Devilishly Talented

Watch the video

You know what legendary blues musician Robert Johnson’s music sounds like whether you realize it or not. That plaintive crooning over the picking and strumming of a dirgelike but oddly cheery guitar became America’s most soulful theme-sound during the early twentieth century.

By the 1940s, the score of every Hollywood movie about “down home with the rural folk” seemed to echo a bit of Johnson’s been-down-so-long-it-looks-like-up-to-me bluesiness.  And by the last decades of the twentieth century, half of rock-and-roll’s establishment was gratefully showing the influence of Johnson, who died in 1938 at the age of only 27. Dylan, Hendrix, Clapton, the Stones, all of them.

Johnson’s life was sparsely, and sometimes contradictorily documented, but his influence was huge. And his legend extends even beyond the human, to the Devil himself, from whom Johnson, as a child in rural Mississippi, was said to have gained his skills - one day at a lonely crossroads. Which makes a certain kind of sense, given the attitude of many Americans at that time towards a black man with any kind of virtuosic and hard-to-explain skill. And given how common such bargains are in African and other folklore. (This part of the Johnson legend inspired the 1986 cult film Crossroads, featuring the music of Ry Cooder and Steve Vai.) 

After watching The Search for Robert Johnson and getting up to speed on all the fascinating historical details and possibilities encompassed by the life of this American icon (his surviving acquaintances make fascinating interviews!), do yourself a favor: buy a Johnson album and immerse yourself in his authentic version of Delta blues.  It’s good music, yes.  But it’s also a sort of philosophy - the kind of stuff that helps us mortals understand why we live and how we continue do so, day after day, with or without the help of supernatural beings.

Watch the video