Escaping the Delta (17 page)
Read Escaping the Delta Online
Authors: Elijah Wald
Most of what we know of Johnson comes from these years, from the reports of his sometime traveling companion Johnny Shines and other musicians he ran with for brief periods along the way. Most remember him as a handsome, personable figure, occasionally noting that he had one “bad” eye, but never suggesting that this bothered him. He seems to have impressed everyone with his self-possession
and confidence, his air of knowing what he was about, both on guitar and on the road. “At the time I met him he was fresh out of Memphis,” the St. Louis guitarist and piano player Henry Townsend remembered. “He was a dark skinned fellow, kind of round shouldered, very small and very young. I thought he must have been teenage. Of course I didn't know whether he was eighteen or seventeen or fifteen, but he was a teenager at that time. But he didn't like the title of being kidâ¦he was a man as far as he was concerned.”
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Robert Lockwood also recalls how young Johnson looked, and suggests that it was partly because of his having Indian blood: “Never had a beard, never shaved. That's an Indian trait.”
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Shines would confirm the round-shoulderedness, but laid more stress on Johnson's fingers, long and spidery, the envy of every guitarist who has seen his picture: “His sharp, slender fingers fluttered like a trapped bird,” Shines recalled, in a startling burst of poetry.
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He also pointed out that, along with his natural good looks, Johnson was careful of his appearance: “Robert was always neat. Robert could ride highways and things like that all day long, and you'd look down at yourself and you'd be as filthy as a pig and Robert'd be cleanâhow, I don't know.”
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As for his character, everyone seems to agree that, while he was pleasant and outgoing in public, in private he was reserved and liked to go his own way. Shines usually described him as a union of opposites: “Robert was a very friendly person, even though he was sulky at times, you know,” or “He was very bashful, but very imposing,” or “He never talked about himself or bragged nothing,â¦He was quiet most of the timeâuntil he started drinking. Then he was like anybody elseârowdy!”
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Lockwood, whose mother was one of Johnson's regular girlfriends and who regards Johnson as his musical mentor, says that Johnson did a lot of drinking, but rarely acted drunk. He enjoyed having Johnson around the place, and says that Johnson not only inspired him to switch from piano to guitar, but showed him playing techniques and even built him a homemade instrument, stripping the thin panel off the front of a Victrola and attaching it to a cheese box, then carving and planing a neck and fitting in some frets.
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He says that Johnson
stopped by often, and always had money to spend. Like pretty much everyone, though, the things he found most striking in Johnson's character were how unwilling Johnson was to get close to anyone, and that constant urge to travel: “Robert was a strange dude,” he says. “I guess you could say he was a loner and a drifter.”
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“He was a kind of peculiar fellow,” Shines agreed. “Robert'd be standing up playing someplace, playing like nobody's business. At that time it was a hustle with him as well as a pleasure. And money'd be coming from all directions. But Robert'd just pick up and walk off and leave you standing there playing. And you wouldn't see Robert no more maybe in two or three weeks.”
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Shines was one of the few peopleâmaybe the only oneâto share any significant portion of this road life. A fine guitarist, and one of the strongest singers in the region, he had originally modeled himself on Howlin' Wolf, a huge bear of a man who was a year older than Johnson. Wolf would go on to be one of the giants of the electric Chicago scene, but at this point he was tearing up the small Delta joints as a young heir to the big-voiced Charley Patton. Shines lacked Wolf's physical presence, but he had a somewhat similar voice and was a more varied and expert guitarist. Still a teenager, he was considered an up-and-comer by his peers, and it was not surprising that he hit it off with Johnson, a thoughtful and adventurous musician only three or four years his senior. Shines recalled that during this period Johnson was playing gigs almost every night around West Helena, Arkansas, and they were introduced by a piano-playing friend who went by the name M&O (after the Mobile & Ohio train line):
He wanted me to meet Robert, because this friend of mine thought I were good. You know how this thing goes: “There's a good guy playing at such and such a place, I'd like for you to meet him.” And the thing about it, what he wants you to do is to go and get your head cut. So M&O finally talked me into going to see him, and Robert played a good guitar, the best I'd heard. Now I had Wolf's style in the beginning, and I was beginning to pick up on quite a few different guys' styles as the time went along, but I thought Robert was about the greatest guitar player I'd ever
heard. The things he was doing was things that I'd never heard nobody else do, and I wanted to learn it, especially a lot of his slide stuff.
