Blind Willie Johnson

"Blind" Willie Johnson
File:BlindWillieJohnson.jpg
Background information
Also known as	"Blind" Willie "Blind" Texas Marlin The Blind Pilgrim
Died	September 18, 1945(1945-09-18) (aged 48)
Genres	Blues, Gospel
Occupation(s)	Preacher, Musician
Instrument(s)	Guitar

"Blind" Willie Johnson (January 22, 1897 – September 18, 1945) was an American singer and guitarist whose music straddled the border between blues and spirituals. While the lyrics of all of his songs were religious, his music drew from both sacred and blues traditions. Among musicians, he is considered one of the greatest slide or bottleneck guitarists, as well as one of the most revered figures of depression-era gospel music. His music is distinguished by his powerful bass thumb-picking and gravelly false-bass voice, with occasional use of a tenor voice.

Life

Blind Willie Johnson, according to his death certificate, was born in 1897 near Brenham, Texas (before the discovery of his death certificate, Temple, Texas had been suggested as his birthplace). When he was five, he told his father he wanted to be a preacher, and then made himself a cigar box guitar. His mother died when he was young and his father remarried soon after her death.

Johnson was not born blind, and, although it is not known how he lost his sight, Angeline Johnson told Samuel Charters that when Willie was seven his father beat his stepmother after catching her going out with another man. The stepmother then picked up a handful of lye and threw it, not at Willie's father, but into the face of young Willie.

It is thought that Johnson was married at least twice, once to a woman with the same first name, Willie B Harris, and later to a young singer named Angeline. Johnson was also said to be married to a sister of blues artist, L.C. Robinson. No marriage certificates have yet been discovered. As Angeline Johnson often sang and performed with him, the first person to attempt to research his biography, Samuel Charters, made the mistake of assuming it was Angeline who had sung on several of Johnson's records. However, later research showed that it was Johnson's first wife.

Johnson remained poor until the end of his life, preaching and singing in the streets of Beaumont, Texas. A city directory shows that in 1945, a Rev W J Johnson, undoubtedly Blind Willie, operated the House of Prayer at 1440 Forrest Street, Beaumont, Texas. This is the same address listed on Blind Willie's death certificate. In 1945, his home burned to the ground. With nowhere else to go, Johnson lived in the burned ruins of his home, sleeping on a wet bed in the August/September Texas heat. He lived like this until he contracted malarial fever and died. (The death certificate reports the cause of death as malarial fever, with syphilis and blindness as contributing factors.) In a later interview his wife, Angeline, said she tried to take him to a hospital but they refused to admit him because he was black, while other sources report that, according to Johnson's wife, his refusal was due to his blindness. Although there is some dispute as to where his exact grave location is, Blanchette Cemetery (which is the cemetery listed on the death certificate but location previously unknown) was officially located by two researchers in 2009. In 2010, those same researchers erected a monument to Johnson in the cemetery, but his exact gravesite remains unknown.

Musical career

His father would often leave him on street corners to sing for money. Tradition has it that he was arrested for nearly starting a riot at a New Orleans courthouse with a powerful rendition of If I Had My Way I'd Tear The Building Down, a song about Samson and Delilah. According to Samuel Charters, however, he was simply arrested while singing for tips in front of a Custom House, by a police officer who misconstrued the title lyric and mistook it for incitement. Timothy Beal argues that the officer did not, in fact, misconstrue the meaning of the song, but that "the ancient story suddenly sounded dangerously contemporary" to him.

Johnson made 30 commercial recording studio record sides in five separate sessions for Columbia Records from 1927–1930. On some of these recordings Johnson uses a fast rhythmic picking style, while on others he plays slide guitar. According to a reputed one-time acquaintance, Blind Willie McTell (1898–1959), Johnson played with a brass ring, although other sources cite him using a knife. However, in enlargement, the only known photograph of Johnson seems to show that there is an actual bottleneck on the little finger of his left hand. While his other fingers are apparently fretting the strings, his little finger is extended straight—which also suggests there is a slide on it as well.

