Latest / DISGRACELAND / Robert Johnson: Voodoo, Delta Blues, Cursing God, and a Crossroads

Transcript

Robert Johnson: Voodoo, Delta Blues, Cursing God, and a Crossroads · DISGRACELAND

0:00
Speaker 1: Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. Hey everybody, this
0:05
Speaker 1: is a special episode of Disgraceland because I was able
0:08
Speaker 1: to cast one of my favorite singers in soul music today,
0:12
Speaker 1: Lee Fields. Lee Fields is an incredible vocalist, great artist.
0:16
Speaker 1: You should check him out wherever you stream your music,
0:19
Speaker 1: Amazon Music, or wherever you listen. Lee Fields plays the
0:22
Speaker 1: part of Sonhouse's head in this episode. He did an
0:26
Speaker 1: amazing job. I just want to give a special thanks
0:29
Speaker 1: to Lee and again, if you don't know his music,
0:32
Speaker 1: go check it out. You won't be disappointed. All right,
0:34
Speaker 1: mellow Tron. The stories about Robert Johnson are insane. He
0:55
Speaker 1: drank and womanized his way through his gigs from the
0:58
Speaker 1: South in the nineteen thirty all the way up to
1:00
Speaker 1: New York and Chicago. He cursed the name of God
1:04
Speaker 1: to any friend who would listen, often to the detriment
1:07
Speaker 1: of those friendships. At the age of seventeen, he married
1:11
Speaker 1: a fourteen year old, both flying about their ages on
1:14
Speaker 1: their marriage license, a relationship that would end in tragedy
1:18
Speaker 1: in Forever cast a dark shadow on his spirituality. He
1:23
Speaker 1: worked out his original blues sound by practicing guitar in
1:26
Speaker 1: the cemetery at night, and when nat didn't yield the
1:29
Speaker 1: results he was looking for, he went further out of
1:32
Speaker 1: town to the crossroads, where legend has it that he
1:36
Speaker 1: sold his soul to the devil in exchange for the
1:38
Speaker 1: lightning blues guitar talent that came to define the delta
1:41
Speaker 1: blue genre for all time. And despite only living for
1:46
Speaker 1: twenty seven years on this earth, with only the last
1:49
Speaker 1: two of those years after his supposed deal with the Devil,
1:53
Speaker 1: Robert Johnson made great music, some of the most unique
1:57
Speaker 1: and most influential music on this place, music that no
2:01
Speaker 1: one has ever been able to imitate, Music that Robert
2:05
Speaker 1: Johnson laid down in just two recording sessions. Again great music,
2:11
Speaker 1: unlike that music I played for you at the top
2:13
Speaker 1: of the show. That wasn't great music. That was a
2:17
Speaker 1: preset loop for my melotron called thigh Bone Xylophone MK One.
2:24
Speaker 1: I played you that loop because I can't afford the
2:26
Speaker 1: rights to music Maestro Please by Tommy Dorsey. And why
2:31
Speaker 1: would I play you that specific slice of toilet plunger
2:35
Speaker 1: trumpet Cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was the
2:39
Speaker 1: number one song in America on August first, nineteen thirty eight,
2:43
Speaker 1: and that was the day that Robert Johnson stepped off
2:46
Speaker 1: the train for the last time in the Mississippi town
2:50
Speaker 1: to perform a string of gigs that would end in
2:53
Speaker 1: his murder. On this episode, Cemetery Blues deals with the
2:58
Speaker 1: devil curse and plunged trumpet, cheese and Robert Johnson. I'm
3:05
Speaker 1: Jake Brennan, and this this disgrace. The train left the station.
3:37
Speaker 1: The Bluesman stood on the platform, pinstriped suit, guitar case
3:42
Speaker 1: in his hand. He pushed the brim of his hat
3:45
Speaker 1: up and away from his brow. He surveyed the town
3:48
Speaker 1: before him, Greenwood, Mississippi, a town he knew well, a
3:53
Speaker 1: town he would make famous or infamous. Rather, the town
3:57
Speaker 1: looked back at him, and word began the spread. Immediately,
4:01
Speaker 1: here comes a guitar man. I'll look out, he's back.
4:05
Speaker 1: Lock your daughters. The man is back in town. Best
4:08
Speaker 1: get your wives in line. It's Robert Johnson. Robert Johnson
4:13
Speaker 1: strolled down the middle of the street in Greenwood's Baptist
4:16
Speaker 1: Town neighborhood. Doors quietly locked, curtains closed. Men stared silently,
4:23
Speaker 1: backing away off of their porches, back into whatever saloon
4:26
Speaker 1: or a good time house. They were fronting women, gocked,
4:30
Speaker 1: father's cringed husband, seethed, little girls saw their future. And
4:35
Speaker 1: it was dark. It was Saturday night. Church was tomorrow's business.
4:41
Speaker 1: Tonight was the devil's business, and the devil just walked
4:45
Speaker 1: into town. And in nineteen thirty eight, in the American South,
4:50
Speaker 1: blues music was indeed the work of the devil. God
4:54
Speaker 1: fearing black folk, those who went to church each Sunday,
4:57
Speaker 1: who kept to him in their heart on every other
5:00
Speaker 1: other day, despised blues music as being the low down
5:03
Speaker 1: work at the devil, with its innuendo and rabble rousing
5:06
Speaker 1: jump bookie. Blues music meant one thing, sex, and sex
5:12
Speaker 1: meant some sort of headache or another, unwanted pregnancies, jealous lovers,
5:17
Speaker 1: burned lovers, violence, Blues music was nothing more than trouble.
5:21
Speaker 1: In twelve bars, blues music was not to be listened to.
