he is celebrating, honestly and humbly, his life.” When acceptance and celebration mean the same thing, or when the two words must fill the same space in the mind at once, we can begin to grasp the tension and the passion of Robert Johnson's music—because when oqe accepts one's life by celebrating it, one also asks for something more. In Johnson’s blues the singer’s acceptance is profound, because he knows, and makes us see, that his celebration is also a revolt, and that the revolt will fail, because his images cannot deny the struggles they are meant to master. It is obvious that man dwells in a splendid universe, a magnificent expanse of earth and sky and heavens, which manifestly is built upon a majestic s truc tu re , maintains some mighty design, though man himself cannot grasp it. Yet for him it is not a pleasant or satisfying world. In his few moments of respite from labor or from his enemies, he dreams that this very universe might indeed be perfect, its laws operating just as now they seem to do. and yet he and it somehoe be in full accord. The very ease with wjiich he can frame this image to himself makes the reality all the more mocking . . . . It is only too clear that man is not at home in this universe, and yet he is not good enough to deserve a better. Perry Miller, on the Puritan view of the world When Robert Johnson traveled through the Deep South, over to Texas and back to Memphis, into the Midwest and up to Chicago, across the border to Canada and back to Detroit 1o sing spirituals on the radio, to New York City (the sight of this primitive blues singer gazing up at the lights of Times Square is not only banal, it is bizarre), to the South again, he was tracing not only the miles on the road but the strength of its image. It was the ultimate American image of flight from homelessness, and he always looked back: the women he left, or who left him, chased him through the gloomy reveries of his songs, just as one of them eventually caught up. Like a good American, Johnson lived for the moment and died for the past. Sometimes the road was just the best place to be, free and friendly, a good way to put in the time. In “ Four Until Late” there is even a girl waiting at the other end. When I leave this town, I'm gonna bid you fare, farewell When I leave this town, I m gonna bid you fare, farewell And when I return again You ’ll have a great long story to tell. There is the grace and bitterness of “Rambling on My Mind” (which Johnson played with his walking bass figure that was to define Chicago blues, making the song sound just like a man pushing himself down the highway, half against his will); the slow sexual menace of “Traveling Riverside Blues” ; the nightmare of “Crossroads,” where Johnson is sure to be caught by whites after dark and does not know which way to run; there is always one more “ strange man’s town," one more girl, one more drink; there is the last word of “Hellhound on My Trail.” I got to keep moving, I got to keep moving Blues falling down like hail, blues falling down like hail Blues falling down like hail, blues falling down like hail And the days keep on 'minding me There's a hellhound on my trail Hellhound on my trail, hellhound on my trail It wasn’t the open road, to say the least; more like Ishmael falling in behind funeral processions, because they made him feel more alive, and on good terms with death. You could imagine what the two travelers would have to say to each other: This is no way for a young man to act! That spirit gives us what might be Johnson's most American image, these lines from “Me and the Devil Blues" —most American because, as a good, defiant laugh at fate, they are vital not only beneath the surface of American life, but on it. They are often called in as proof of Johnson’s despair, and they are part of it, but also his most satisfied lines, a proud epitaph: You may bury my body, down by the highway side Babe, I don’t care where you bury my body when I'm dead and gone You may bury my body, ooooo, down by the highway side So my old evil spirit Can get a Greyhound bus, and ride. Robert Johnson had a beautiful high voice, a tragic voice when he meant it to be. In “Walking Blues” he wakes up to find that his woman has left him without even his shoes. He is plainly in awe of this woman (“Well!" he sings to himself, "she's got Elgin movements, from her head down to her toes. . . From her head down to her toes!"); when he says the worried blues are the worst he ever had, he’s still too full of admiration for that woman to make you believe him. So he will sing, with a distracted, comic determination: Lord I—feel like blowin ’ my, old lonesome home Got up this morning, my little bunny ears was gone Now, up this light, ooooo, my lonesome home and then with utter grace his voice rises, almost fades away, and there is a soft moan that could echo in your heart for a long time, a melancholy too strong to step around: Well, I got up this morning. . .all I had, was