Mississippi Delta blues artist. Possibly America’s finest blues poet, Johnson is the best
known, if least understood, practitioner of down-home blues. Under the tutelage of
various lesser-known musicians, he mastered his local tradition, eventually blossoming
into one of the preeminent regional guitar stylists. According to his contemporaries, he
possessed a “phonographic” memory that allowed him to re-create the musical phrases
and songs he heard on the radio and on phonograph recordings or from other local
performers. Influenced by various recording artists, particularly Lonnie Johnson, he
expanded the local tradition, creating an innovative personal style. Adept at synthesis, he
could cover other artists’ songs, but he also possessed the ability to transpose musical
phrases or techniques associated with instruments such as the piano to the guitar.
Credited with instrumental innovations—the use of a repeated bass figure as a
rhythmic foundation and the turnaround, or “get back,” a rhythmic melodic phrase that
seamlessly bridges blues verses—Johnson was fiercely jealous of his techniques, and he
tried to keep them from other musicians. Nevertheless, these techniques were quickly
absorbed into tradition as were many of his compositions. In 1936 and 1937, he recorded
twenty-nine songs, including “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom” and “Sweet Home
Chicago,” both of which showcase his guitar innovations and remain favorites of his
traditional audience.
Like his guitar playing, Johnson’s songs have the modern feel of single poetic units.
Johnson traveled much of the country, ranging from Texas to New York, St. Louis, and
Canada. Initially typecast as a naive country musician, he was a musical genius
determined to make records. Unfortunately, well-meaning critics, writing for bluesrevival audiences, have fostered an image of him as a loner or outsider whose skills
derive from supernatural sources rather than from his community traditions and his own
artistic vision. These romantic stereotypes helped sell reissues of his recordings in the
1960s and in 1990, but they have also clouded our understanding of Johnson’s life and
work. In 1994 Robert Johnson’s face appeared on a 29-cent U.S. post-age stamp, but
minus a cigarette that appears in the photo from which the stamp design was derived.
Barry Lee Pearson
References
Charters, Samuel. 1973. Robert Johnson. New York: Oak Publications.
Guralnick, Peter. 1989. Searching for Robert Johnson. New York: Dutton.