http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MCHI23FTP8&feature=related
this track is hella eerie ^^^
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd60nI4sa9A&feature=related
ONE OF MY PERSONAL FAV'S I LISTEN TO THIS WHEN I AM DRINKING BRANDY HAHA ^^
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqgcM_CmhdA&feature=related
THEY SAY HE IS TALKING ABOUT HOW HE SOLD HIS SOUL IN THESE SONGS ^^
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLmlz34BUlk
Eric Clapton talking about Robert Johnson ^
Devil legend
According to a legend known to modern Blues fans, Robert Johnson was a young black man living on a plantation in rural Mississippi. Branded with a burning desire to become a great blues musician, he was instructed to take his guitar to a crossroad near Dockery's plantation at midnight. There he was met by a large black man (the Devil) who took the guitar from Johnson and tuned it, giving him mastery of the guitar, and handed it back to him in return for his soul. Within 10 year's time, in exchange for his everlasting soul, Robert Johnson became the king of the Delta blues singers, able to play, sing, and create the greatest blues anyone had ever heard.
This legend was developed over time, and has been chronicled by Gayle Dean Wardlow,[20] Edward Komara[21] and Elijah Wald.[22] Folk tales of bargains with the Devil have long existed in African American and White traditions, and were adapted into literature by, amongst others, Washington Irving in "The Devil and Tom Walker" in 1824, and by Stephen Vincent Benet in "The Devil and Daniel Webster" in 1936. More recently, this legend was referenced with the Blues Devil in Metalocalypse, after the main characters meet a Robert Johnson lookalike. In the 1930s the folklorist Harry Middleton Hart recorded many tales of banjo players, fiddlers, card sharps and dice sharks selling their souls at the crossroads, along with guitarists and one accordionist. The folklorist Alan Lomax considered that every African American secular musician was "in the opinion of both himself and his peers, a child of the devil, a consequence of the black view of the European dance embrace as sinful in the extreme".[23]
In recorded Blues, the theme first appeared in 1924 in the record by Clara Smith "Done Sold My Soul To The Devil (And My Heart's Done Turned To Stone)". An influential song, Smith's tune was covered during the following decade by blues artists Merline Johnson (the Yas Yas Girl), Casey Bill Weldon, and John D. Twitty. A cover was also recorded in 1937 by the white Western Swing band named after their business manager Dave Edwards.[24][25]
Johnson seems to have claimed occasionally that he had sold his soul to the Devil, but it is not clear that he meant it seriously. However, these claims are strongly disputed in Tom Graves' biography of Johnson, Crossroads: The Life and Afterlife of Blues Legend Robert Johnson, published in 2008. Son House once told the story to Pete Welding as an explanation of Johnson's astonishingly rapid mastery of the guitar. Welding reported it as a serious belief in a widely read article in Down Beat in 1966.[26] However, other interviewers failed to elicit any confirmation from House. Moreover, there were fully two years between House's observation of Robert as first a novice and then a master.
Further details were absorbed from the imaginative retellings by Greil Marcus[27] and Robert Palmer.[28] Most significantly, the detail was added that Johnson received his gift from a large black man at a crossroads. There is dispute as to how and when the crossroads detail was attached to the Robert Johnson story. All the published evidence, including a full chapter on the subject in the biography Crossroads by Tom Graves, suggests an origin in the story of Tommy Johnson. This story was collected from his musical associate Ishman Bracey and his elder brother Ledell in the 1960s.[29] One version of Ledell Johnson's account was published in 1971 David Evans's biography of Tommy,[30] and was repeated in print in 1982 alongside Son House's story in the widely read Searching for Robert Johnson.[31]
In another version, Ledell placed the meeting not at a crossroads but in a graveyard. This resembles the story told to Steve LaVere that Ike Zinnerman of Hazelhurst, Mississippi learned to play the guitar at midnight while sitting on tombstones. Zinnerman is believed to have influenced the playing of the young Robert Johnson.[32] Recent research by blues scholar Bruce Conforth uncovered Ike Zimmerman's daughter (note the difference in spelling... the daughter and Ike's own funeral program containing a photo of him all state that the correct spelling is "Zimmerman". LaVere allegedly came up with a document purportedly signed by Zimmerman dealing with his second wife's death in which the respondent signed it "Zinermon" yet Zimmerman's second wife outlived him and was responsible for burying him!) and the story becomes much clearer, including the fact that Johnson and Zimmerman did, in fact, practice in a graveyard at night (because it was quiet and no one would disturb them) but that it was not the Hazlehurst cemetery as had been believed. Johnson spent about a year living with, and learning from Zimmerman who ultimately accompanied Johnson back up to the Delta to look after him. Conforth's article in Living Blues magazine goes into much greater detail.[33]
The crossroads detail was widely believed to come from Johnson himself, probably because it appeared to explain the discrepancy in "Cross Road Blues". Johnson's high emotion and religious fervour are hard to explain as resulting from the mundane situation described, unsuccessful hitchhiking as night falls. The crossroads myth offers a simple literal explanation for both the religion and the anguish.
