Blind Willie Johnson

For other people named Willie Johnson, see Willie Johnson (disambiguation).

Blind Willie Johnson

"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 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 twice, first to a woman with the same first name, Willie B Harris, and later to a young singer named Angeline, who was the sister of blues guitarist 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 to anyone who would listen. A city directory shows that in 1944, 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 malaria 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 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, in 2009, the Blanchette cemetery was officially located by two researchers. Members of the Beaumont community and researchers are committed to preserving it.

Musical career

His father would often leave him on street corners to sing for money, where his powerful voice left an indelible impression on passers-by. Legend 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.

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 "In My Time of Dying" (identified as "Jesus Make up My Dying Bed" on his 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", and "Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning".

Legacy

His records have kept his music 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. There is only one known photo of Johnson in existence, and it is not the same face as the one shown on the Led album cover), Bob Dylan, The 77s, Beck, 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. In 1968, British group Fairport Convention recorded a cover of "Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground" under the title "The Lord is in this Place...How Dreadful Is This Place". "If I Had My Way I'd Tear the Building Down" was recorded by Peter, Paul, and Mary; retitled as "Samson and Delilah". It was frequently performed by the Grateful Dead and appears on the studio album Terrapin Station; Gary Davis also has recorded a version of the song; 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 the "Blind" Willie song of the same name. In the liner notes of a 2002 record by Derek Bailey, Marc Ribot compared "Dark Was The Night, Cold Was the Ground" to the music of Django Reinhardt and the avant garde guitarist Bailey. Many of his songs, and those of Rev. Gary Davis, 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 in itself 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 CD tribute called Dark was the Night, featuring artists such as Martin Simpson, Gary Lucas, Mary Margaret O'Hara and Jody Stecher.

Johnson's recordings and legacy have crossed over into other media and cultural contexts. Dark Was The Night, Cold Was the Ground was included on the Voyager Golden Record, sent into space with the Voyager spacecraft in 1977; this piece was used in the widely seen science show Cosmos: A Personal Voyage by Carl Sagan in 1980. Blind Willie Johnson's music and life were featured in the 2003 film "The Soul of a Man" by Wim Wenders for the PBS series "The Blues." The film deals extensively with the Voyager spacecraft recording. This recording also got Johnson mentioned on an episode of the television series The West Wing (see "The Warfare of Genghis Khan"); the fictional Deputy White House Chief of Staff Josh Lyman used Johnson's recording to show the depth and soul behind the space program. As mentioned by Lyman, Johnson's music left the solar system on December 16, 2004. Dark Was The Night was the soundtrack for The Warfare of Genghis Khan episode of the West Wing. Dark Was The Night has also been covered by Jack Rose. It was also mentioned in an episode of FlashForward episode Revelation Zero (Part 2) with the same story being told about the music being sent into space.

The song is also used in Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Gospel According to St Matthew; Walk the Line, a biopic of country singer Johnny Cash; and The Devil's Rejects, a serial killer film by rocker Rob Zombie. Ry Cooder, who based his desolate soundtrack to Paris, Texas on "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground", described it as "the most soulful, transcendent piece in all American music."

In 2006 Eric Burdon covered his song "Soul of a Man" for his album Soul of a Man.

In 2007 David Lindley covered "Soul of a Man", on his album 'Big Twang'.

In 2009 4AD put out a compilation CD titled "Dark Was The Night", featuring Kronos Quartet covering the song "Dark Was The Night".

References

• Charters, Samuel (1993). The Complete Blind Willie Johnson, CD booklet. Columbia/Legacy C2K 52835.
• Blakey, D. N. (2007). Revelation Blind Willie Johnson; the biography; the man, the words, the music. ISBN 1430328991
• Charters, Samuel (1959). "The Country Blues" Ch. 12 - published in UK by: Jazz Book Club (1961). Some facts in the book are at variance with those given in this article and may represent an earlier stage of research
• Obek and Ford (2010) "Ain't Got No Home, Following the Trail of Blind Willie Johnson", http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:wl5m0LSm3XEJ:blindwilliejohnsonfund.com/uploads/On_the_Trail_of_Blind_Willie_Johnson_216.pdf+ain't+got+no+home+blind+willie&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjotmGis-SChTrG6rSjdsWZgRU2-1-nwtDS2TpDaTq2yGs185QploTwiN8KpQQ4T8Kk53iNr1hJhcAfiZ3ezSiw0fbZQCaJ1Z5LEqOMmrQ949V4_jtzDVEZuVLgwAGaWdVr7XNV&sig=AHIEtbTQsu7DsgjNVAMQyyNChXLfXzz45A
• Dark Was the Night: The Life and Times of Blind Willie Johnson

External links

• Biographical article
• Illustrated Blind Willie Johnson discography
• MP3 Audio Files of Songs by Blind Willie Johnson on the Internet Archive