Robert Johnson is Still the King

I just finished reading Bob Dylan's little memoir. Like the best of Dylan it's unpredictable, brilliantly written, and chock-a-block with flashing genius the author just seems to be stumbling upon.

The book apparently began life as essays that were to be used as liner notes to accompany a set of hybrid SACD reissues. So oddly, half the book is devoted to the stories of New Morning and Oh Mercy. The stories are better than the albums, especially in the case of the New Morning stories which revolve around Dylan's effort to collaborate with poet Archibald MacLeish. The Oh Mercy stories--an extended and welcome slam at the overrated producer Daniel Lanois--also include a piece about a motorcycle trip through rural Louisiana. The story may be fact, it may be fiction, but either way it is as good as the best songs Dylan has ever written.

But for me the highlight of the book is Dylan's discussion of the impact on his songwriting of hearing the Brecht/Weill piece "Pirate Jenny" (from Three Penny Opera) in a Greenwich Village theater in the early 1960s, and his stunning explanation of discovering Robert Johnson on an pre-release acetate of the influential 1961 Columbia re-issue of Johnson's then-forgotten music.

Johnson's rediscovery and rehabilitation in the 1960s--when he went from forgotten and unknown to titan and genius--was something like the critical rediscovery of Herman Melville's then mostly forgotten works in the 1920s. (At the time of his death Melville was a dimly recalled writer of once-popular travelogues of the south seas. In the 1920s the previously unknown manuscript of Billy Budd was discovered and published sparking Melville's revival.)

But in recent years there has been a critical backlash against Johnson. The contention of the Johnson revisionists is that because Johnson's work is derived from the earlier work of Tommy Johnson, Son House, Leroy Carr, Kokomo Arnold, the obscure Hambone Willie Newburn and others (say, WC Handy's "Yellow Dog Blues"), it does not deserve the reputation it has gained. It is a contention most recently articulated by Elijah Wald in his book, Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues. Wald even goes so far as to suggest that because Johnson wasn't a pop star in his day (like Ma Rainey or Mamie Smith) his music doesn't matter.

As far as the evolution of black music goes, Robert Johnson was an extremely minor figure and very little that happened in the decades following his death would have been affected if he had never played a note.

Wald's argument is a historical fallacy. The kind of fallacy that says that because in 1851 Moby Dick was considered loony or because only Emily Dickinson's family read her poems during her lifetime, the work is unimportant, overrated.

(Wald's book is one example of a current trend of 'gee-whiz' books of would-be erudition like A.J. Jacob's The Know-It-All : One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World. These books exist in a vacuum and presume that all human knowledge begins with their page 1. Wald's stunningly ignorant presumption is that music fans would be shocked to know that Bessie Smith wasn't a field-hollering primitive but a polished professional or that white people and black people sang the same songs in the rural south. Gee whiz! You mean Jimmie Rodgers and Louis Armstrong recorded a blues together in the 1930s. Wow. No one ever knew that. Gee whiz, you mean Son House wasn't popular but Ma Rainey was? Shocking! And Rainey was a glitzy pop performer, the blues merely show biz? Can you imagine that. Hey, who knew Johnson's lyrics were funny, laced with double-entendres? Golly! "Who was the stupid editor that decided to publish this book?" would be a real question worth asking. For the record, in his influential 1981 book Deep Blues the late critic Robert Palmer made a point of noting that some of Johnson's finest performances went unreleased until the folk revival reclaimed the man. And why do we keep making the mistake of assessing an early performer's influence on the records he made when few people owned playback equipment in the 1920s and 1930s? Wald is reinventing the wheel, friends.)

The Dylan book illustrates that this debate over Johnson raged from the moment of the bluesman's rediscovery. Dylan describes arriving at the apartment of folk singer Dave Van Ronk and slapping the acetate of this unknown bluesman on the record player.

