ‘n’ roll players like Cream, The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin.”[\/content_box_grey]<\/p>\n
For a list of great covers of Robert Johnson tunes, check out http:\/\/www.coversproject.com\/artist\/robert%20johnson\/<\/a>. Though they missed one of my favorites which is a Jeff Healey Band cover of “Stop Breakin’ Down” from their Cover To Cover<\/em> album.<\/p>\nI know for myself, I’ve played several Robert Johnson tunes over the years, and I’ve always been surprised to find out that some of my favorite recordings were, in fact, covers of old Robert Johnson tunes.<\/p>\n
Having such a short life and career and to have such an impact is something that very few artists can claim. The only other one that comes to mind is Jimi Hendrix.<\/p>\n
One of the amazing things about Robert Johnson is the lack of documentation of his life. There are only a couple of pictures of him, but there is a video claiming to have footage of him now. I’ll let you decide…<\/p>\n