An alternative explanation (as expressed by musician and blues historian Scott Ainslie) is that the experience of "unsuccessful hitchhiking as night falls" --far from being a "mundane situation"-- was, in fact, likely to be an extremely dangerous predicament for a lone, young black man to find himself in the deep American south in the 1920s and 1930s. This is especially true if the individual in question was a stranger in the area and suspected of working at a nearby "juke joint". Rather than "religious fervour", the "high emotion" that Johnson exhibits while singing the song is more likely to recall the justifiable anxiety (or, indeed, terror) that he probably regularly experienced during his career as an itinerant musician, trying to reach the relative safety of a welcoming safe-house before evening fell.
The myth was established in mass consciousness in 1986 by the film Crossroads. There are now tourist attractions claiming to be "The Crossroads" at Clarksdale and in Memphis.[34] The film O Brother Where Art Thou? by the Coen Brothers incorporates the crossroads legend and a young African American blues guitarist named "Tommy Johnson", with no other biographical similarity to the real Tommy Johnson or to
this track is hella eerie ^^^
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd60nI4sa9A&feature=related
ONE OF MY PERSONAL FAV'S I LISTEN TO THIS WHEN I AM DRINKING BRANDY HAHA ^^
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqgcM_CmhdA&feature=related
THEY SAY HE IS TALKING ABOUT HOW HE SOLD HIS SOUL IN THESE SONGS ^^
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLmlz34BUlk
Eric Clapton talking about Robert Johnson ^
Devil legend
According to a legend known to modern Blues fans, Robert Johnson was a young black man living on a plantation in rural Mississippi. Branded with a burning desire to become a great blues musician, he was instructed to take his guitar to a crossroad near Dockery's plantation at midnight. There he was met by a large black man (the Devil) who took the guitar from Johnson and tuned it, giving him mastery of the guitar, and handed it back to him in return for his soul. Within 10 year's time, in exchange for his everlasting soul, Robert Johnson became the king of the Delta blues singers, able to play, sing, and create the greatest blues anyone had ever heard.
This legend was developed over time, and has been chronicled by Gayle Dean Wardlow,[20] Edward Komara[21] and Elijah Wald.[22] Folk tales of bargains with the Devil have long existed in African American and White traditions, and were adapted into literature by, amongst others, Washington Irving in "The Devil and Tom Walker" in 1824, and by Stephen Vincent Benet in "The Devil and Daniel Webster" in 1936. More recently, this legend was referenced with the Blues Devil in Metalocalypse, after the main characters meet a Robert Johnson lookalike. In the 1930s the folklorist Harry Middleton Hart recorded many tales of banjo players, fiddlers, card sharps and dice sharks selling their souls at the crossroads, along with guitarists and one accordionist. The folklorist Alan Lomax considered that every African American secular musician was "in the opinion of both himself and his peers, a child of the devil, a consequence of the black view of the European dance embrace as sinful in the extreme".[23]
In recorded Blues, the theme first appeared in 1924 in the record by Clara Smith "Done Sold My Soul To The Devil (And My Heart's Done Turned To Stone)". An influential song, Smith's tune was covered during the following decade by blues artists Merline Johnson (the Yas Yas Girl), Casey Bill Weldon, and John D. Twitty. A cover was also recorded in 1937 by the white Western Swing band named after their business manager Dave Edwards.[24][25]
Johnson seems to have claimed occasionally that he had sold his soul to the Devil, but it is not clear that he meant it seriously. However, these claims are strongly disputed in Tom Graves' biography of Johnson, Crossroads: The Life and Afterlife of Blues Legend Robert Johnson, published in 2008. Son House once told the story to Pete Welding as an explanation of Johnson's astonishingly rapid mastery of the guitar. Welding reported it as a serious belief in a widely read article in Down Beat in 1966.[26] However, other interviewers failed to elicit any confirmation from House. Moreover, there were fully two years between House's observation of Robert as first a novice and then a master.