From the first note the vibrations from the loudspeaker made my hair stand up. The stabbing sounds from the guitar could almost break a window. When Johnson started singing, he seemed like a guy who could have sprung from the head of Zeus in full armor. I immediately differentiated between him and anyone else I had ever heard. The songs weren't customary blues songs. They were perfected pieces--each song contained four or five verses, every couplet intertwined with the next but in no obvious way...They jumped all over the place in range and subject matter, short punchy verses that resulted in some panoramic story--fires of mankind blasting off the surface of this spinning piece of plastic....

...I was mixed up in it. Didn't see how anybody couldn't be. But Dave wasn't. He kept pointing out that this song comes from another song and that one song was an exact replica of a different song.

I think a lot of the argument about Johnson derives from an obsession that has become pervasive in our culture, one that has always driven blues fetishists--the idea of authenticity. The earliest, rawest material that can be found is somehow the most authentic, and therefore the most artistically valid, so the thinking goes. Johnson took material that had been floating around among his peers and predecessors, cleaned it up, approached it with a kind of ambition and precision--professionalism even--and therefore wasn't keeping it real. (Wald's argument is different, because he wasn't a major figure in his time, Wald seems to suggest, Johnson shouldn't be considered important today.)

Obviously I line up with Dylan in this argument, and here's why. The story of Othello--a perfect archetype of cross-racial longing, lust, and envy--had been floating around the Mediterranean at least since the middle 1500s when it was written up by an Italian author known as Cinthio. But we don't read Cinthio today. We read the version William Shakespeare concocted in the early 1600s. Shakespeare and his rival Christopher Marlowe both wrote a plays about Henry IV. Why do we cherish Shakespeare's works today while Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great Parts 1 & 2 are academic curiosities?

The answer, of course, is art. With the same basic material at their disposal Shakespeare was able to make the better work. He was the greater artist. Authenticity isn't at issue. In fact, authenticity is never at issue in art. The whole matter of authenticity is a canard. Art, by its nature, by its definition, is inauthentic--it is artifice, it is invention, it is the process of creating artifacts.

Johnson did what hundreds of great artists have done--he took folk material from around him in the world and through an act of creative molding, turned that material into something more than just found stuff. He turned it into literature. It was a performance literature to be sure (as was Homer's btw), and, like Shakespeare's, Johnson's literature is best experienced in performance. That's why Johnson's spellbinding, slow, first take of "Come On In My Kitchen," moves us in a way that other versions don't.

The nature of Johnson's artistic transformation was clearly audible to Dylan ("I immediately differentiated between him and anyone else I had ever heard"). And it is clearly audible in the evidence today. Listen to the recordings. For all his protean fire-stealing, Charley Patton was never a great songwriter. Outside of the miraculous "Spoonful" Patton's work is frustratingly incoherent. A signature performance like "Screaming and Hollering the Blues" seems to feature random verses strung together without connection. There's no development from beginning to middle to end. It is slapdash. Accidental. And although the recorded performance is full of energy it lacks the drama and nuance of which Johnson was a master. This is typical of nearly all of Patton's work. Patton may have come first. He may pass the test of authenticity. He may have been keeping it real. But he was (and is) the inferior artist.

"Come On In My Kitchen" lifts the melody of one of blues music's biggest early hits, the Mississippi Sheiks' "Sitting on Top of the World" (the Sheiks probably got it from somewhere else but that source is lost to time). Now, I love to hear the Mississippi Sheiks singing "Sitting on Top of the World," but it's not half the record that Johnson's is, hell it's not one tenth the record Johnson's is.

To be sure some of Johnson's influence can be put down to the Faustian myths that grew up around him (an accrued romantic haze surrounds and obscures his work, much like the one that surrounds Sylvia Plath's). Also, some of Johnson's influence can be put down to the high quality of the extant recordings. Paramount, which recorded Patton, House, Ma Rainey, and Tommy Johnson, made records of notoriously poor audio quality even for the 1920s. Robert Johnson's sides, cut later (the 1930s) under more controlled conditions for Okeh, sound fabulous and clear. That means performers equally as great as Johnson ( Blind Lemon Jefferson--the first and possibly best blues guitarist, singer/songwriter--or Skip James) are sadly less well known.

