Review:

on 2011-08-25 CharlesMartel Said:

I am not going to describe this album in any way other than it is. The sound quality is utter crap. Let's face it, it is appalling. Yet we can (and we will) make allowances for it because of what Robert Johnson represents. Yes you can hear the pain in his voice (but you hear it through a haze of crackles). Yes you can hear the distinctive guitar lines which presaged Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton among others (but you hear them through the hiss of an old analogue 78). This is tough listening to and believe me, I have listened to it a lot. There is a lot to be said for letting old 78's pass away peacefully or moulder away on the shelves of museums. Trying to make a commercial release out of a poorly recorded collection of ceramic ten inch discs which have well passed their sell-by date is a pretty tall order. If this were not Robert Johnson, there would be little reason to release it commercially.

Okay, that is enough of the objectivity. Let's now talk about this album's place in musical history. After all, that is why people buy it. Let's not kid ourselves about that. Put aside Robert Johnson's tragic life and his death by poison at the hands of a jealous husband. Let us also, for the purposes of reviewing the music, not look at the social context of the appalling brutality and racism blacks in Mississippi were subjected to until the emancipation of the sixties. We can take that as a given, without betittling or diminishing either the effect or the evil of it. The debate about whether white men can sing the blues is, as far as I am concerned, long ago settled. People like Robert Johnson sang the blues, not by choice, but because it was a part of them - they lived it. They sang about life and as few, if any, white men, can have lived with the same experiences, they cannot possibly sing with the same intensity, with the same feeling. Debate settled. White men may be able to sing blues but they cannot sing The Blues.

This represents a seminal moment in modern popular music. This was, effectively, where it all began. Now you can say that about a lot of Delta Blues artists  Son House, Charlie Patton, Skip James, Big Bill Broonzy, but it really takes on a significance with Robert Johnson because you can trace the link. Had it not been for Robert Johnson, the music which the British led in the sixties and early seventies would probably never have emerged.

Robert Johnson was one crucial link in a chain which stretched back all the way to Henry Sloan who first bent the notes on the Dockery Plantation at the end of the nineteenth century and created what we today call The Blues. If McKinley Morganfield had not stood on a street corner as a young man listening to Robert Johnson play, and left because of the intensity, then the next link would never have been made. McKinley Morganfield went home and vowed to play with the same intensity. After the War, when the record producers of Chicago came looking for Robert Johnson, by then long dead, they were directed to McKinley Morganfield instead. He was taken to Chicago and swapped his acoustic for an electric guitar producing the most seminal song in the history of rock and roll - "Rolling Stone". That song is Robert Johnson's Delta Blues played electric and it started a trend.

And Robert Johnson? Well, the songs he played and the way he played them take you back to an era before popular music as we know it. It is said that he sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for the ability to play the guitar in such a unique fashion. It was something he himself never denied, nor confirmed, and even sang about on one of his songs, "Crossroads". If you listen casually, then many of the songs sound the same but if you listen closely, and it is hard through all that noise, you can genuinely hear the guitar sounds which led to the British guitar greats of the sixties and seventies to whom all modern music lovers owe a debt. To own this album is to own a part of musical history. But it is also to own some of the best Delta Blues you will ever hear in your life. It is just a pity that modern technology cannot clean this up a bit more.
Rating: 8/10