5:25
Speaker 1: Blues musicians were not to be messed with doors, locked,
5:28
Speaker 1: windows shut, shotguns, cocks, except on Saturday nights. On Saturdays
5:36
Speaker 1: for some anyway, exceptions were made out on the outskirts
5:40
Speaker 1: of town, not quite as far as the crossroads, but
5:43
Speaker 1: just past the cemetery, Robert Johnson, the blues musician, along
5:48
Speaker 1: with some of those Greenwood residents from the black section
5:50
Speaker 1: of town from Baptist Town would get after it in
5:53
Speaker 1: the devil's workshop, that is, inside whatever juke joint was
5:57
Speaker 1: set to jump. That evening. Jukes were rough. At the
6:01
Speaker 1: duke joints in town, the doormen would collect the patrons
6:04
Speaker 1: knives and guns at the door and return them at
6:06
Speaker 1: the end of the night, but such a practice didn't
6:09
Speaker 1: exist out of town. In the country, dukes, which were
6:13
Speaker 1: generally lawless, weapons were not only allowed, weapons were necessary
6:17
Speaker 1: for survival musicians. The entertainment would usually perform as duos,
6:23
Speaker 1: positioning themselves on stage on chairs with their backs to
6:26
Speaker 1: each other so that each could keep an eye out
6:28
Speaker 1: for the other one and prevent any sort of drunken
6:31
Speaker 1: violent ambush from discrumptled patrons. But Robert Johnson performed solo.
6:37
Speaker 1: He was the only accompaniment he needed. It suited him.
6:40
Speaker 1: It was worth the risk, more spoils, more money, and
6:44
Speaker 1: more women. The duke opened to five pm. It was
6:48
Speaker 1: twenty five cents to get in. Guests were encouraged to
6:51
Speaker 1: stay all night, and the host kept the corn liquor flowing.
6:54
Speaker 1: Robert played most of the evening straight through the brawling
6:57
Speaker 1: and the bawling, and left with whichever woman he wants
7:00
Speaker 1: it before sun was up, using the homes of these
7:02
Speaker 1: women to briefly settle into before rambling on via rail
7:06
Speaker 1: to his next stop. It was a loose, wayward, and
7:10
Speaker 1: dangerous way of life, but that's what life had been
7:12
Speaker 1: for Robert Johnson as far back as he could remember,
7:15
Speaker 1: and before that the stories he heard from his family
7:18
Speaker 1: about life in the South before he was born. Life
7:22
Speaker 1: was rougher, roudier than even deadlier. The hounds were hot
7:29
Speaker 1: on his trail, barking, mad salivating. He could hear them gaining.
7:33
Speaker 1: If he were caught, it would be the rope. He
7:35
Speaker 1: knew this, but that entitled motherfucker had it coming. It
7:39
Speaker 1: wasn't much, just a couple of words at first, but
7:42
Speaker 1: was enough enough to make the white man pull his knife.
7:45
Speaker 1: He then pulled his straight racer, and the white man
7:48
Speaker 1: got the better of him, a gash across his jaw,
7:50
Speaker 1: but it wasn't enough to cut him down. He took
7:53
Speaker 1: off out of town, out toward the plantation, and now
7:56
Speaker 1: this hell hounds on his trail through the black Berry patch,
8:00
Speaker 1: its brambles and briars, cutting at his skin, the blood
8:04
Speaker 1: bread crumbs for the vicious hounds. But he knew these parts,
8:07
Speaker 1: knew them better than the dogs, and he knew them
8:10
Speaker 1: more than their racistoners, the white men on the horses
8:13
Speaker 1: that followed them. He burrowed down in the briar and
8:16
Speaker 1: waited them out In the morning. He escaped by train.
8:23
Speaker 1: He had to leave his wife behind, and after a
8:25
Speaker 1: few years she took up with another man. On May As,
8:29
Speaker 1: nineteen eleven, she gave birth to a boy, Robert Johnson,
8:34
Speaker 1: born only because his mother's first husband was run out
8:37
Speaker 1: of town and she was forced to remarry a man
8:40
Speaker 1: who would eventually become a father to him, a circumstance
8:44
Speaker 1: that never would have come to be had not been
8:47
Speaker 1: for the threat of violence. The thread of evil. Robert
8:52
Speaker 1: Johnson from the jone born under a bad sigh. Young
9:18
Speaker 1: Robert Johnson didn't know what he was looking for, but
9:21
Speaker 1: he'd know it when he saw it. Some sort of
9:24
Speaker 1: hoodoo supplies, and there were plenty on the shelves of
9:27
Speaker 1: a schwabs dry goods, mojo bags, hot foot powder, goofer dust.
9:32
Speaker 1: He didn't want anything that would kill his stepfather. Heally
9:35
Speaker 1: wanted to knock him down a bit, give him some
9:38
Speaker 1: sort of sickness, cause him some pain his retaliation for
9:41
Speaker 1: the plantation beatings he build out to Robert for no
9:44
Speaker 1: good reason. Plantation life was hard, but made harder when
9:48
Speaker 1: you were a teenage didn't have no mind for fieldwork.