But just like West Side Story doesn't suck because Romeo and Juliet came before it, just as Moby Dick is important now even though it was rejected in its time, so too Robert Johnson remains the king today no matter what he was in 1936.

Art, it turns out, lives outside of time.

Fans who chase an imagined "authenticity" in art by fetishizing the most raw, most primitive, least composed work don't get the brilliance of Robert Johnson. Scholars who insist on the primacy of history never will be able to reconcile themselves to the notion that Johnson's influence post-1961 is more important than his obscurity in his own time.

Their loss.

UPDATE: My boy Tom Watson has a great piece up about the Dylan book. Tom hits the nail on the head not only about the book but about the way in which Dylan's private obsessions and influences in 1961-1962--when he was a wayfaring stranger on the Greenwich Village folk scene--gave rise to an entire school of American literature, music and culture.

Comments

[jackson]

What matters to me is that Robert Johnson has been cited by the greats of our time, Dylan, Clapton, Keith, as being a huge influence, that's all the authenticity I need. BTW, I got Blonde On Blond on Vinyl this weekend, which I probably wouldn't have if not for our discussion, how authentic is that?

[chervokas]

Although I still have my mid 70s pressing of Blonde on Blonde, and I have a decent turntable (merrill heirloom w/ a modified rega tonearm and the miraculous clearaudio aurum beta cartridge), I'm perfectly happy with the CD transfer. Listen to it all the time.

But many folks--myself exempted--think the definitive Blonde on Blonde is the mono mix--not just a collapsed version of the stereo mix but a different mix altogether--which was recently reissued on vinyl by Sundazed. I guess that's for folks even crazier than I am ;)

[jackson]

Mine is the Stereo '360 Sound' release, and I'm just fine with that. I'm not going to tell you, or anyone else, what format is best, but for me vinyl is the ultimate experience in both sound and packaging. My brother Rod (my other brother) claims that his problem with Blonde On Blonde is that 'Positively 4th Street' should be, but is not on that record. I think there are enough classics contained within to support the double dic set, I'm excited about cuts like 'Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands' which I've heard so much about, but have never spent any time really listening to.

[chervokas]

4th Street actually should have been on Highway 61 for which it was originally cut in both a beautiful, aching slow version w/ glockenspiel, and the classic, venom-spitting version. (Recorded July 29, 1965 at the same session that produced Tombstone Blues and It Takes A Lot to Laugh....) But it's so close in mood and theme and sound to "Like A Rolling Stone" I understand the decision to keep it off. Still, it's more at home there than on Blonde on Blonde (cut in Nashville later that year), where, say, Desolation Row might have been at home. (4th Street is also close to the forgotten, single-only recording from just before the Blonde on Blonde Nashville sessions w/ the Band "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?" and the brilliant, unreleased, unfinished "She's Your Lover Now" from more or less the same time.)

Even the lesser know songs on Blonde on Blonde--Sooner or Later One of Us Must Know, Absolutely Sweet Marie, Fourth Time Around (in part a goof on Norwegian Wood)--are brilliant. But you know, Dylan's is the classic case of his shit is better than everybody else's diamonds. And those songs ain't even his shit, they just have to compete for space with Stuck Inside of Mobile and Just Like A Woman.

For my money Blonde on Blonde is perfect as it is, and as much as I love vinyl (give me Classics Record's 200-gram vinyl reissue of Sonny Rollins' The Bridge any day!), I marvel at Blonde on Blonde on CD. It's a coherent listening experience on one disk where it was always frustrating changing sides. In the old days I never even got around to Sad Eyed Lady. And on one CD, Blonde on Blonde makes you realize what a perfect 74 minutes of music it is--vs. today's CD's which seem to be a 45 min. LP's worth of music plus filler.

And I love the stereo mix which I'm sure is great on the old 360-degree sound pressing. Yeah it's a little bit 'hard left-hard right' as a lot of stereo pop mixes were in those days. But I think it works perfectly. (My 360-sound pressing of Miles/Gil Evans' Porgy & Bess gets quite a workout where the CD rarely leaves the closet).

