Robert Johnson

Phil cotton color a écrit:

en tout cas, cette légende, même si elle y participe un tout petit peu, n'explique certainement pas que Robert Johnson soit devenu l'icône du Blues pour le cercle des amateurs blancs du genre, et ce des années après !

1936/37 ses enregistrements , pas de quoi en faire une légende je le conçois, mais ses blues c'est quand même quelque chose pour l'époque. Un genre de précurseur quoi.

Phil cotton color a écrit:"Visiblement" ? qu'en sait-on vraiment ?

Les différente interviews que j'ai pu lire, notament le livre dont je parlais la dernière fois de Paul Trinka, ou tout ceux qui y font référence donnent une version identique à dire "Robert m'a raconté que ..."

Après comme le dit OD ses Blues restent des trucs assez novateurs et méritaient et mérite encore le détour.
Pas forcément plus que ceux Blind Willie Johnson, Bukka White ou autre mais l'histoire a ses caprices et ses héros ce qui n'a pas forcément à voir avec la vérité.

Mr Bear a écrit:
Pas forcément plus que ceux Blind Willie Johnson, Bukka White ou autre mais l'histoire a ses caprices et ses héros ce qui n'a pas forcément à voir avec la vérité.

Ben dans le cercle des amateurs blancs du genre, si un peu quand même.

Old_Debris a écrit:

Mr Bear a écrit:
Pas forcément plus que ceux Blind Willie Johnson, Bukka White ou autre mais l'histoire a ses caprices et ses héros ce qui n'a pas forcément à voir avec la vérité.

Ben dans le cercle des amateurs blancs du genre, si un peu quand même.

Que veux tu dire, je pense qu'on veut dire la même chose mais pas sûr ...

Les Blues de Johnson pour les amateurs blancs du genre, ont une place plus importante dans leur cœur que ceux Blind Willie Johnson, Bukka White, sans dénigrer ces derniers soyons clair.

Mr Bear a écrit:

Jungleland a écrit:ben le coup du carrefour à priori c'est Tommy Johnson qui avait pipeauté là dessus avant

C'est vrai, j'avais oublié celui là tiens. J'avais découvert ce mec après O Brother en cherchant un éventuel Timmy Johnson ... mémoire, mémoire quand tu n'es pas rafraichie

J'ai toujours lu que l'histoire du mythe du pacte avec le diable venait de Son House. Il y a d'ailleurs une vidéo où il s'exprime sur le sujet. Disant qu'il était effrayé de voir tout ses amis mourir les uns après les autres et c'est pourquoi il s'est éclipsé pendant des décennies jusqu'à sa redécouverte.

Old_Debris a écrit:Les Blues de Johnson pour les amateurs blancs du genre, ont une place plus importante dans leur cœur que ceux Blind Willie Johnson, Bukka White, sans dénigrer ces derniers soyons clair.

Pour ceux qui ne sont pas féru peut être ... et encore ...
Si c'est le cas on parle d'amateur amateur alors.

D'après ce que j'ai pu lire, John Hammond aurait amplement participé à créer le mythe R.J.

Voici ce qu'en disait un certain ''Bluesprof'' sur le blog de Cathie Rhodes ( http://catierhodes.com/2012/06/08/the-grandfather-of-rock-n-roll-part-2/ ) :