9:52
Speaker 1: You knew who you were good at. Manual labor was
9:55
Speaker 1: not it. It was music. It had been music from
9:58
Speaker 1: the beginning, since you strung that bailing wire to the
10:02
Speaker 1: side of the shack with a glass bottle for a
10:04
Speaker 1: bridge and started playing the diddly bow. Then when you
10:07
Speaker 1: get your hands on that acoustic guitar and started trying
10:10
Speaker 1: to strink together Jimmy Rogers tunes and then mimicking sounds
10:14
Speaker 1: of those older local bluesmen, Charlie Patton and Sonhouse, you
10:18
Speaker 1: got yourself some recognition. Girls noticed you, and there was
10:21
Speaker 1: money in it too, not much, but more than plantation
10:25
Speaker 1: work where you sweated it out for your mother and
10:27
Speaker 1: your stepfather and for barely a penny street work. Playing
10:31
Speaker 1: your guitar and singing out on Beale Street. It brought
10:34
Speaker 1: in some coin and unlocked the whole new world. Finally
10:38
Speaker 1: you were somebody you didn't even know who that somebody was,
10:41
Speaker 1: but you were determined to find out build out, then
10:45
Speaker 1: bound to go. Unlike most in his community, Robert Johnson
10:50
Speaker 1: never went to church for the self identifying so called
10:55
Speaker 1: low down blues man. Church was the rails, hopping moving
10:59
Speaker 1: froms to travel from one place to another. It was
11:03
Speaker 1: Robert Johnson's only mode of transportation. Who was necessary for
11:07
Speaker 1: himed a travel as a working musician, honing his craft
11:10
Speaker 1: and developing a reputation. Towards the end of booking a
11:13
Speaker 1: recording engagement where a record would be made with his
11:15
Speaker 1: voice and his guitar playing for commercial distribution, an effort that,
11:19
Speaker 1: in Robert's mind, was the key to fame and unheard
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Speaker 1: of success. Robert would ride the rails nearly all the
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Speaker 1: way into town, pop off at the outskirts, and walk
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Speaker 1: the rest of the way. He'd trek down the railroad
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Speaker 1: track and keep an eye out for black children playing.
11:34
Speaker 1: Whichever side of the track the kids are hanging out
11:36
Speaker 1: on was the side of town Robert wanted to be on.
11:39
Speaker 1: Once he had determined that he'd head deeper into the
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Speaker 1: segregated community, find the first popular street corner he could
11:46
Speaker 1: PLoP down his guitar case, take his guitar out, and
11:49
Speaker 1: begin playing and singing right there. If he was good,
11:52
Speaker 1: he could make up to a quarter and one Saturday afternoon,
11:55
Speaker 1: and if he was really good, he'd get invited to
11:57
Speaker 1: come play at one of the jukes that night, and
12:00
Speaker 1: if he was great, get to stay in town a
12:02
Speaker 1: spell and keep on playing. At Robert's young age, that
12:07
Speaker 1: didn't happen often by all accounts. As a teenage bluesman,
12:12
Speaker 1: Robert Johnson wasn't that good, but he must have been
12:15
Speaker 1: doing something right Intosto County, Mississippi, back in nineteen twenty eight,
12:19
Speaker 1: because his afternoon spell on the corner turned into a
12:22
Speaker 1: juke show that night out by the cotton plantations near
12:25
Speaker 1: the Mississippi River up on Highway sixty one in the
12:28
Speaker 1: communities of Klack and Pennon. The sharecroppers needed entertainment that Saturday.
12:33
Speaker 1: In the Clack grocery store, which doubled as a juke
12:36
Speaker 1: joint on weekend nights, seventeen year old Robert Johnson would
12:41
Speaker 1: do his country style blues wasn't yet earth shattering, but
12:45
Speaker 1: it would work. It was plenty good enough to keep
12:47
Speaker 1: joint hopping. Then plenty, good enough to capture the eye
12:49
Speaker 1: of a young, impressionable sharecropper's daughter who'd somehow managed to
12:53
Speaker 1: find her way into the juke fourteen year old Virginia Travis.
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Speaker 1: Her beauty was beyond Robert was smitten. He laid it
13:03
Speaker 1: on thick, pouring his heart into his playing, exposing his
13:07
Speaker 1: vulnerabilities in public in the way that only musicians can,
13:11
Speaker 1: and through his songs that internal pain he was grappling with,
13:15
Speaker 1: the torment of his abusive stepfather, the ever present wickedness
13:18
Speaker 1: of the Jim Crow South, the teenage angst of not
13:21
Speaker 1: knowing exactly who you are, why you're here, or what
13:24
Speaker 1: you're meant to do. All of that tangled itself up
13:27
Speaker 1: with the longing he now felt for this heaven sent
13:30
Speaker 1: Mississippi Queen, and Robert Johnson was able to express it
13:34
Speaker 1: with the dark brand of low down blues he had
13:37
Speaker 1: been experimenting with. All of it came out in a
13:40
Speaker 1: captivating mix of self expression that perfectly featured Robert Johnson's
13:44
Speaker 1: devilish charm. In the end, Virginia Travis didn't stand a chance. She,
13:51
Speaker 1: like her musical suitor, was smitten, despite the protests of
13:55
Speaker 1: her parents. Who worried about a blues man darkening their doorway.
14:00
Speaker 1: The fourteen year old Virginia Travis and the seventeen year
14:03
Speaker 1: old Robert Johnson married two months later, each lying about
14:07
Speaker 1: their ages on their marriage certificate. In no time, Virginia
14:12
Speaker 1: was pregnant. Robert was committed. He put down the guitar
14:15
Speaker 1: and picked up the plow. The two set up home
14:18
Speaker 1: in the all black Mississippi Delta community of New Africa.
14:22
Speaker 1: Robert sharecropped. Virginia prepared for the baby, but New Africa
14:26
Speaker 1: was no place for her to give birth. She wanted
14:29
Speaker 1: to be closer to her immediate kin, so she headed
14:32
Speaker 1: back to clacked, Mississippi. Robert stayed behind to keep working
14:36
Speaker 1: and keep saving. He'd joined her shortly before the baby
14:39
Speaker 1: was born. The screams were their own kind of hell fire.
14:46
Speaker 1: The pain was all encompassing. Every inch of Virginia's pregnant
14:50
Speaker 1: body hurt. There was a little progress, the baby was stuck,
14:54
Speaker 1: and none of what was happening seemed natural. Virginia screamed
14:57
Speaker 1: with the devil's tongue and the midwife her ears. Robert
15:01
Speaker 1: Johnson's baby seem to be holding on for dear life,
15:04
Speaker 1: not wanting to leave the comfort of the wound to
15:06
Speaker 1: enter this world gone wrong. Hesitant for reasons that'll never
15:10
Speaker 1: be known, to give in to this thing called life.