gone. Johnson was in his mid-twenties when he sang these songs (Don Law, the great recording engineer who handled the sessions, thought of him as a teenager). Johnson didn't have the worldly dignity of Son House or Skip James. Neither House nor James ever sound confused; they sing as men who live deeply, but within limits. In Johnson’s voice, there is sometimes an element of shock—less a matter of lost innocence than of innocence willfully given up and remembered anyway. Johnson seemed to take more pure pleasure out of making music than any other Delta singer; there is rock ’n‘ roll fun in his guitar playing you can hear anytime you like. He was, I think, working obt a whole new aesthetic that rock ’n’ roll eventually completed: a loud, piercing music driven by massive rhythms and a beat so strong that involvement was effortless and automatic. Yet Johnson also had more to say than other singers. His music was half seduction, half assault, meant to drive his words home with enormous force. His technique was not only more advanced, it was deeper, because it had to be. Only his weakest songs move on an even keel; the greatest shudder and break and explode, or twist slowly around quietly shaking strings into a kind of suspension, until Johnson has created a mood so delicate and bleak one feels he cannot possibly get out of his song alive. Johnson’s most distinctive performances have the tension that comes when almost everything is implied, when the worst secrets are hiding in plain talk. With “Come on in My Kitchen” Johnson plays out the sound of a cold wind on his guitar, and his voice rides it; there is a stillness in the music. The loneliness is overpowering and the feeling of desolation is absolute. The most prosaic lines take on the shape of pure terror. a woman gets in trouble Everybody throws her down Looking for her good friend None can be found. You better come on. in my kitchen There's going to be rain in our door. It was songs like this one—the combination of voice, guitar, words and the mythical authority that comes when an artist conforms his work with his life—that made Eric Clapton see Johnson's ghost, and his own, in Jimi Hendrix’s death. “Eric wanted to do a Robert Johnson," one of Clapton’s friends said when Hendrix died. “A few good years, and go.” Johnson’s music is so strong that in certain moods it can make you feel that he is giving you more than you could have bargained for—that there is a place for you in these lines of his: "She’s got a mortgage on my body, a lien on my soul." It is no exaggeration to say that Johnson changed the lives of men as distant from each other as Muddy Waters, who began his career as a devoted imitator; Dion, who made his way through the terrors of his heroin habit with Johnson’s songs for company; and myself. After hearing Johnson’s music for the first time —listening to that blasted and somehow friendly voice, the shivery guitar, hearing a score of lines that fit as easily and memorably into each day as Dylan’s had—I could listen to nothing else for months. Johnson’s music changed the way the world looked to me. Over the years, what had been a fascination with a bundle of ideas and dreams from old American novels and texts—a fascination with the foreboding and gentleness that is linked in the most interesting Americans— seemed to find a voice in Johnson's songs. It was the intensity of his music that changed fascination into commitment and a bundle of ideas into what must serve as a point of view. But commitment is a tricky, Faustian word. When he first appeared Robert couldn’t play guitar to save his life, Son House told Pete Welding; Johnson hung out with the older bluesmen, pestering them for a chance to try his hand, and after a time he went away. It was months later, on a Saturday night, when they saw him again, still looking to be heard. They tried to put him off, but he persisted; finally, they let him play for a lull and left him alone with the tables and chairs. Outside, taking in the air. House and the others heard a loud, devastating music of a brilliance and purity beyond anything in the memory of the Mississippi Delta. Johnson had nothing more to learn from them. “He sold his soul to the devil to get to play like that.” House told Welding. Excerpted from larger chapters with permission o f Griel Marcus. Mystery Train can be found at Looking Glass and N o r ’wester books. DeNICOLA RESTAURANT Mrs. DeNicola and her family invite you to the DeNicola's Restaurant. The DeNicola’s prepare each entree with fine ingredients. . from recipes they brought with them from Italy. They serve tne kind of Italian food you've been looking for. TAKE OUT 234-2600 BANQUET FACILITIES 3520 SE Powell 4:00-11:00 Tue-Thur 4:00-12:00 Fri-Sat 4:00-11:00 Sun. Wilde Oscar’s 318 SW Third Avenue , Portland, O regon 97204 223-8620 — Engl ish Pork Pies — Cornish Beef Pasties — M e llow and Earnest Happy Hour 5-7 p.m. Monday - Friday 26
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