Escaping the Delta (42 page)

23.
Welding, “Ramblin' Johnny Shines,” p. 29.

24.
Duchin and Kaye were “sweet” bandleaders, and both were fabulously popular, as were the sweet bands in general. This popularity endured well beyond the big band era: In 1956, Tyrone Power starred in
The Eddy Duchin Story
, and the sound-track album went to number one and stayed on the
Billboard
chart for ninety-nine weeks, making it one of the top thirty-five albums of the decade.

6
A Life Remembered

1.
Peter Guralnick,
Searching for Robert Johnson
(New York: Dutton, 1989), p. 10. Johnson's birth date is subject to dispute. The records of the Indian Creek School give his age as fourteen in 1924, and as eighteen in 1927. His two marriage licenses give his age as twenty-one in February of 1929 and twenty-three on May 4, 1931. His death certificate, on August 16, 1938, gives his age as twenty-six. If his birth date was May 8, that means we have documentation for birth years of 1907, 1909, 1910, and 1912. The 1910 census does not include him among Julia's children, casting doubt on the first two dates, which leaves 1910 and 1912, so I end up back at the usually cited year of 1911, as an average if nothing else. (All dates are from Tom Freeland, “Robert Johnson: Some Witnesses to a Short Life,”
Living Blues,
no. 150, March/April 2000, p. 49.)

2.
Willie Coffee, interviewed in Robert Mugge,
Hellhounds on My Trail: The Afterlife of Robert Johnson
(Winstar Home Entertainment, 2000), video recording.

3.
Freeland, “Robert Johnson,” pp. 44–45.

4.
Other guitarists have been cited over the years as Johnson's teachers, particularly Richard “Hacksaw” Harney, whom many older Delta guitarists recall as the region's all-time blues virtuoso. Johnson also seems to have learned quite
a bit from Ike Zinnerman, a guitarist who lived near his hometown of Hazlehurst. Harney made a handful of recordings in the 1920s, and again in the 1970s. No recordings of Zinnerman exist.

5.
House, interview with Fahey et al.

6.
House recalled these details in 1941, when first interviewed by Alan Lomax, and would repeat them virtually verbatim in later years.

7.
House, interview with Fahey et al. This is the only mention I have ever found of Johnson playing a seven-string guitar, and I wish Fahey had asked which string was added.

8.
Lomax field notes.

9.
Ibid.

10.
Samuel Charters,
Robert Johnson
(New York: Oak Publications, 1973), p. 14.

11.
Larry Hoffman, “Robert Lockwood, Jr.,”
Living Blues
no. 121, June 1995, p. 15.

12.
Johnny Shines, interviewed by John Earl, quoted in Guralnick,
Searching for Robert Johnson
, p. 68.

13.
Guralnick,
Searching for Robert Johnson
, pp. 20–21.

14.
“Robert was a very friendly person…you know,” Peter Guralnick,
Feel Like Going Home: Portraits in Blues & Rock 'n' Roll
(New York: Vintage Books, 1981), p. 91; “He was very bashful, but very imposing,” Guralnick,
Searching for Robert Johnson
, p. 55; “He never talked about himself…rowdy!” Neff and Connor,
Blues
, p. 56.

15.
Hoffman, “Robert Lockwood, Jr.,” p. 16.

16.
Barlow,
Looking Up At Down
, p. 46.

17.
Guralnick,
Feel Like Going Home,
pp. 91–92.

18.
Guralnick,
Searching for Robert Johnson
, p. 19. (This quotation includes a section from Welding's interview with Shines. Guralnick merged various interviews to form seamless sentences and paragraphs. I have given earlier sources when I know them, but use Guralnick's pastiches as the principal citation when I cannot fully source them.)

19.
“Robert was a guy…just ready to go,” Welding, “Ramblin' Johnny Shines,” p. 30; “I was just…running the road with him,” Guralnick,
Feel Like Going Home,
pp. 91–92; “That was his personality…away from him,” Welding, “Ramblin' Johnny Shines,” p. 28; “It made it pretty tough…style that I liked,” Guralnick,
Feel Like Going Home,
pp. 91–92; “Robert and I played…I wanted to learn,” Neff and Connor,
Blues
, p. 56.

