Robert Johnson
I went down to the crossroads…
Or did he?
I didn’t think I liked Christopher Titus. But after hearing him tell his story on Marc Maron’s WTF I loved him. Because he was honest and forthright in a world of complete b.s. He stood up to power, Gail Berman, the Fox exec who wanted him to insert a love triangle in his TV show. Titus asked if she watched his show. What made it work was the fact that the couple stayed together, in light of all the shenanigans surrounding them.
As a result of this, his sitcom got canceled.
You see suits need to teach talent a lesson.
But talent, real talent, is in search of truth, nothing can alter their art, it’s got to be pure, because that’s when the public can relate.
And when the podcast ended I was disappointed, I wanted an extension, I wanted to know more. But there was none. So I dialed up Radiolab, to hear a short, for I only had a little listening time left.
I went to the live Radiolab show, at UCLA, about a month ago. I loved it. Interwoven into the stories was the comedy of one Demetri Martin, who was utterly fantastic, he radiated intelligence, which is not something you experience much in music. I paid for my ticket. I felt like I was a member of a club, of geeks, who weren’t looking to get rich, just to be thrilled.
And I was thrilled with the Radiolab podcast on Robert Johnson I just finished listening to.
You know Robert Johnson, the most famous blues musician of all time, who sold his soul to the devil. Or did he..
Jad Abumrad went down to the crossroads, at midnight, in Clarksdale, Mississippi, looking to find out.
Nothing happened there. But upon returning to New York, he found out that John Hammond discovered Robert Johnson. That in 1938, Hammond was putting on a Carnegie Hall show of the history of black music, "From Spirituals To Swing". And he wanted an authentic backwoods bluesman, so he sent one of his people to Mississippi to discover one. And at a record store he did. Upon hearing Robert Johnson’s music, Hammond insisted the young bluesman perform at his show. But it turned out Johnson was poisoned by a jealous husband whose wife Johnson consorted with, and had died.
At least that’s the legend.
But now everything’s in question.
It turns out that crossroads story, of selling his soul to the devil…was about a different Johnson, a musician who yodeled. A UCLA graduate student went to Mississippi to interview Tommy Johnson’s brother, who told this student that Tommy said he got so good by selling his soul to the devil. That’s how he could write songs on the spot, satiate all the white people.
And when he got back to UCLA, this graduate student told the tale, there’s actually an audiotape, you can hear it on the podcast. But his buddies were disappointed, because it was the wrong Johnson!
But that didn’t deter a friend in the room, who tracked down Son House and asked him if it was possible that Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil…after all, everyone knew he sucked, then disappeared and returned fully-formed, better than everybody else. Son House said it was possible, and eureka, the legend was born. That’s how everybody came to believe that Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads, it wasn’t even the right Johnson! But the story was repeated endlessly and now it’s considered fact. Or at least well-known myth.
But then it gets even better. Turns out Johnson married at age eighteen, he was planning to retire from music and become a farmer. But when his new wife died in childbirth, he was so distraught, he became the Robert Johnson we all know, composing "Love In Vain"…
But they track down the man who told this story, the big Robert Johnson historian Mack McCormick, and he won’t confirm it, he doesn’t even want to talk about it. And when they finally open him up, he now believes it’s a different Robert Johnson. That there were many Robert Johnsons. And further research revealed that many people had seen "Robert Johnson" long after 1938, even at a rodeo. As for dying of poison, at the hand of a jealous husband, had they seen the back of the death certificate? It said this Robert Johnson died of syphilis!
So maybe the death story isn’t even true. Maybe all we’ve got is the music.
And although everyone agrees how fantastic it is, that almost never broke through. You see you get really good, and then your success comes down to luck. Robert Johnson didn’t knock on John Hammond’s door, he was an itinerant musician, playing gigs. An intermediary told the story.
And from 1938 until the early sixties, Johnson was meaningless, until Hammond decided to release Johnson’s music in the middle of the early sixties folk/blues revival and all the English musicians popularized his music.
This was riveting radio about a subject I thought was exhausted.
That’s what we live for. Excellent entertainment.
There’s very little of it.
But this Radiolab podcast about Robert Johnson is exceptional!