''Regarding John Hammond and the “From Spirituals to Swing” Caregie Hall concert. Hammond was really the person who was largely responsible for Johnson becoming a legend and myth.
Hammond had become enthralled with Johnson’s music in 1937, the first year any of his recordings were released. Writing under the pseudonym “Henry Johnson” (the J. and H. of his own name reversed) for the Left-wing magazine New Masses, he produced one of the first (if not the first) reviews of a Johnson record in the March 2, 1937 issue:
“Before closing, we cannot help but call your attention to the greatest Negro blues singer who has cropped up in recent years, Robert Johnson. Recording them in deepest Mississippi, Vocalion has certainly done right by us in the tunes “Last Fair Deal Gone Down” and “Terraplane Blues,” to mention only two of the four sides already released, sung to his own guitar accompaniment. Johnson makes Leadbelly sound like an accomplished poseur.”
Three months later, this time using his real name, he once again extolled Johnson’s music for the New Masses readers:
“…Hot Springs’ (Mississippi) star is still Robert Johnson, who has turned out to be a worker on a Robinsonville, Miss., plantation.”
It was natural for Hammond to want to include Johnson as part of his big show, and indeed, the original promotional ad for the concert, printed in November of 1938, lists Johnson among the performers scheduled to appear. What Hammond didn’t know at the time was that Johnson had died in August. Discovering only three weeks before the concert that Johnson had died, and having already printed Johnson’s name on the programs, Hammond was not to be denied his star’s presence. Instead he created an introduction that would launch Robert Johnson into the realm of myth: inaccurate, but gloriously so.
The lights went down in Carnegie Hall with a single spotlight showing a phonograph sitting on the stage. From out of the wings walked Hammond to give the following speech:
“It is tragic that an American audience could not have been found seven or eight years ago for a concert of this kind. Bessie Smith was still at the height of her career and Joe Smith, probably the greatest trumpet player American music ever knew would still have been around to play obligatos for her… and dozens of other artists could have been there in the flesh. But that audience as well as this one would not have been able to hear Robert Johnson sing and play the blues on his guitar, for at that time Johnson was just an unknown hand on a Robinsonville, Mississippi, plantation.
“Robert Johnson was going to be the big surprise of the evening for this audience at Carnegie Hall. I knew him only from his Vocalion blues records and from the tall, exciting tales the recording engineers and supervisors used to bring about him from the improvised studios in Dallas and San Antonio. I don’t believe Johnson had ever worked as a professional musician anywhere, and it still knocks me over when I think of how lucky it is that a talent like his ever found its way onto phonograph records. Tonight we will have to be content with playing two of his records, the old “Walkin’ Blues,” and the new, unreleased “Preachin’ Blues,” because Robert Johnson died last week at the precise moment when Vocalion scouts finally reached him and told him that he was booked to appear at Carnegie Hall on December 23. He was in his middle twenties and nobody seems to know what caused his death.”
Although Hammond was a masterful manipulator of information, even he probably had little conception of how the words he spoke would lay the foundation for Robert Johnson’s legendary, indeed mythic and iconic status. What is certain, however, is that he consciously shaped that evening’s image of Johnson: from the recordings he chose to play to the information he provided about Johnson’s life.
By the time of the concert fully twenty of Johnson’s recordings had been released. Among those releases were Johnson’s only commercial “hit” Terraplane Blues (selling a modest 5,000 copies), as well as those Johnson compositions that would become legendary and rank among the best known blues “standards”: Cross Road Blues, Sweet Home Chicago, I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom, Hellhound on My Trail, and others. Hammond was well aware of these recordings.
If Hammond was as well-versed in Johnson’s recorded repertoire as evidence suggests one wonders why he chose to play two of Johnson’s lesser works at the opening of the concert? “Walkin’ Blues” and “Preachin’ Blues” (subtitled “Up Jumped the Devil”) were among Johnson’s most derivative pieces; compositions that owed a huge debt to one of Johnson’s mentors, Son House, who recorded songs by the same titles and with similar verses in 1930, six years before Johnson’s first recording session. Johnson’s versions are energetic and enthusiastic, but they were not nearly as adventurous or inventive as his compositions Hellhound on My Trail, or Stones In My Passway, nor as commercial as Terraplane Blues or Kindhearted Woman Blues. So we must ask again, why did Hammond choose Walkin’ Blues and Preachin’ Blues, songs that Vocalion Records thought not even interesting enough to release until three years after they were recorded, one year after Johnson’s death (the two songs were actually released after the “From Spirituals To Swing” concert)?