Some of Johnson's most famous recordings include Jesus Make Up My Dying Bed (later covered as In My Time of Dying on later recordings), the stirring It's Nobody's Fault but Mine, his rendition of the famous gospel song Let Your Light Shine On Me, as well as the raw, powerful Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground, where he sings in wordless hum and moans about the crucifixion of Jesus. This song was a "moaning" piece related to the Bentonia school of blues practiced by such "eerie voiced" artists as Skip James and Robert Johnson. On 14 of his recordings he is accompanied by Willie B Harris or an as-yet-unidentified female singer. This group of recordings includes Church I'm Fully Saved Today, John the Revelator, You'll Need Somebody on Your Bond, Soul of a Man, and Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning.

Legacy

Johnson's records have become tremendously influential and his songs have been covered by several popular artists, including Led Zeppelin. However, contrary to popular belief, Johnson is not featured on the album cover of Led Zeppelin II. Other artists who have covered Johnson include Bob Dylan, The 77s, Beck, The Blasters, Phil Keaggy and The White Stripes (who have covered John the Revelator, as well as covering Motherless Children Have A Hard Time and Lord, I Just Can't Keep From Cryin' live). Billy Childish has covered John the Revelator with his band The Buff Medways and it was a staple of their live performances. John the Revelator was also recorded by delta blues musician Son House, and Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning was recorded by another delta blues musician, Fred McDowell. Eric Clapton did Motherless Children, Bob Dylan turned Johnson's Jesus Make Up My Dying Bed into In My Time of Dying on his 1962 debut LP and If I Had My Way I'd Tear The Building Down has been appropriated by everyone from the Grateful Dead to the Staple Singers.

If I Had My Way I'd Tear The Building Down was recorded by Peter, Paul, and Mary; retitled as Samson and Delilah. The song was frequently performed by the Grateful Dead and appears on their studio album Terrapin Station; Gary Davis also recorded a version; and Bruce Springsteen has performed a version of the song live with the Seeger Sessions Band. In the opening scene of the second season of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Shirley Manson sings a version of this song. Nobody's Fault But Mine has also been covered by Mason Jennings, Nina Simone, and was modified by Led Zeppelin. Nick Cave has performed John the Revelator live, and based his song City of Refuge, from his band the Bad Seeds' 1988 album Tender Prey, on Johnson's song of the same title. Many of Johnson's songs were recorded in the late 1980s by gospel blues musicians Glenn Kaiser and Darrell Mansfield, on their album Trimmed & Burnin.

In 1991 Bruce Cockburn covered Soul of a Man on his album Nothing But A Burning Light, the title of which is a line from the same song. In 1994 Ben Harper added a short cover excerpt of By and By I'm Going To See The King as a hidden track on his debut album Welcome to the Cruel World. Trouble Soon be Over was covered by Colin Linden on the album Easin' Back to Tennessee. In 2003 Deep Sea Records issued a Johnson tribute album called Dark Was the Night, featuring artists such as Martin Simpson, Gary Lucas, Mary Margaret O'Hara and Jody Stecher. Dark was the Night was also included on the Voyager Spacecraft Interstellar Mission which has left our Solar System, this event was mentioned, along with a clip of the song, on The West Wing episode The Warfare of Genghis Khan. Segments of several performances by Blind Willie Johnson are used as interludes on the 2010 album We Walk This Road by Robert Randolph and the Family Band.

See also

• The Ladykillers Soundtrack

References

• Charters, Samuel (1959). The Country Blues. United Kingdom: Jazz Book Club. — Some facts in the book are at variance with those given in this article and may represent an earlier stage of research
• Blakey, D. N. (2007). Revelation Blind Willie Johnson; The Biography: The Man, the Words, the Music. ISBN 1430328991.

External links

• MP3 Audio Files of Songs by Blind Willie Johnson on the Internet Archive