Escaping the Delta (37 page)

I would stress that the Johnson in this story was
Tommy
, one of Mississippi's most popular and influential blues performers. Tommy Johnson was a local star with a smooth, mellow voice and distinctive falsetto cry that was imitated by many Delta singers. There is nothing particularly haunted about this voice, and the only demons that crop up in his lyrics are the prosaic ones of cheating women and the vile alcoholic preparation he made famous in his “Canned Heat Blues.” As a result, those who have written about him have talked about his music, and paid only passing attention to the devil story, which has been transferred to Robert Johnson ex post facto, to match the character white listeners had already created in their imaginations. As an example of how far this has gone, the
New York Times
review of the movie
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
, which featured a blues-playing character named Tommy Johnson who had sold his soul to the Devil, described this character as “a reference…to the real-life bluesman Robert Johnson.”
⁹

Not only was it Tommy, not Robert, who provided the one thorough account of a Mississippi guitarist selling his soul, but his testimony came to us only by way of his brother LeDell, who seems to have been singularly enamored of such stories. LeDell was a reformed blues singer who had become a minister, and he traced his conversion to supernatural roots, saying that his guitar had become bewitched, and this scared him off secular music. The folklorist David Evans, who recorded LeDell's story about Tommy in the late 1960s, notes that he heard nothing similar from the blues star's other siblings or acquaintances.
¹⁰

LeDell Johnson was only one of a number of Mississippi blues musicians who became preachers, among them Ishmon Bracey, Rube Lacey, and Robert Wilkins. Then there were Skip James and Son
House, both of whom did stints in the ministry before turning to music. This is often cited as evidence of a parallel between blues singers and preachers, as if the two professions were flip sides of the black Delta belief system. The two trades could certainly overlap, since someone who is expert at reaching and keeping an audience can channel that skill in various ways, but how many patent medicine salesmen, comedians, and other sorts of entertainers took the same route? Indeed, how many pimps, thieves, and gamblers? I do not know the answer, but a glance at St. Augustine's
Confessions
suggests that such transformations are anything but new.

It is easy to see how outsiders would have concluded that bluesmen and preachers were two sides of the same coin. I have already written of Son House's trancelike performances, and it requires no great leap to imagine his listeners acclaiming him as a sort of
loa
, a receptacle of voodoo spirits. The problem is that, much as I am struck by his appearance of mystical possession—the shivering, the eyes rolling back, and that amazing voice bursting forth—no one has ever suggested that folks in the Delta regarded House as anything more than a great dance musician, fond of strong drink and pretty women. His performances seem to have been considered far less memorable than the “clowning” of Charley Patton or Tommy Johnson, with their jokes and acrobatic guitar tricks.

In fact, the only reports I have read of old-time blues singers “possessing” their audiences come not from the Delta jukes, but from the vaudeville theaters. There is Thomas Dorsey's recollection of Ma Rainey, and similar descriptions of Bessie Smith hypnotizing people with her live performances, in one case “walking” an audience member across the stage like a zombie. This sort of mystical control is far more practicable in a theater setting, where the crowd's attention is focused on the singer, than in a juke joint full of rowdy customers dancing, drinking, talking, gambling, and generally casting off the troubles of the working week. In later years, there would be more such stories, but always attached to the higher-level performers, and in particular the pioneers of the gospel-soul fusion, who had a battery of church tricks up their sleeves. If one wanted to build legends about
singers acting as priests of the dark forces, Sam Cooke, James Brown, Ray Charles, and Aretha Franklin have effected more voodoolike possessions than all the down-home bluesmen put together.

But enough generalities. Let me finish off with a look at the specific evidence connecting Robert Johnson and the Devil. This is ground that has already been covered by others, such as Gayle Dean Wardlow, a white Mississippian who has done as much research into prewar Delta blues as anyone in the field, including finding Johnson's death certificate and much of the other information that is endlessly recycled by writers like myself. In
Chasin' That Devil Music
, Wardlow goes through some of the lyrics that have been used to prove Johnson's special connection to the Devil.
¹¹
He points out that such lyrics were good business, that the “hellhound on my trail” line had been recorded by Funny Paper Smith six years earlier, and that both Johnnie Temple and Kansas Joe McCoy had already done Devil songs based on Skip James's piece before Johnson recorded his adaptation.
¹²
Wardlow does not parse “Me and the Devil,” but others have pointed out what an unbiased reader, unaware of the Johnson legend, might see quite easily: That as far as the lyrics go, this is meant to be a funny song. The most obviously comic lines are “You may bury my body down by the highway side/So my old evil spirit can get a Greyhound bus and ride,” but the dark humor common to blues is there throughout. Disturbing as it may be, even lines like “Me and the Devil was walking side by side/I'm going to beat my woman until I get satisfied” would have been more likely to provoke chuckles than horror in a juke-joint crowd. Indeed, similar lines are regularly greeted with guffaws and cheers today, at shows by everyone from Chris Rock to Eminem.

