Interesting to reflect that when the young Robert Johnson was making his celebrated blues records in Texas, Dizzy Gillespie was on a European tour with the Teddy Hill Band and the 17-year-old Charlie Parker was starting out with Jay McShann’s Orchestra. Johnson was just 10 years older than Parker.
Jazz’s rapid change confounds notions of a regular procession of events widely separated in time. By 1937, when most of the songs on this album had been recorded by Vocalion, Johnson must even then have sounded like a throwback. That year the record-buying public was being offered the music of, among many others, Benny Goodman, Roy Eldridge, Duke Ellington and Dicky Wells.
Only in the context of the raw and elemental blues tradition can Johnson’s style be called sophisticated, despite the way he transformed the guitar into a more than cursory accompaniment. The blues emanating from the Mississippi Delta, in form, content and subject-matter, were all-powerful and self-sufficient at point of delivery.
The 20 tracks on this LP have been reissued many times. They include Hell Hound On My Trail, Me And The Devil Blues (enshrining, with the title track, the myth of how Johnson was gifted his talents in some Faustian pact), Kind Hearted Woman Blues (his first recording), and Terraplane Blues (his first big popular success).
One shrinks from adding to the welter of writing about Johnson. Many of these seminal tracks have been covered by Johnson’s latter-day successors. Suffice to say that the 180gm retro format, in echoing 78rpm Vocalion shellac but with peerless sound quality and informative liner notes, is the best sort of tribute to perpetuate.
Discography
Sweet Home Chicago; Come On In My Kitchen; Me And The Devil Blues; Love In Vain Blues; Preachin’ Blues (Up Jumped The Devil); Kind Hearted Woman Blues; I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom; Drunken Hearted Man; Hell Hound On My Trail; Walkin’ Blues; Cross Road Blues/Crossroads; Ramblin’ On My Mind; They’re Red Hot; Travelling Riverside Blues; 32-20 Blues; Malted Milk; Stones In My Passway; When You Got A Good Friend; Terraplane Blues; From Four Until Late (52.63)
Robert Johnson (v, g). Texas, November 1936, June 1937.
New Continent 101034