20.
Welding, “Ramblin' Johnny Shines,” p. 30.

21.
Guralnick,
Searching for Robert Johnson
, p. 21.

22.
“Sometimes I'd get…Robert started,” Neff and Connor,
Blues
, p. 56; “He couldn't punch…you'd get it!” Welding, “Ramblin' Johnny Shines,” pp. 28–29.

23.
In 1942, Muddy Waters would tell Alan Lomax that his standard pay as a musician was six dollars for a duo at a juke joint, or sixteen dollars for the full band to play at a picnic (Lomax field notes).

24.
Welding, “Ramblin' Johnny Shines,” p. 29. The large minstrel shows were on
a similar schedule, and already by the 1890s were arranging their tours to follow harvest seasons across the South (Abbott and Seroff,
Out of Sight
, p. 108).

25.
Samuel Charters,
Robert Johnson
, p. 12.

26.
Welding, “Ramblin' Johnny Shines,” p. 29.

27.
Ibid.

28.
Ibid., p. 28.

29.
Obrecht,
Blues Guitar
, p. 24.

30.
Johnson was also familiar with the local rural repertoire. Willie Moore told Gayle Dean Wardlow of hearing Johnson in Robinsonville around 1930 singing older, countrified songs with titles like “Captain George, Did Your Money Come,” “Make Me Down a Pallet on Your Floor,” “Black Gal, Whyn'cha Comb Your Head,” “You Can Mistreat Me Here But You Can't When I Go Home,” “President McKinley” (apparently a slide piece related to “Frankie and Johnny”), “East St. Louis Blues,” and a bottleneck version of “Casey Jones” (Obrecht,
Blues Guitar
, p. 6).

31.
“He did anything…continue to play them,” Welding, “Ramblin' Johnny Shines,” p. 29; “And I know…he made them right,” Johnny Shines, interviewed in
The Search for Robert Johnson
(Sony Music Video 49113, 1992), video recording; “He could play…songs out of the air,” Guralnick,
Searching for Robert Johnson
, p. 22, merged with Guralnick,
Feel Like Going Home,
pp. 91–92. Though polkas might seem a particularly odd choice, the blues harmonica innovator Little Walter apparently got his start playing waltzes and polkas in Chicago's Maxwell Street Market (Mike Rowe,
Chicago Breakdown
[London: Eddison Press, 1973], p. 49).

32.
Obrecht,
Blues Guitar
, p. 13. Shines also recalled that, on a trip to Detroit, he, Johnson, and another musician, Calvin Frazier, got a job as gospel singers on a radio show out of Windsor, Ontario.

33.
Henry Townsend, interview with Pete Welding, quoted in Guralnick,
Searching for Robert Johnson
, p. 58.

34.
Welding, “Ramblin' Johnny Shines,” p. 29.

35.
Frank Driggs,
Robert Johnson: King of the Delta Blues Singers
(New York: Columbia LP 1654, 1961), phonograph album notes.

36.
Ibid.

37.
The one notable exception to this rule was Blind Boy Fuller, a Carolina guitarist who played in an old-fashioned but catchy ragtime style, and sang raunchy lyrics with smooth nonchalance that suggested a country Leroy Carr.

38.
Son House, “I Can Make My Own Songs,” Julius Lester, ed.,
Sing Out
, vol. 15, n. 3, July 1965, p. 42.

39.
Guralnick,
Searching for Robert Johnson
, pp. 39–40.

40.
Ibid., pp. 40–41.

41.
Ibid., p. 47, blended with Guralnick,
Feel Like Going Home,
p. 101.

42.
Guralnick,
Searching for Robert Johnson
, p. 24.

43.
Mugge,
Hellhounds on My Trail
.

44.
Neff and Connor,
Blues
, p. 56.

45.
David “Honeyboy” Edwards, interviewed by Pete Welding,
Blues Unlimited
no. 54, June 1968, pp. 10–11.

46.
Welding, “Ramblin' Johnny Shines,” p. 30.

47.
All information about the death certificate comes from Wardlow,
Chasin' That Devil Music
, pp. 87, 92.

48.
Guralnick,
Searching for Robert Johnson
, p. 50.

8
First Sessions, Part One: Going for Some Hits

1.
It is hard to define what should be called a “hit” record in this period, since sales figures are generally unavailable. However, it seems safe to assume that a song that was popular enough to be covered by several other people and spawned multiple sequels, as “Mean Mistreater Mama” did, deserves the label.