15:13
Speaker 1: Virginia screamed some more. Her fourteen year old body was
15:16
Speaker 1: ill equipped for the pain. She pushed, She screamed again,
15:20
Speaker 1: pushed once more, screamed an earth shattering death rattle, and
15:23
Speaker 1: the baby gave in and finally exited, and the midwife
15:27
Speaker 1: held it in her arms. She looked to Virginia, who
15:30
Speaker 1: is now silent and still, and the midwife knew it
15:34
Speaker 1: in an instant. She'd seen it before. Virginia Travis was dead,
15:40
Speaker 1: so too was her baby. Robert Johnson was unaware. He
15:50
Speaker 1: was using his new wife's absence to let us some
15:52
Speaker 1: steam before taking on the immense responsibility of fatherhood. He
15:56
Speaker 1: put down the plow, picked up his guitar, and hit
15:59
Speaker 1: the jukes. But what was to be a one night's
16:01
Speaker 1: stand stretched into a two week run, and by the
16:04
Speaker 1: time he turned up on the doorstep of his wife's parents'
16:07
Speaker 1: home to embrace Virginia and his new baby, both were
16:10
Speaker 1: in the ground. Her parents were not surprised. The lowdown
16:15
Speaker 1: blues men had delivered upon his reputation. Robert Johnson was devastated.
16:22
Speaker 1: There was no one or no thing that was going
16:25
Speaker 1: to heal this immense heartbreak. Church wasn't an option. His
16:29
Speaker 1: family was dead. The only thing that helped was music.
16:34
Speaker 1: Robert hit the rails again. He turned up into town
16:36
Speaker 1: called It's That's right, Its It's Mississippi, just south of Hazlehurst.
16:44
Speaker 1: There he met an older player named Ike Zimmerman. Ike
16:47
Speaker 1: played unlike anyone Robert had ever heard before, and unlike
16:51
Speaker 1: the older players working their way around the delta. Ike
16:54
Speaker 1: was settled, a family man, a father, and also unlike
16:58
Speaker 1: any other seasoned musician and Robert had met by that point,
17:01
Speaker 1: Ike seemed intent on helping Robert. Ike wasn't competitive, Ike
17:06
Speaker 1: was generous. What his angle was, Robert didn't know. Robert
17:10
Speaker 1: was happy to have a mentor. Ike listened, and Robert
17:14
Speaker 1: had a lot to get off of his chest. He
17:17
Speaker 1: was angry, disillusioned. While Ike rifted on guitar, Robert rift
17:22
Speaker 1: on life, how church was a scam, how everyone he
17:26
Speaker 1: knew was a hypocrite whopping it up with him on
17:28
Speaker 1: Saturday night and then cursing the blues man every Sunday morning.
17:32
Speaker 1: Religion was a joke. Why worship a god that didn't
17:34
Speaker 1: respect you, a God that forced you to live like
17:37
Speaker 1: this under the threat of the rope from the white
17:39
Speaker 1: man under Jim Crow, a god who was spiteful. Robert
17:43
Speaker 1: ran this wrap regularly, to the point where his friends
17:45
Speaker 1: he'd made started to distance himselves from him, but not Ike.
17:49
Speaker 1: Ike kept Robert close. Robert told Ike flat out he
17:54
Speaker 1: hated God for as much as he knew he was
17:57
Speaker 1: the devil. Ike paid Robert to anger no service. He
18:01
Speaker 1: simply kept playing guitar. Robert Newyke's tutelage was the key,
18:06
Speaker 1: the key for him to get better, and getting better
18:08
Speaker 1: was key to making a recording engagement. Ike was straight
18:12
Speaker 1: as an arrow in most ways, with the exception of
18:14
Speaker 1: one peculiar habit. He practiced out at the graveyard, so
18:22
Speaker 1: that's where Robert Johnson practiced too. Robert set up on
18:26
Speaker 1: one of the newer greystones and began to play. The
18:29
Speaker 1: wind picked up on top of the time. Robert kept
18:32
Speaker 1: with his foot, his hand stretched effortlessly over the neck
18:35
Speaker 1: of his guitar, his voice spread out in a melodic wail,
18:39
Speaker 1: and the moonlight painted shadows and small pools around Robert's feet.
18:44
Speaker 1: He felt at peace, his inner turmoil momentarily quelled by song,
18:49
Speaker 1: his song, And then a hound in the distance broke
18:54
Speaker 1: Robert's concentration, a hell hound giving chase to some unlucky soul.
18:59
Speaker 1: Robert new where this would end. He'd heard this racist
19:02
Speaker 1: rift played before. It was a distraction at the exact
19:05
Speaker 1: wrong time, just when he was getting somewhere. He could
19:09
Speaker 1: feel it, feel himself getting better. He needed to pull
19:12
Speaker 1: on that thread, see where it led, see where it
19:15
Speaker 1: would take him, and see what he would become. Robert
19:18
Speaker 1: needed privacy, a place where he could play uninterrupted. I
19:22
Speaker 1: told him about a spot. It was way out of town,
19:26
Speaker 1: but quiet. The moon flooded out this peculiar spot with
19:30
Speaker 1: just enough light, and there were no trees, most important,
19:34
Speaker 1: no passengers, no parents, no God fearing judgment, and no hounds.