Part of the answer can be found in how Hammond described Johnson’s replacement – Big Bill Broonzy. Broonzy, already an established recording artist, was described by Hammond as a “primitive blues singer” who “shuffled” onstage. In truth, however, by the time the concert was held Broonzy had been living in Chicago for eighteen years, had recorded over two hundred sides, and wore very fashionable suits. Hammond’s use of Walkin’ Blues and Preachin’ Blues was probably due to an attraction to a “primitive” blues sound. By selecting these two pieces to introduce Johnson to the northern, white, liberal world Hammond would help create a very specific image of what constituted the “true” delta blues as sung by “the greatest Negro blues singer who has cropped up in recent years… (who)… makes Leadbelly sound like an accomplished poseur.” But in addition to helping create a stereotypical idea of the sound of the Delta blues, Hammond also helped create the “myth” of Robert Johnson.
Numerous factual errors in Hammond’s various statements about Johnson can be excused due to a legitimate lack of information or misinterpretation of cultural context. When Hammond states that he didn’t believe Johnson worked as a professional musician and was, rather, a hand on a Mississippi plantation, he was probably thinking within the “professional” musical framework with which he was accustomed. Traveling from juke joint to tavern to house party might not have been what Hammond considered “professional.” How it might have surprised Hammond to learn that during his short lifetime Johnson had actually played as far north as Canada (he actually performed in Detroit and Windsor, Ontario), and as far east as New York and New Jersey, travelling that great distance from the Delta! Johnson was about as “professional” as a “blues musician” could be in the 1930s.
Hammond also largely invented Johnson’s original mythic status with his claim that “Robert Johnson died last week at the precise moment when Vocalion scouts finally reached him and told him that he was booked to appear at Carnegie Hall on December 23.” Hammond certainly must have known that this was not true, but it made a terrifically romantic story. In any event, Hammond’s praise of Johnson’s music and his concoction of a mysterious ethos surrounding him was enough to capture the interest of Hammond’s friend and folk song collector Alan Lomax, whose father John had “discovered” Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter in the early 1930s; the same Leadbelly that Hammond had earlier claimed was made to sound “like an accomplished poseur” by Johnson’s music.
In 1942 Lomax, spurred by this interest, travelled to the Mississippi Delta in search of information about Robert Johnson and in the process “discovered” Son House, Muddy Waters, and our Johnson Centennial Concert’s special guest David “Honeyboy” Edwards. Lomax recorded them all for the now famous Library of Congress recordings. But Lomax also added to Johnson’s myth by finding Johnson’s “mother.” I put “mother” in quotes because the woman who was introduced to Lomax told him “Yessuh, I’s Mary Johnson. And Robert, he my baby son. But Little Robert, he dead.” But in truth, Johnson’s mother’s name was Julia Ann Majors, so we are left with several possibilities: Lomax made the story up, or he was introduced to a woman who only claimed to be Johnson’s mother and was duped. Whether or not he actually met Johnson’s real mother, Lomax added to the myth by insisting that he did and including the following narrative he allegedly collected from her in his seminal book The Land Where The Blues Began:
“I’m mighty happy that someone came to ask about Little Robert. He was a puny baby, but after he could set up, I never had no trouble with him. Always used to be listenin, listenin to the wind or the chickens cluckin in the backyard or me, when I be singin round the house. And he just love church, just love it. Don’t care how long the meetin last, long as they sing every once in a while, Little Robert set on my lap and try to keep time, look like, or hold on to my skirt and sort of jig up and down and laugh and laugh.
I never did have no trouble with him until he got big enough to be round bigger boys and off from home. Then he used to follow all these harp blowers, mandoleen and guitar pickers. Sometime he wouldn come home all night, and whippin never did him no good. First time there’d be somebody pickin another guitar, Little Robert follow um off. Look like he was just bent that way, and couldn help hisself. And the tell me he played the first guitar he pick up; never did have to study it, just knew it.
I used to cry over him, cause I knowed he was playin the devil’s instruments, but Little Robert, he’d show me where I was wrong cause he’d sit home and take his little twenty-five cents harp and blow all these old fashioned church songs of mine till it was better than a meetin and I’d get happy and shout. He was knowed to be the best musicianer in Tunica County, but the more his name got about, the worse I felt, cause I knowed he was gonna git in trouble.
Pretty soon he begun to leave home for a week at a time, but he always brought me some present back. Then he took off for a month at a time. Then he just stayed gone. I knotweed something gonna happen to him. I felt it. And sure enough the word came for me to go to him. First time I ever been off from home, and the last time I’ll go till the Lord call me. And, Lord have mercy, I found my little boy dyin. Some wicked girl or boyfriend had give him poison and wasn no doctor in the world could save him, so they say.
