Music |
Blind Willie Johnson
By
Published: Feb 02, 2011
Category:
Blues
Guest Butler Mark Hipgrave lends his voluminous musical expertise to a blues show on community radio station 4ZZZ in Brisbane, Australia. On HeadButler.com, he recently shared his enthusiasm for Son House.
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Eric Clapton called one of his songs “probably the finest slide guitar playing you’ll ever hear.”
Ry Cooder has described another as “the most transcendent piece in all American music.”
By the 1970s, Willie Johnson (1897 – 1945) was recognized as a genius, That’s an overused term, so consider this as certification: Carl Sagan put one of his songs — “Dark Was The Night (Cold Was The Ground)” — onto a golden LP record, along with that of Beethoven, Mozart, Bach and Chuck Berry and, accompanied by a handy record player, sent it off into outer space on board the two 1977 Voyager spacecraft to inspire aliens in far off galaxies.
Next stop: the Ophiucus Constellation, deep in the Milky Way.
Considerable irony there. Willie Johnson’s music is at home in the universe, but after his Beaumont, Texas house was gutted by fire, he and his wife had no choice but to sleep on damp newspapers in the charred ruins. He soon caught pneumonia, was refused admission to a local hospital because he was poor, or black or blind, or all three, and died. That was 1945. Thank goodness things are different now.
Willie Johnson had every right to sing the blues. When he was seven, an unloving stepmother threw lye in his face as a payback to her cheatin’ husband, blinding the boy for life. With no work prospects, he followed the path of many other blind black southerners: music. He taught himself piano and guitar, gathering lyrics from old hymnals. By the mid 1920s, he was performing on the streets of Hearne, Texas, collecting tips in a tin cup.
Only one photograph of Johnson exists, and much of his life story is anecdotal. Like the time he was arrested outside a New Orleans Customs House singing "If I Had My Way, I’d Tear the Building Down," a song about Samson and Delilah. A policeman thought he was inciting a riot.
With a strong, gruff baritone voice and wonderful slide guitar work, using either a penknife blade or a bottleneck, Johnson soon gathered attention. In five recording sessions between 1927 and 1930, he cut 30 tracks for Columbia, in Dallas, Atlanta and New Orleans. Columbia promoted him well – its ads proclaimed that he “sings sacred songs in a way you never heard before.” And he quickly became one of the label’s best selling race artists. (To buy “The Complete Recordings of Blind Willie Johnson” from Amazon, click here. To buy the MP3 download from Amazon, click here. To download one amazing song — "Dark Was the Night" — click here.)
After his last session, he disappeared, moving to Beaumont where shopkeepers remembered him as a gentle, dignified man who dressed neatly and wore close-cropped hair. With his second wife Angeline, Johnson often sang at Mount Olive Baptist Church and at revivals in Houston. He eventually opened a House of Prayer in Beaumont, and remained a preacher there until his death in 1945.
The legend of bluesman Robert Johnson — no relation — has it that he sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads in exchange for otherworldly guitar skills. That myth helped him become a blues icon. But Blind Willie was devoted to religious music, and that purity meant a lesser historical following.
Nevertheless, you have grown up with his music. Eric Clapton covered "Motherless Children."
Led Zeppelin did "Nobody’s Fault But Mine" and "If I Had My Way I’d Tear the Building Down" has been lifted by literally everyone. The White Stripes acknowledge his influence regularly. And Martin Scorsese used Johnson’s song “Soul of a Man” as the title of the second episode of his seven-part PBS series, "The Blues" featuring Johnson, Skip James and J.B. Lenoir.
Johnson was buried in an unmarked grave in Beaumont’s Blanchette cemetery and promptly forgotten. (It was not until 2009 that the grave was identified and a headstone provided.) In 2002, researchers found a daughter, then in her 70s living in Marlin, Texas. She had little recollection of her father, no memorabilia and no interest in claiming royalties from his recordings.
In a mission where royalties don’t matter, Willie Johnson’s music sails deeper into space. The two Voyager probes are now way outside our solar system. It will be 40,000 years before either of them pass near another star. A long wait for extraterrestrials. But not for you — you can hear Willie Johnson right now.
BONUS VIDEOS: "Trouble Soon Be Over"
"Let Your Light Shine on Me"
"Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning"
"Nobody Hide from God"
