Crossing the Delta

 

Let us start with the technicalities so as not to offend Blues experts in particular and music experts in general: we are fully aware that Delta Blues and Hill Country Blues are two distinct schools with the Blues canon. Robert Johnson being one of the overarching figures of the former, the Black Keys chose instead to focus on the latter with their brand new release and 10th studio album, Delta Kream. Although the title is somewhat misleading and the album was introduced with Big Joe Williams / John Lee Hooker-penned single “Crawling kingsnake”, technically a Delta blues classic. But who are we to judge?

The point is, we are going to focus on Delta Blues here, and on Mr. Robert Johnson specifically. In many ways, as is now largely public knowledge, the Mississippi Delta is responsible for helping Blue music burgeon in the early 20th century, which in turn gave way to Soul, RnB and Rock n Roll music in the decades that followed. Put plainly, the Delta is responsible for much of modern music — period. And Robert Johnson stands — or rather sits — at the center of all of this: living a grand total of 27 years on this earth — and therefore effectively starting the infamous 27 Club — and recording a mere 29 songs in only two separate know recording sessions in his lifetime, he nevertheless managed to forever change the face of modern music. Eventually.

The incredible story of Robert Johnson starts with the fact that he never saw any proper fame — or money — during his lifetime. The artist spent his short life traveling the South from juke joint to juke joint playing music and making ends meet. And, as the story goes, meeting women in the process. One of the myths surrounding Johnson attributes his death to a fatal encounter with the husband of one of the women he had supposedly managed to seduce with his guitar. While that may theoretically be true, chances are his death may be more attributable to strictly health-related factors, including congenital syphilis, although that is arguably a less captivating scenario…

The other thing about Robert Johnson is — we hardly know anything about him. Only a couple of photos survived to this day, along with the low fidelity recordings he made. And very little is understood about his life. His birth date remains in question, the details of his early life are somewhat unclear, his given name was changed several times… From what we can gather, his upbringing — for a Southern African-American boy at the turn of the century — was relatively comfortable and his education level therefore seemed higher than many of his peers. He met with a few musicians growing up, who influenced him and occasionally taught him, but that’s about it: how he came up with absolute standards of the Blues — and music in general — largely remains a mystery. Call it God given talent: his soul famously got sold to the Devil…

Finally, the most thrilling thing part about the Johnson story is that his influence came way later — with a vengeance: as the 50’s and 60’s musical scene was gearing up to produce a new cultural revolution, many budding artists in the US and UK started (re)discovering the Blues and Johnson’s work in particular, modelling their work to that melodic foundation. The Stones, Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan all heard about Johnson and proceeded to weave in some of his musical creations into their own sounds. Thus came many of the early Rock and Roll hits that eventually embodied the 60’s and 70’s. Decades after the man had left this earth…

The famous “crossroad” Johnson talks about in his historic track is perhaps the most plagiarized myth there is in modern music. The notion that Blues and Rock and Roll are the devil’s work, as opposed to religious music, is very much embedded in musicians’ conscience — to this day. Whether or not they believe it…