When I went in where he at, he layin up in bed with his guitar crost his breast. Soon’s he saw me, he say, ‘Mama, you all I been waitin for. Here,’ he say, and he give me his guitar, ‘take and hang this on the wall, cause I done pass all that by. That what got me messed up, Mama. It’s the devil’s instrument, just like you said. And I don’t want it no more.’ And he died while I was hangin his guitar on the wall.
‘I don’t want it no more now, Mama, I done put all that by. I yo child now, Mama, and the Lord’s. Yes – the Lord’s child and don’t belong to the devil no more.’ And he pass that way, with his mind on the angels. I know I’m gonna meet him over yonder, clothed in glory. My little Robert, the Lord’s child.”
A romantic story to be sure – the prodigal son, a natural musician who played the devil’s music, being “saved” on his death bed with his mother by his side – but one we now know to be full of factual inaccuracies. Johnson’s first instrument was, in fact, the harp (harmonica), but he was not known to be a natural guitarist. In fact he was so bad at playing guitar that Son House and others used to chase him away when he would pick up their instruments and make nothing but noise on them. Johnson was originally so bad at playing guitar that he disappeared from the Delta for a period of almost a year after being ridiculed for his lack of talent. But when he came back, he could play better than anyone. It was this apparently mysterious and seemingly impossible musical transition that helped give birth to the “selling his soul to the devil” myth, for no one could understand how someone previously so bad could suddenly become so good. What really happened during that year, however, was his apprenticeship to a guitarist named Ike Zimmerman outside of Hazlehurst, Mississippi where Johnson was born, some 240 miles south of Tunica, Mississippi.
As in Lomax’s story, Johnson was, in fact, poisoned by a jealous husband, but Johnson’s real mother was definitely not with him when he died. He died with no family at his side and his half sister Carrie, then living in Memphis, was notified of his death and travelled to Greenwood, Mississippi to give him a decent reburial (he had originally been quickly laid down in a simple pine box by the county).
Nor did Johnson’s real mother live her whole life in Tunica, as claimed in Lomax’s narrative, but rather did a lot of traveling after Johnson’s illegitimate birth in 1911: from Mississippi plantation to plantation, to Memphis, to Crittendon, Arkansas, and then back into Mississippi, living with several different men and marrying at least one of them. But again, another wonderfully romantic tale and grist for further growth of the Johnson myth. The foundations of Robert Johnson as American myth were laid, and when Columbia Records, fueled by the folk/blues music revival of the late 1950s and early 1960s released the 1961 Thesaurus of Classic Jazz album “Robert Johnson: King of the Delta Blues Singers” with sixteen of his recordings heard for the first time since their initial release in the 1930s, Johnson’s iconic status was assured. A whole new generation of young white musicians and fans discovered this acknowledged “king” and the cult that Hammond had started in 1938 was fully born. As Eric Clapton was to say upon hearing the album:
-“It came as a something of a shock to me that there could be anything that powerful… It was as if I were prepared to receive Robert Johnson, almost like a religious experience… I have never found anything more deeply soulful… His music remains the most powerful cry that I think you can find in the human voice.”
There was no questioning of Johnson’s greatness, for it was taken as truth that he was the ultimate and purest example of the Delta blues. Even those people to whom Johnson owed his musical form and style – Son House, Charley Patton and others – took an immediate back seat to his stature. After all, hadn’t John Hammond and others told everyone Johnson was the best? And hadn’t Son House confirmed that Johnson had “sold his soul to the Devil?” And hadn’t Johnson died at the tender age of 27, a promise unfulfilled, one of American culture’s greatest fixations? Johnson, as we were told, had everything: the actual talent and the mythic proportions.
In truth, of course, Johnson was a great artist. His lyrics completely transcended the norm that had been the blues. His imagery could reach into the transcendental. No one else had ever written lyrics like those angst-filled lines in Hellhound On My Trail:
I got to keep movin, I’ve got to keep movin,’
Blues fallin’ down like hail, blues fallin’ down like hail,
And the days keep on worryin’ me
It’s a hellhound on my trail,
Hellhound on my trail,
Hellhound on my trail.
No one else had ever approached the guitar with such a combination of complex intensity and subtle simplicity, both in his chordal arrangements and his slide guitar playing. No one else had ever sung with such personal anguish. No one else had such a mythically short life, shrouded in mystery, around which almost anything was possible. And no one else had someone like John Hammond create such an immediate cult of personality around him the first time he was introduced to a larger, white audience.
Robert Johnson was a great musician, composer, and singer. And as Hammond said in 1938, we are lucky that his voice was preserved on record. But Robert Johnson was also the perfect vehicle for elevation to mythic proportions, and his life, factual or not, as indeed been raised to that status.''