19:41
Speaker 1: But what there was plenty of was opportunity. On the
19:45
Speaker 1: right night, on a night like this, under a full moon,
19:48
Speaker 1: there was a bargain to be had. All Robert out
19:51
Speaker 1: of do was head down to that spot and play
19:54
Speaker 1: down to the crossroads. We'll be right back after this
20:01
Speaker 1: word word were When Robert Johnson returned to Rambling after
20:12
Speaker 1: his stint with Ike Zimmerman, his tutelage at the Cemetery,
20:16
Speaker 1: and his fabled visit to one of the Delta's many
20:18
Speaker 1: outlying crossroads. He was, by all accounts from every musician
20:23
Speaker 1: who knew him, and from anyone who'd ever heard him
20:25
Speaker 1: perform in one of the Mississippi or Memphis jukes before
20:29
Speaker 1: a changed man. Just ask Sunhouse, that is, if you
20:34
Speaker 1: could find him at one piece. His lifeless body was
20:37
Speaker 1: prone on the juke's wide wooden floorboards, his severed head
20:40
Speaker 1: a few feet removed from the body, having rolled over
20:43
Speaker 1: to the side of the room, but still with a
20:46
Speaker 1: clear view of young Robert Johnson on the jukes makeshift stage,
20:50
Speaker 1: making quick devastating work of the audience. Sonhouse's head blasted
20:55
Speaker 1: a vicious trail of curses ending with Robert Johnson and
20:59
Speaker 1: his deal. Robert took that guitar with his massive hands
21:04
Speaker 1: and bent it to his will. He rocked, he rolled simultaneously.
21:08
Speaker 1: He played the rhythm and the melody, both parts at
21:11
Speaker 1: the same time, along with the bass part two. He
21:14
Speaker 1: needed no accompaniment. Sonhouse's head was.
21:17
Speaker 2: Livid, mandamn, my motherfucking ass.
21:22
Speaker 1: Robert used the guitar to fashion the sound of Adelta
21:25
Speaker 1: orchestra in his own two hands. His sound was fuller
21:29
Speaker 1: and more realized than anything Sunhouse or anyone in the
21:32
Speaker 1: room had heard before. Motherfuckers could played for this bullshit.
21:36
Speaker 1: Robert connected. He worked his own tunes with immediate effect,
21:41
Speaker 1: creating what seemed to be instant hits. Come on in
21:44
Speaker 1: my Kitchen, traveling Riverside Blues and cross road Blues. Sonhouse's
21:49
Speaker 1: head thought that last one, rich Blues ain't the battle.
21:55
Speaker 1: Motherfucker went out, come back as a head cut. Robert
21:59
Speaker 1: sprinkled in audience favorites, and the place went wild. Songs
22:03
Speaker 1: by blind Willie McTell, Lonnie Johnson, even by country singer
22:07
Speaker 1: Jimmy Rodgers. Then standards in different styles, ragtime waltz, is
22:12
Speaker 1: even a fucking polka, just to make them all fall out.
22:15
Speaker 1: Sonhouse's head couldn't believe what it was seeing Robert's style,
22:18
Speaker 1: his technique, his execution, all his shit and one bag.
22:23
Speaker 1: His hands moved like lightning up and down the neck,
22:25
Speaker 1: augmented seven nights, diminish and all with that steady rhythm
22:29
Speaker 1: under everything, and stinging melody up on top. Robert Johnson's
22:33
Speaker 1: playing was in a word everything. Sonhouse's head had seen enough.
22:40
Speaker 1: What was powerless to do anything. It's not like it
22:43
Speaker 1: had legs. He could just walk away, nor could it
22:45
Speaker 1: just roll itself on out of the joint. All he
22:47
Speaker 1: could do was squint it's eyes shut and protest and
22:50
Speaker 1: curse the devil as he saw him. Motherfucker, wasn't sho
22:54
Speaker 1: roads shit, don't walker pus the first on his Lemont
23:00
Speaker 1: Johnson heard nothing, kept playing himself, possessed, the audience hypnotized.
23:07
Speaker 1: He had the entire juke in his grasp. The dance
23:10
Speaker 1: floor was full, men were in awe, women were enthralled.
23:14
Speaker 1: Everyone drank more, Everyone got on their grind. Saturday night
23:18
Speaker 1: felt a little looser, the sweat tasted a little sweeter.
23:21
Speaker 1: Sunday morning seemed a long ways off, and Sunhouse was fucked.
23:27
Speaker 1: Robert Johnson had cut his head off. Having one's head
23:33
Speaker 1: cut off, or more to the point, cutting one's head off,
23:36
Speaker 1: was a Delta blues tradition quote unquote. Cutting heads was
23:40
Speaker 1: the practice of one perpetrating blues man showing up at
23:43
Speaker 1: another blues man's gig, coming on all friendly, talking himself
23:47
Speaker 1: onto the stage to give the other player whose gig
23:50
Speaker 1: it was a much needed rest, and then playing so
23:53
Speaker 1: well that the audience then wanted to hear the perpetrating
23:56
Speaker 1: blues man, and only the perpetrating blues man, rendering the
24:00
Speaker 1: original bluesman whose gig it was in the first place,
24:02
Speaker 1: out of a job wherein the headcutter would make the
24:05
Speaker 1: money the original performer was supposed to make. As an
24:09
Speaker 1: experienced bluesman. Sunhouse had done this many times, cut someone's
24:14
Speaker 1: head as an inexperienced bluesman. Robert Johnson had this done
24:19
Speaker 1: to him many times, had his head cut. But those
24:23
Speaker 1: days were over. Tonight was a proclamation there was a
24:27
Speaker 1: new player in town. Sunhouse learned the hard way. Sunhouse
24:33
Speaker 1: knew what was up. No one goes out of town
24:35
Speaker 1: one day to fuck off in the country and comes
24:37
Speaker 1: back the next as the greatest bluesman the Delta has
24:39
Speaker 1: ever seen without getting a leg out from mister Jake
24:41
Speaker 1: Legg himself, the devil. Sunhouse knew all about the myth
24:45
Speaker 1: of the Crossroads, that fabled Delta outpost where blues men
24:48
Speaker 1: would exchange their eternal souls with satan for earthly fame
24:52
Speaker 1: and pleasures beyond one's imagination. But Sunhouse never believed it,
24:56
Speaker 1: not until tonight, not until seeing what Robert Johnson had
24:59
Speaker 1: turned in to a beast. From on stage, Robert Johnson
25:04
Speaker 1: could see son House looking on in disbelief. Fuck him,
25:08
Speaker 1: serves him right to suffer. He never believed in Robert.