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Soon, the two young men were on the road together.
Robert was a guy, you could wake him up anytime and he was ready to
go
. Say, for instance, you had come from Memphis and go to Helena, and we'd play there all night probably and lay down to sleep the next morning, and you hear a train. You say, “Robert, I hear a train; let's catch it.” He wouldn't exchange no words with you; he's just ready to goâ¦. I was just, matter of fact, tagging along. Not that he wanted me along, I don't think, being a soloist, a fellow that really didn't care for nobody very much, I mean so far as running the road with himâ¦. That was his personality; that was just his make. You had to be able to deal with him if you wanted to know him, and he was kind of long-armed. What I mean by that, he'd kind of keep you away from himâ¦. It made it pretty tough keeping up with him, but Robert had a style that I likedâ¦. Robert and I played together a lotâtraveled to Chicago, Texas, New York, Canada, Kentucky, Indiana. I tagged along with him cause I knew he was heavy and I wanted to learn.
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They played wherever they could find a crowd.
We never had much trouble finding places to play. In New York there were quite a few speakeasies and places like that. In Buffalo there were several places we could play, and over in New Jersey there were two or three places we used to work atâ¦speakeasies, taverns, housesâ¦.
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In those days you didn't have to know nowhere to go. People would just pick you up on the streetsâthey'd see you with your instrument, say, “Man, you play that?”
“Yeah.”
“Play me a piece.”
You say, “Well, I do this for my living, man,” and by that they know automatically you're not going to be playing for free. Maybe you stand there and play two or three piecesâwell, by that time, hell, you got twenty-five or thirty people around youâ¦.
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It was pretty rough at times; we didn't know where the next food was coming from or where we'd stay that night. Robert and I would travel
any
where to play and make some money. We'd hear about a sawmill going to pay off at a certain time, and we'd be there; we'd pick up maybe seven dollars just playing where the payday was. And then some guy might hire us to play somewhere for four dollars a night and all we could drink. Different guys'd give us a quarter to play this piece or that piece, so we'd end up with twenty-five or thirty dollars.
Everything was fun in those days, though, cause you wasn't taking much of anything too serious. You'd wake up with a couple of black eyes, lip all swollen up and a loose tooth:
“Man, you sure kicked that son of a bitch around last night!”
“Shit, look like to me he kicked
my
ass!”
Sometimes I'd get the worst of something Robert startedâ¦. He couldn't punch hisself out of a wet paper sack. I've seen many people with the same build that he had that were much more capable of taking care of themselves than he was. He wasn't a scrapper or a fighter, but he tried, and he'd get the hell beat out of
you
if you didn't watch out. 'Cause he'd jump on a gang of guys just as quick as he would one, and if you went to defend him, why, naturally you'd get it!
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It is not clear just when Shines met Johnson, or how often they got together and split up again over the next few years. Shines's memories varied occasionally as to just how much terrain they covered, but Johnson certainly did his share of traveling, and Shines is not alone in remembering the ease with which he slid into jobs and impressed people with his talents. His childhood friend Willie Coffee, for example, says that whenever he came back through town he was greeted like royalty: “We had a old juke, like we called an old plantation juke. When Robert walked in there, they'd jump up, just like the President done come in. Gettin' ready to dance. Man, he could tear 'em upâ¦they'd break the floor in, shouting and jumping.”