2.
Johnson sings, “She's a kindhearted mama, she studies evil all the time/You well's to kill me as to have it on your mind.” Carr had sung, “You're a mean mistreater and you mistreats me all the time/Now I tried to love you, swear but you won't pay that no mind.” As in other such cases, the source is evident, but Johnson created something new and more interesting from it. As for the guitar work, Blackwell has frequently been cited as a major influence on Johnson's playing, and deservedly so. If I dwell on this influence less than other writers have, it is because I think that blues scholarship has spent far too much time talking about guitar techniques, considering the extent to which singers (many of them pianists) were the driving force of the blues boom. Johnson certainly learned a great deal from Blackwell's playing on Carr's records, but would have thought of them as Carr's records.

3.
Johnson seems to have used a capo to raise the guitar pitch for many songs, and he may have been using one here, then removed or lowered it for the second take. It is also possible that this tonal difference is a technical glitch, and the playback speeds on the CD are not calibrated, but I am trusting that this is not the case.

4.
Harney recorded a boogie guitar line in 1927 as part of the duo Pet and Can. His version was more complex than Johnson's and he did not use it as a steady accompaniment, but his claim as originator is supported by rumors that he was one of the people who taught Johnson some guitar techniques. Jefferson had recorded a still earlier version of the guitar boogie on his “Rabbit Foot Blues” in 1926, and again on his hugely popular “Matchbox Blues” in 1927.

5.
The claim that Temple learned from Johnson appears in Obrecht,
Blues Guitar
, p. 8. Temple's denial is given in David Evans,
Johnnie Temple: Complete Recorded Works in Chronological Order, Vol. 1
(Austria: Document CD 5238, 1994), compact disc album notes.

6.
The early reworkings of “Sweet Home Chicago” stuck with Johnson's puzzling tag line: “Do you want to go back to the land of California, to my sweet home Chicago?” Many people have wondered how a well-traveled performer could have written this line, and I have even heard the assertion that Johnson had
relatives in the tiny hamlet of Chicago, California. I would suggest that the listener simply imagine a gentle “or” between the relevant phrases.

7.
As usual, this statement depends on how one defines genres. Harmonica players like DeFord Bailey and Sonny Terry made imitations of trains and hounds a basic part of their repertoires, and Blind Willie McTell, though generally classed as a bluesman, recorded plenty of “programmatic” instrumental riffs, even coming up with a guitar equivalent of billowing marijuana smoke. However, McTell tended to do these bits as part of ragtime-minstrel monologues, not in his blues songs, and the “Fox Chase” and train numbers usually lacked any blues structure.

8.
I have taken Woody Mann,
The Complete Robert Johnson
(New York: Oak Publications, 1991), as my source for Johnson's guitar tunings. Some of these tunings are disputed, as when Mann says “Hell Hound on My Trail” is in open D or E, while others say it is in Skip James's trademark E minor tuning.

9.
This was a common maxim, and had been the theme of a popular 1926 recording by E. W. Clayborn, “the Guitar Evangelist,” titled “Your Enemy Cannot Harm You (But Watch Your Close Friend),” and also of a preaching record, “Watch Your Close Friend,” recorded in 1927 by the Reverend W. M. Nix.

10.
Tampa Red had already recorded an instrumental version of this melody in 1929, titled “You Got to Reap What You Sow,” but my suggestion that “Things 'Bout Coming My Way” was inspired by the Sheiks' 1930 hit is supported by the fact that at the same session at which he recorded the latter song, he also cut a cover of “Stop and Listen,” the Sheiks' follow-up release.

11.
This stretch was beyond not only Johnson's peers in the Delta, but also generations of blues scholars, who have routinely assumed that his song was directly inspired by the Sheiks. Obviously, Johnson knew “Sitting On Top of the World”—as did almost everyone in Mississippi, black or white—but he clearly patterned his arrangement on the Tampa Red variation. This mistake exemplifies the persistence with which Mississippi bluesmen have been viewed as a world apart, rather than fitted into the wider popular music scene of their time. To reinforce this point, the Sheiks' song was itself a variation on the “How Long, How Long” melody.

12.
Big Bill Broonzy,
The Bill Broonzy Story
(1960; reissued Verve 31454, 1999), compact disc recording, disc 2, track 1.