25:11
Speaker 1: No one did Son, not any of the other players,
25:14
Speaker 1: his stepdad, Virginia's parents, none of them, and least of
25:17
Speaker 1: all God. God never offered him nothing. God cursed him,
25:22
Speaker 1: took his family, took his wife, his baby. Fuck God.
25:27
Speaker 1: Now it was Robert Johnson's time to take. Robert was
25:30
Speaker 1: going to take why he was owed on stage, He
25:34
Speaker 1: basked in what was finally his greatness. No longer the meek,
25:38
Speaker 1: struggling musician at his young age and with little to
25:41
Speaker 1: no training, certainly no formal training, he had become a killer,
25:46
Speaker 1: vanquishing the blues master himself Son House from the stage.
25:50
Speaker 1: It felt good. Robert enjoyed the feeling. Being bad felt good.
25:56
Speaker 1: And now Robert needed to take his bad self nationwide,
26:00
Speaker 1: a recording contract, a record, and then real fame and
26:04
Speaker 1: real success. Robert Johnson woke up in a strange woman's bed,
26:13
Speaker 1: and the next day he did the same in a
26:14
Speaker 1: different town. He woke up with a different woman a
26:18
Speaker 1: day after that the same thing. And there were many towns,
26:21
Speaker 1: over many days, and many women, and the women had
26:24
Speaker 1: one thing in common, and it was that they had
26:26
Speaker 1: nothing in common. Robert Johnson didn't discriminate beautiful, ugly, fat, skinny, young, old, married, single,
26:33
Speaker 1: None of it mattered. Robert worked women the way he
26:36
Speaker 1: worked the rails as a means to an end. In
26:39
Speaker 1: this case, it was sheltered from the storm, a place
26:42
Speaker 1: to lay his head while he traveled from Mississippi to
26:44
Speaker 1: Texas for his first recording engagement. Robert Johnson arrived in
26:49
Speaker 1: San Antonio, Texas on November twenty second, nineteen thirty six,
26:53
Speaker 1: and promptly got down to business, setting up shot by
26:56
Speaker 1: the Southern Pacific Railroad Depot to make a little extra coin.
27:00
Speaker 1: Playing on the street before hitting the studio, Robert quickly
27:04
Speaker 1: drew a crowd. He lit them up with his brand
27:06
Speaker 1: of country blues, and then Robert's lights went out, a
27:11
Speaker 1: sudden thlop to the back of his head in immediate darkness.
27:16
Speaker 1: When Robert opened his eyes, he was in a San
27:19
Speaker 1: Antonio cell arrested on charges of vagrancy and judging from
27:23
Speaker 1: the bump on his head and his sore ribs. He
27:26
Speaker 1: must have caught a beating to boot. The vagrancy charge
27:30
Speaker 1: was bullshit. Some square jown, Texas good old boy cop
27:33
Speaker 1: didn't like the cut of Robert's deablish jib and decided
27:36
Speaker 1: to knock him down a peger two. Robert was released
27:39
Speaker 1: into the custody of a white man named Don Law,
27:41
Speaker 1: who was tasked by Vocalian Records with getting Robert's songs
27:45
Speaker 1: down on record, and the two quickly headed to the
27:48
Speaker 1: Gunter Hotel, where Law had a makeshift recording studio set
27:51
Speaker 1: up in two rooms on the fourth floor, one room
27:54
Speaker 1: for the musician in the microphone and the other for
27:57
Speaker 1: the engineers in the recording equipment. And there was a
28:00
Speaker 1: window on the door that separated both rooms where the
28:02
Speaker 1: engineers could look in on and communicate with the musician.
28:06
Speaker 1: Robert sat on a chair alone in the room, waiting
28:09
Speaker 1: for the signal from the engineers to start playing. He
28:12
Speaker 1: got it, and then he did something neither engineer had
28:16
Speaker 1: ever seen before in all their combined experience. Robert Johnson stood,
28:22
Speaker 1: repositioned his microphone, and turned his chair around so that
28:25
Speaker 1: it faced the wall, so that it faced the exact
28:28
Speaker 1: opposite direction of the engineers. He then sat and began
28:32
Speaker 1: to perform. Robert Johnson was no dummy. He knew that
28:36
Speaker 1: his style was unique. He knew that the world was
28:39
Speaker 1: full of headcutters and thieves, and he wasn't about to
28:41
Speaker 1: let two white engineers he barely knew have a front
28:44
Speaker 1: row lesson on how to play guitar Like Robert Johnson,
28:47
Speaker 1: his highly effective and unique guitar playing technique would remain
28:50
Speaker 1: a secret even if the white men were capturing his
28:53
Speaker 1: music on record. The move had the added but unintended
28:57
Speaker 1: benefit of altering Robert's saund facing away from the engineers
29:02
Speaker 1: and directly toward the corner of the hotel room. The
29:05
Speaker 1: sound he generated bounced off of the hotels two adjoining
29:08
Speaker 1: hotel room walls to create a bigger, more dynamic sound.
29:12
Speaker 1: The results speak for themselves. Robert Johnson's first recordings there
29:19
Speaker 1: are some of the most compelling recordings of all time.