Voici qq détails à propos de sa période d'apprentissage auprès d'Ike Zinnerman (ou Zimmerman): http://www.tdblues.com/2011/10/ike-zimmerman-more-details-around-the-legend/

Ne pas écarter non plus l'hypothèse, avancée par différents musicologues, et dont notre Zomb' (lezombie) faisait état en p10 de ce topic, selon laquelle les enregistrements 78t de R.J. aient pu être gravés à une vitesse plus rapide que ses effectives performances de 1936-37.

Je vous mets en qq liens à ce sujet:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2010/may/27/robert-johnson-blues?commentpage=2#start-of-comments

Steady Rollin' Man: a revolutionary critique of Robert Johnson: http://www.touched.co.uk/press/rjnote.html

http://landownunder.blogspot.fr/2005/01/robert-johnson-on-speed.html

ainsi que la réponse d'Elijah Wald, en supplément :

http://www.elijahwald.com/johnsonspeed.html

A cogiter, malgré tout...

Pas le temps de me pencher là dessus maintenant, surtout en anglais.
En tout cas merci.
De toute façon je préfère Blind Willie Johnson

Vu sur le dernier Blues Magasine.


Je ne savais même pas qu'il avait un fils Robert Johnson. Il attire toujours les convoitises le père Johnson.

décidément rien n'est jamais acquis aux States : en 2004 il avait été reconnu judiciairement comme le seul héritier de RJ

on peut d'ailleurs douter qu'il n'ait eu qu'un seul enfant. Vu sa réputation de chaud lapin et l'absence généralisée d'utilisation de préservatifs à cette époque, il ne m'étonnerait pas qu'il ait d'autres descendants qui s'ignorent

Encore qu'il soit mort relativement jeune et quel est la part de la légende à propos de sa réputation???

dire que certains ne savent meme pas que c'est leur pere cette legende du blues !!

Je ne savais pas qu'il avait reconnu un fils...  

Ce que je regrette dans tout ça, c'est le ramdam qu'on fait sur lui... Ses morceaux sont géniaux, ok, mais à lire des interviews, on ne sait où donner de la tête. Quand Muddy Waters dit qu'il était dans la même salle que lui et qu'il ne l'a pas approché parce qu'il était "dangereux", je trouve que c'est pas très fiable...

Par contre, Alan Lomax a rencontré sa mère dans les années 40 qui parlait de lui comme un enfant sage, qui n'avait jamais d'ennuis mais qui en grandissant a commencé à fréquenter des musiciens et le "diable" (le blues), à s'absenter de longues semaines, jusqu'à ce qu'il revienne chez lui mourant, disant (Alan Lomax cite) : "M'man, je n'attendais que toi. Là, prends cette chose [il tend sa guitare à sa mère] et accroche-la au mur, car c'est du passé tout ça. C'est ce qui m'a embrouillé, M'man. C'est l'instrument du diable, comme t'avais dit. Et j'en veux plus."