Further details were absorbed from the imaginative retellings by Greil Marcus[27] and Robert Palmer.[28] Most significantly, the detail was added that Johnson received his gift from a large black man at a crossroads. There is dispute as to how and when the crossroads detail was attached to the Robert Johnson story. All the published evidence, including a full chapter on the subject in the biography Crossroads by Tom Graves, suggests an origin in the story of Tommy Johnson. This story was collected from his musical associate Ishman Bracey and his elder brother Ledell in the 1960s.[29] One version of Ledell Johnson's account was published in 1971 David Evans's biography of Tommy,[30] and was repeated in print in 1982 alongside Son House's story in the widely read Searching for Robert Johnson.[31]
In another version, Ledell placed the meeting not at a crossroads but in a graveyard. This resembles the story told to Steve LaVere that Ike Zinnerman of Hazelhurst, Mississippi learned to play the guitar at midnight while sitting on tombstones. Zinnerman is believed to have influenced the playing of the young Robert Johnson.[32] Recent research by blues scholar Bruce Conforth uncovered Ike Zimmerman's daughter (note the difference in spelling... the daughter and Ike's own funeral program containing a photo of him all state that the correct spelling is "Zimmerman". LaVere allegedly came up with a document purportedly signed by Zimmerman dealing with his second wife's death in which the respondent signed it "Zinermon" yet Zimmerman's second wife outlived him and was responsible for burying him!) and the story becomes much clearer, including the fact that Johnson and Zimmerman did, in fact, practice in a graveyard at night (because it was quiet and no one would disturb them) but that it was not the Hazlehurst cemetery as had been believed. Johnson spent about a year living with, and learning from Zimmerman who ultimately accompanied Johnson back up to the Delta to look after him. Conforth's article in Living Blues magazine goes into much greater detail.[33]
The crossroads detail was widely believed to come from Johnson himself, probably because it appeared to explain the discrepancy in "Cross Road Blues". Johnson's high emotion and religious fervour are hard to explain as resulting from the mundane situation described, unsuccessful hitchhiking as night falls. The crossroads myth offers a simple literal explanation for both the religion and the anguish.
An alternative explanation (as expressed by musician and blues historian Scott Ainslie) is that the experience of "unsuccessful hitchhiking as night falls" --far from being a "mundane situation"-- was, in fact, likely to be an extremely dangerous predicament for a lone, young black man to find himself in the deep American south in the 1920s and 1930s. This is especially true if the individual in question was a stranger in the area and suspected of working at a nearby "juke joint". Rather than "religious fervour", the "high emotion" that Johnson exhibits while singing the song is more likely to recall the justifiable anxiety (or, indeed, terror) that he probably regularly experienced during his career as an itinerant musician, trying to reach the relative safety of a welcoming safe-house before evening fell.
The myth was established in mass consciousness in 1986 by the film Crossroads. There are now tourist attractions claiming to be "The Crossroads" at Clarksdale and in Memphis.[34] The film O Brother Where Art Thou? by the Coen Brothers incorporates the crossroads legend and a young African American blues guitarist named "Tommy Johnson", with no other biographical similarity to the real Tommy Johnson or to