Ah, yes, Sad Eyed Lady, "With your mercury mouth in the missionary times,/And your eyes like smoke and your prayers like rhymes,/And your silver cross, and your voice like chimes,/Oh, who among them do they think could bury you?"

Wow.

[jackson]

Nice! I'll let Rod know so he can get over it. It may be time for him to leave 'Bringin'It All Back Home' alone for a quick 'Blone On Blonde' spin.

[chervokas]

yeah well, not bad for a guy in his mid 20s over 18-months or so, Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61, Blonde on Blonde, and the 66 tour w/ the Hawks.

[Olaf]

Jason, your comments leave me wondering if you even read the Wald book. He wasn't claiming Robert Johnson is unimportant. Wald is a guitarist. He admits to being heavily influenced by Robert Johnson. He loves R. Johnson's music.

"I think a lot of the argument about Johnson derives from an obsession that has become pervasive in our culture, one that has always driven blues fetishists--the idea of authenticity. The earliest, rawest material that can be found is somehow the most authentic, and therefore the most artistically valid, so the thinking goes."

Wald would agree with you that the earliest, rawest material isn't inherently better or more authentic than later material. He seeks to argue against the blues fetishists' idea of authenticity.

I've never been much of an Elijah Wald fan, but I thought his Robert Johnson book was outstanding. By clarifying the chronology, he argues against the racist myth that a lot of blues fans buy into when they think of Robert Johnson as some savage creature. Wald doesn't argue against the massive influence of Robert Johnson records on Dylan and other rockers. Setting the historical record straight does no disservice to Robert Johnson.

[Olaf]

Just read your "Mea Culpa?" post.
Never mind.

[chervokas]

Olaf,

Funny how blog items posted in one chronological flow are experienced later by readers.

I finished the Wald book, and in fact wound up in an e-mail correspondence w/ him after these posts. I love his song by song analysis and his tracing of each song's historical pedigree.

But I hate the combo gee whiz/know-it-all, my record-collection-is-bigger-than-yours tone of his book. I think the book's premise profoundly over-emphasizes the value of knowing what the contemporaneous black record buying public purchased. Certainly it's interesting. But in the absence of a deeper explication about what was recorded, what wasn't recorded and why; as well as an explanation of distribution of the time, the market penetration of Victrolas, etc. it's information without context and therefore limited in usefulness. And lost to time is the breakdown of race record sales to white audiences (as well as hillbilly records to black audiences), also lost to time are radio playlists and records of live, in-studio radio performances which almost certainly reached more people than any single 78 did--either purchase or on a juke box. And of course radio was the great leveler, reaching across racial boundries.

In the end I think the theme and tone of the book told us more about Wald (and the race fetish of white blues fans) than it told us about the nature of commercial blues or the nature of Johnson's art.

[Andrew]

I disagreed with your pre-mea-culpa comments, but still found Wald's book profoundly irritating before I reached the end.

The main problem is that his attempt to escape racist stereotyping itself collapses around a race-based assumption: that the "true" blues (if that's a measure of quality) can only be defined by the listening tastes of its contemporary black audience. This, and his insistence that the white interest in country blues must be primarily racial because it is not shared by the black audience.

The book does a lousy job of getting away from racial preoccupations in the blues.

[Hobson]

Although it's been written some years ago, I thought I'd leave a cooment. I found this article very interesting and helpful to me, expecially the part about "Authenticity" and "Art". Thanks for writing it :)

[CoolJack]

Robert Johnson couldn't hold a match stick to the Mississippi Sheiks, saying that "Come on in my Kitchen" is ten times the song as "Sitting on top of the world" shows how little about early blues you know. This ridiculously biased article just serves as another "OMG ROBERT JOHNSON INVENTER OF ALL MUSIC EVER" kind of thing, when in reality he's exactly on par with the likes of Ed bell and other Unknown bluesmen who had lives equally "misterious" and recorded roughly the same amount of songs which were never really picked up by the contemporary audiance on a great scale. Just because Robert Johnson is the first blues musician you come across dosen't mean hes the only one who played songs and had a semi-mysterious life, same goes to that idiot Dylan.