On m'a également dit qu'il "gratouillait" sur les instruments de certains musiciens lors de concerts dans des jukes joint et ces derniers se marraient de le voir faire. D'après, ce que j'ai lu, il aurait pris des cours pendant un an avant de revenir avec des compositions et des paroles géniales...

Après, c'est ce qu'en ont fait les bluesmen des années 50, 60.

Personnellement, je pense que la légende est surfaite.

Cette histoire de photos, c'est encore pour touché des royalties, renforcer la légende et toucher encore plus de sous sur les rééditions...

The Guardian révèle que la fameuse troisième photo de Robert Johnson est un faux
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/may/23/robert-johnson-photo-does-not-show-blues-legend-music-experts-say ou http://tinyurl.com/mxsgqjv

RollingPat a écrit:The Guardian révèle que la fameuse troisième photo de Robert Johnson est un faux
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/may/23/robert-johnson-photo-does-not-show-blues-legend-music-experts-say ou http://tinyurl.com/mxsgqjv

Pas inintéressant du tout cet article, encore qu'il ne nous apprend pas grand chose.

Que Robert Johnson ne soit finalement pas sur cette photo, ce n'est pas un scoop et beaucoup le subodoraient depuis longtemps. Que Robert Johnson soit encore "bankable" et que, le concernant, l'aspect financier ait largement pris le pas sur l'aspect musical, là aussi ce n'est pas une découverte et c'est bien là le plus triste concernant un artriste mort il y a presque 80 ans.

Quant au fait que les sociétés ont besoin de légendes, évidemment ! On peut juste regretter que ce soit tombé sur lui, car cela a pour effet à la longue de brouiller complètement l'essentiel, c'est à dire son oeuvre musicale. Mais qu'y faire ? Comme l'auteur de l'article le dit, à sa mort (en fait un peu après quand même... ) Robert Johnson a cessé d'être une personne pour devenir une légende.

Le problème est que quand le poids de la légende atteint ce niveau d'importance, il devient difficile de la dissocier complètement de la musique et de juger cette dernière de façon objective. Et selon la personnalité de chacun, ce décalage peut jouer dans les deux sens.
Je veux dire par là que ce n'est pas parce Robert Johnson est une légende, que son image génère encore pas mal d'argent et que son aura éclipse peu ou prou tous les autres super bluesmen de son époque, que sa musique est forcément géniale ou au contraire forcément surévaluée. On a un peu la même problèmatique avec quelqu'un comme Jimi Hendrix...

Et la musique de Robert Johnson mérite bien mieux que cette légende en carton...

hello

j'écoute les Complete recordings - the centennial collection et j'hallucine : le son a fait un bond en avant.
J'ai eu deux éditions avant celle-là et je n'avais jamais entendu Robert chanté de cette manière, le souffle a reculé et son jeu de guitare n'en ai que plus impressionnant.

A recommander chaudement !

badlieut2002 a écrit:A recommander chaudement !

Avec un Expresso digne de ce nom.

sergio88 a écrit:

badlieut2002 a écrit:A recommander chaudement !

Avec un Expresso digne de ce nom.

tu me l'enlève des lèvres :


un p'tit à la rok sans me prendre la tête...

badlieut2002 a écrit:

hello

j'écoute les Complete recordings - the centennial collection et j'hallucine : le son a fait un bond en avant.
J'ai eu deux éditions avant celle-là et je n'avais jamais entendu Robert chanté de cette manière, le souffle a reculé et son jeu de guitare n'en ai que plus impressionnant.

A recommander chaudement !

J'ai pour ma part l'ancien coffret de 90 :



Me conseillez-vous d'investir dans la dernière mouture de 2011 ?

salut

j'ai eu ce coffret également, ça vaut largement le coup d'acheter la nouvelle mouture, il n'y aura plus le souffle et les grésillements, tout est plus clair.

Tiens donc, une nouvelle photo représentant soi-disant Johnson commence à faire le buzz sur les réseaux sociaux !  

mouais ... la fameuse 3ème photo qui réapparait régulièrement

Oui !
Et en ce moment, ça devient de plus en plus fréquent !