Around the Delta, most of the work was at those backcountry “jukes,” often nothing more than a house with the furniture moved outside to leave space for dancing. Shines recalls that rising local stars like Johnson and himself could demand as much as six dollars a night,
while other musicians were working for a dollar and food, as long as the season was right:
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In the fall it was better than at other times of the year. That was because of the harvest season, cotton picking, corn pulling and so on like that. There was more money around then. In the spring of the year there wasn't much of anything because the people were trying to get themselves straightened out over the winter season. Along about June and July things would begin to pick up to where you could get hold of some money. September, October, November and up through December and sometimes January, that's when you really had to get it. Didn't make no difference what kind of hustle you had to do, you
had
to get it right through then. Those were the big months, that's when the money was floating around. When things would start to fall off, I would go back to Memphis and kind of take it easy till the next season came.
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Johnson sometimes stopped off in Memphis as well, but he liked to go a good deal farther, and wherever he went he had no trouble finding a receptive audience. Townsend recalls him turning up in St. Louisâa blues center noted for stars like Lonnie Johnson and Peetie Wheatstrawâand quickly proving his mettle:
I was playing at Ernest Walker's house party on Jefferson. Robert Johnson had come over to find me, and he was a stranger in the town, so he told me, “Look, I've heard about you.” He was just traveling through and he says, “Where you working at tonight?” So I told him and he says, “Can I come over?” and I said, “Yeah,” so he came over to Walker'sâ¦
Well, we sat in the backyard and that fellow, he went over some guitar and I thought, well, this guy's got it. I mean he was amazing. I was a little bit older than him, but I didn't think anybody had any seniority over me on the guitar, really, and he played for Ernest Walker for about three weeks and I came back and he stayed with me another week over there, for a very small scale, of course. He held the job until I came back and the truth is it was Robert's job when I came back. Robert continued until he was ready to leave; then the boss put me
back to work. Robert was very decent about it, I mean we worked together, but as far as the job was concerned it belonged to Robertâ¦I don't really know where he was going when he left. He said he was going to Chicago⦔
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Johnson had all the skills necessary for a traveling musician. First of all, and most important in those days before microphones became common, he had volume. In Shines's words:
Robert sang pretty loud, and most of the time he sang in a high-pitched voice, and, naturally, his voice was carrying. We didn't have too much trouble in having ourselves heard in those places we played in. The people that was dancing, they'd just pick up the beat, and if they got out of earshot, I guess the rhythm just stayed with them and they kept right on dancing. Because the whole house had the same motion, it wasn't hard for them to stay in rhythm.
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Shines recalled that, along with his musical talentsâthe powerful voice and uncanny facility on guitarâJohnson had a personal magnetism about him, something that attracted people:
Robert was one of those fellows who was warm in every respectâin
every
respect. Even, you know, it's natural for men not to like a musician too much. But Robert was a fellow very well liked by women and men, even though a lot of men resented his power or his influence over women-people. They resented that very much, but, as a human being, they still liked him because they couldn't help but like him, for Robert just had that power to draw.
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And for showmanship, he had a built-in showmanship radar! He could just stop anywhere and draw a crowd of people, doing anything. Now he wasn't a clown or anything like that. Here's an example. We was staying in West Memphis at a place called John Hunt's and this place burnt down and burnt our guitars up. I didn't know that he knew anything about harmonica at all, but he come up with this old harmonica. We were out on Highway 61 and he started blowing this harmonica and slapping his handsâpatting his hands, blowing and
singingâand in a few minutes the whole highway was almost blocked off with cars, people pitching us nickels, dimes, quarters.
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The loud voice and the gift for showmanship were common to all the Delta greatsâwithout them there was no way to distinguish yourself in this worldâbut Johnson was also very much a man of his time. Shines reported that, like all the musicians of their generation, “he talked really hipâ¦like, âYeah, man,' you know, or âLook, Daddy Soand-So.”
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While older Delta players like Patton and House were largely tied to a rural, regional repertoire, Johnson had big ears for all the latest sounds, and Shines recalls him performing everything from hillbilly tunes to Hollywood cowboy songs and Bing Crosby numbers.
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