29:22
Speaker 1: Kind Hearted Woman, Blues, Terra Play, Blues, Last Fair Deal,
29:26
Speaker 1: Gone Down. These songs, along with all of Robert Johnson's songs,
29:31
Speaker 1: defy logic. They drive, they groove, they hurt, they inspire,
29:35
Speaker 1: and their construction is nearly impossible to visualize. How is
29:39
Speaker 1: one man making all of that glorious sound at the
29:43
Speaker 1: same time, in one sitting with one instrument. You can't
29:47
Speaker 1: understand it, but at the same time know it's the
29:49
Speaker 1: coolest thing you've ever heard. Robert Johnson's songs deliver you
29:53
Speaker 1: from wherever it is you're stuck. They unlock another place
29:56
Speaker 1: in time to which you believe only you have entry.
29:59
Speaker 1: As a teenager, when I first heard Robert Johnson, I
30:02
Speaker 1: felt like I was being let in on a secret,
30:04
Speaker 1: something dangerous, something no one else I knew could possibly understand.
30:08
Speaker 1: His music makes you feel singular. It's that same feeling
30:12
Speaker 1: you get when you're being whisked backstage at a show
30:15
Speaker 1: under the envious eyes of all the other concert cours.
30:18
Speaker 1: Robert Johnson's songs are a ticket in first class, an
30:21
Speaker 1: invitation to an unknown back room where only the most
30:24
Speaker 1: interesting people hang out and only the most exciting things happen.
30:28
Speaker 1: This feeling of being let in on something special is
30:31
Speaker 1: perhaps what contributed to the success of these songs. Maybe
30:34
Speaker 1: I don't know. All I do know is that immediately
30:37
Speaker 1: upon their release, Robert Johnson's music made an impact and
30:41
Speaker 1: in the pre pop star days of the music business.
30:44
Speaker 1: They made Robert Johnson a success. The relative fame suited him.
30:51
Speaker 1: The notoriety hardened him finally into the professional musician he
30:55
Speaker 1: always knew he was destined to become. Any remaining ideas
31:00
Speaker 1: about family or some other sort of more traditional life
31:02
Speaker 1: involving someone else's crops and a plow were dead dead
31:07
Speaker 1: by the time Robert Johnson turned twenty five years old
31:10
Speaker 1: and released his first recordings in January of nineteen thirty seven,
31:15
Speaker 1: Robert traveled more beyond the South, all the way to
31:18
Speaker 1: Chicago and New York. His reputation preceded him everywhere he went.
31:23
Speaker 1: He weaponized his music on stage, he killed off stage.
31:29
Speaker 1: He took whatever spoils, usually in the form of women,
31:31
Speaker 1: that he could. Robert embraced the image of the bad man,
31:35
Speaker 1: the low down bluesman. Columbia Records John Hammon the Second
31:40
Speaker 1: took an interest in Robert and wrote under a pseudonym
31:43
Speaker 1: that he was more authentic than fame blues musician in
31:45
Speaker 1: ex convict Leadbelly, who, in Hammon's estimation, was now nothing
31:50
Speaker 1: more than a poser justin Alan Lomack's fabrication. Compared to
31:54
Speaker 1: the authenticity of Robert Johnson. Robert could only grin the
31:58
Speaker 1: interest in Robert from Hammond in Columbia. The opportunity that
32:02
Speaker 1: represented was almost to blur. Everything just seemed to be
32:06
Speaker 1: moving so fast, and like the many trains he hawked,
32:12
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty seven, was full steam ahead for Robert Johnson,
32:16
Speaker 1: doubling down on one guttun to this point himself, low down, crude,
32:21
Speaker 1: increasingly drunk, and violent, Robert kept up his crusade against God,
32:26
Speaker 1: cursing him out in the company of his friends, with
32:28
Speaker 1: or without the drink, so much so that acquaintances increasingly
32:32
Speaker 1: stopped hanging around with Robert for fear they'd be struck down.
32:36
Speaker 1: And Robert also kept up his pursuit of women on
32:38
Speaker 1: a nightly basis, and more often than not these days,
32:41
Speaker 1: with married women. Robert had no respect for the ring,
32:45
Speaker 1: no respect for God's vows. God had given him nothing,
32:50
Speaker 1: Robert Johnson, Oh God, not a single thing. No. Robert
32:55
Speaker 1: Johnson had another debt entirely for the upstanding citizens of
33:24
Speaker 1: Baptist Town in Greenwood, Mississippi. To even hear the blues
33:28
Speaker 1: whistled was enough to make them shut their windows and
33:30
Speaker 1: lock their doors. The sight of the notorious bluesman Robert
33:34
Speaker 1: Johnson strolling down their main street was enough to cause
33:38
Speaker 1: legitimate shock and some Robert knew what he was looking for,
33:43
Speaker 1: the little girl, Tush Hogg's daughter. Robert tracked it down
33:47
Speaker 1: at the Three Forks juke out by the crossing of
33:50
Speaker 1: Highways eighty two and forty nine, and when he did,
33:54
Speaker 1: Robert learned that tush Hog's baby girl had nothing on
33:57
Speaker 1: the older, more experienced Beatrice, the wife of a Three
34:01
Speaker 1: Forks bartender. The fact that Beatrice was married mattered none
34:05
Speaker 1: to Robert. He quickly turned on the charm, used all
34:08
Speaker 1: his powers to seduce Beatrice, and it worked. Robert set
34:12
Speaker 1: up shop in Greenwood, performing at the Three Forks in
34:15
Speaker 1: the evening and stealing away to shack up with Beatrice
34:18
Speaker 1: during the day. Rumors spread, the bluesman is up to
34:22
Speaker 1: no good. Beatrice is shaming her husband. Robert Johnson got
34:26
Speaker 1: the devil in him. She ain't never going to show
34:28
Speaker 1: her face in church again. Oh, Robert Johnson is a bad,
34:31
Speaker 1: bad man. It wasn't long before the rumors reached Beatrice's husband,
34:37
Speaker 1: a man who went by the name r D. R
34:41
Speaker 1: D played it cool like a snake, lying in the cut,
34:44
Speaker 1: biting his time, ready to attack the most opportune moment
34:48
Speaker 1: when his victim least expected it, when his victim was
34:51
Speaker 1: at his most comfortable. And that's precisely where Robert Johnson
34:56
Speaker 1: was at the moment on August thirteenth, nineteen thirty eight,
35:00
Speaker 1: on stage, as comfortable a place for the musician as
35:03
Speaker 1: anywhere else on God's Green Earth, made even more comfortable
35:07
Speaker 1: by the steady flow of drinks Beatrice was bringing him
35:10
Speaker 1: during his set. While Robert performed at the Duke and
35:13
Speaker 1: the crowd jumped, r D slung drinks from behind the bar,
35:17
Speaker 1: including to his wife, Beatrice, who steadily served them to
35:20
Speaker 1: her not so secret lover, the bluesman on stage, Robert Johnson.
35:26
Speaker 1: Brother Robert, nor Beatrice were wise to the vengeful intentions
35:29
Speaker 1: of the man behind the bar. At around eleven PM,
35:33
Speaker 1: with Robert Johnson lit up in the head and lighting
35:35
Speaker 1: up the audience in the juke, r D gave Beatrice
35:39
Speaker 1: another jar of corn liquor to give to Robert, and
35:42
Speaker 1: prior to doing so, r D dissolved in the liquor
35:45
Speaker 1: numerous mothballs containing the tasteless, colorless and odorless poison. Naphthlene.
35:52
Speaker 1: Robert drank the poison concoction between sets and immediately felt
35:56
Speaker 1: something go terribly wrong. He slouched in his chair, the
36:00
Speaker 1: room bent, the audience's pleased for him to continue to perform,
36:04
Speaker 1: fell deaf on his ears, his stomach contorted with sharp pain,
36:09
Speaker 1: and the last thing he remembered was sliding out of
36:11
Speaker 1: his chair and on to the floor of the Duke.
36:14
Speaker 1: Robert Johnson woke up in his hotel room and vomited violently,
36:18
Speaker 1: howling like one of those furious hellhounds in pain, coughing
36:22
Speaker 1: up blood, spitting up bits of his tornesophagus, hemorrhaging over
36:26
Speaker 1: and over again, until finally giving into the pain and
36:29
Speaker 1: giving into this world completely. Robert Johnson died alone with himself,
36:37
Speaker 1: with the devil. Robert Johnson did not die because of
36:41
Speaker 1: the devil. There was no fostering bargain that felled the Bluesman,
36:45
Speaker 1: as the famous myth goes that Robert Johnson died at
36:48
Speaker 1: the age of twenty seven because he made a deal
36:50
Speaker 1: with the devil and that demonic debt had come due. No,
36:54
Speaker 1: Robert Johnson did not make a deal with the devil.
36:57
Speaker 1: Robert Johnson was the devil. Both options are equally ridiculous,
37:04
Speaker 1: and both options are equally unprovable. Sure, you could say
37:09
Speaker 1: that there was no way a blues player was evil
37:11
Speaker 1: incarnate Satan himself here on earth, but you can't actually
37:14
Speaker 1: prove that he wasn't either. From a young age, Robert
37:18
Speaker 1: Johnson's spurn church, hated religion, cursed god. He lived unscrupulously,
37:23
Speaker 1: coveted women regardless of their age or marital status, wrote
37:27
Speaker 1: and sang songs filled with voodoo imagery with particular homage
37:30
Speaker 1: paid to Satan, over and over again, and most famously,
37:34
Speaker 1: Robert Johnson had an unexplainable otherworldly talent that his mortal
37:38
Speaker 1: contemporaries couldn't come close to replicating, a talent that to
37:43
Speaker 1: this day, nearly one hundred years later, is as spellbinding
37:47
Speaker 1: as it was when it first came to be. On
37:50
Speaker 1: the other hand, maybe Robert Johnson wasn't the actual devil,
37:53
Speaker 1: but instead maybe the devil was just always there with
37:57
Speaker 1: Robert Johnson, there in the stories about his kin in
38:01
Speaker 1: the briar with his mother's first husband, on the end
38:04
Speaker 1: of a blade, on the end of the hanging rope,
38:07
Speaker 1: on the hot breath of the hell hounds. There in
38:10
Speaker 1: the plantation feels writing hidemost on the sharecropper's plow. There
38:14
Speaker 1: in that little girl's smile, on the lips of her
38:17
Speaker 1: judgmental parents. There out in the cemetery wind, under the crossroads,
38:21
Speaker 1: moon out on the rails, and in the jukes on
38:24
Speaker 1: the face of Sunhouse's head, at the end of the
38:26
Speaker 1: Texas Cops billy Club, in the dark corner of a
38:29
Speaker 1: San Antonio hotel room, on the minds of opportunistic recordman
38:34
Speaker 1: in his lyrics, between the thighs of a married juke
38:37
Speaker 1: joint bartender's woman, and finally at the bottom of a
38:41
Speaker 1: poisoned jar of corn liquor. As far as Robert Johnson's
38:46
Speaker 1: life was concerned, the Devil was everywhere, and myth or
38:50
Speaker 1: no myth, the devil's outsized influence most definitely brought upon
38:55
Speaker 1: the immensely talented bluesman's early demise. And that is a disgrace.
39:02
Speaker 1: I'm Jake Brennan, and this is disgrace.
39:06
Speaker 2: Slam Disgraceland was created by Yours Truly and is produced
39:21
Speaker 2: in partnership with Double Elvis.
39:23
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39:25
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39:29
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40:08
Speaker 1: Rock a Roller, He's a bad don man.