The Devil-seekers have also attempted to drag in other songs, farther-fetched and with less evidence. “If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day,” for example, is quite obviously a jokey threat, a cousin of the medicine-show song “I'm Gonna Buy a Graveyard of My Own.” As for “Cross Road Blues,” the satanic connection has to be made by first citing the Tommy Johnson story, tracing it through the ancient beliefs in a dark spirit who appears at the meeting of pathways, then jury-rigging it to fit a song that never suggests any such theme. Johnson sings that he was down at the crossroad trying to flag a ride—any
hitchhiker can tell you that this is the place where cars slow down and are more likely to stop for passengers—but everybody passed him by. Seeking spiritual assistance, he did not call on the Devil, but instead “asked the Lord above, ‘Have mercy, now save poor Bob, if you please.'”
¹³

I cannot answer those people who say that all of this is irrelevant, that they perceive the demon-haunted aspect of Johnson's character in the tone of his voice and the slashing power of his slide work.
De gustibus non est disputandum
, and it would be pointless for me to try to deny anyone the right to get anything out of a work of art that they want. Speaking for myself, when I listen to Johnson I hear a great poet and musician, someone who could communicate zest for life and searing misery with equal ease and power. It would seem to me that this ability is the hallmark of any truly great artist, from Homer to James Joyce to Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Cesaria Evora, Hank Williams…I do not see why, except because some disenchanted urbanites want to create a mystical Delta fantasy, we need to single out Robert Johnson for satanic honors. If the Devil was real to him, the same was true of John Milton and Paganini, of Jelly Roll Morton and any other believer in the powers of light and darkness. If one believes the world is caught in a Manichean battle between God and the Devil, good and evil, saved and damned, it follows logically that the psalm singers go to heaven and the fiddlers go to hell. But assuming that Delta dwellers of the 1930s were humorlessly Manichean about such matters is condescending bullshit.

Yes, Son House once answered a question about Johnson's speedy mastery of the guitar by suggesting that he had sold his soul to the Devil, but House did not emphasize the point with any seriousness, nor did he repeat it whenever he told the story. And listen to Johnson's school friend Willie Coffee. In the documentary
Hellhounds on My Trail: The Afterlife of Robert Johnson
, the blues expert Steven LaVere asks him if Johnson ever talked about selling his soul to the Devil. Coffee says that yes, he did, then promptly adds, “I never did think he's serious, because he'd always, when he'd come in here with us, he'd come in with a lot of jive, cracking jokes like that. I never did believe in it.”

In another documentary,
In Search of Robert Johnson
, the modern-day blues singer John Hammond is interviewing an old girlfriend of Johnson's, a funny, toothless character called “Queen” Elizabeth. She is quite adamant that Johnson sold his soul to the Devil, but to Hammond's apparent amusement insists that the same is true of all blues singers. “Yeah! You're singing the blues, ain't you?” She looks at Hammond quizzically. “Do you sing?”

“I sing, but I didn't sell my soul,” he says.

“Don't you sing?” she asks, with the air of a district attorney catching a witness in a prevarication.

“Yeah, I sing.”

“Well!” she says, with an air of finality. “Ain't you done sold your soul?”

The scene shifts to Hammond sitting opposite Johnny Shines. Shines reaches out a hand, and quietly asks, “Let me see your soul. Hand it over. Can you?”

Hammond demurs.

“Then what can you do about selling it? How can you sell something you've got no possession over? You've got possession over life; you can become a dead soul. But now you're a living soul.”

Then the scene shifts again, to Mack McCormick, perhaps the foremost modern Johnson expert, as he reassures us that Johnson was indeed devoted to the Devil legend.

Every culture has its legends—one could argue that this is what makes for a culture. The legend of Robert Johnson selling his soul at the crossroads is one of ours. The “us” being present-day, urban, literate, mostly white music fans. It is a legend carried on by the Rolling Stones, by heavy-metal bands, by blues guitarslingers, by journalists, by filmmakers. It is a potent and intriguing legend, and says a great deal about our yearnings and dreams. Just as the legend of the brilliant young musician who traveled to big cities, made records, wore fancy clothes, and never had to pick any cotton ever again says a great deal about the yearnings and dreams of black people in the Mississippi Delta of the 1930s. We are all romantics in our fashion.

Records on jukeboxes in African-American amusement places in Clarksdale, Mississippi, c. 1941, as noted by the Fisk University–Library of Congress team, including Samuel Adams, Lewis Jones, Alan Lomax, and John Work.

M
ESSENGER'S
C
AFÉ
(numbers indicate most-played selections)

“I Know How to Do It”—Sam Price

“Goin' to Chicago Blues”—Count Basie (1)

“Vine Street Boogie”—Jay McShann

“That's the Blues Old Man”—Johnny Hodges (3)

“The Boogie Woogie Piggy”—Glenn Miller

“Until the Real Thing Comes Along”—Ink Spots

“When I Been Drinking”—Big Bill

“Solitude”—Billie Holiday

“Daddy”—Sammy Kaye (5) (was first, now waning in popularity)

“Julia”—Earl Hines

“I Like My Sugar Sweet”—Fletcher Henderson

“I See a Million People”—Cab Calloway

“Brotherly Love”—Louis Jordan (6)

“Twenty Four Robbers”—Fats Waller

“I'll Get Mine Bye and Bye”—Louis Armstrong

“Love Me”—Lil Green

“Jelly Jelly Blues”—Earl Hines

“Come Back Baby”—Walter Davis

“Yes Indeed”—Tommy Dorsey

“Maria Elena”—Eddie Duchin (4)

“Tonight You Belong to Me”—Erskine Hawkins

“Basie Boogie”—Count Basie

“Pine Top's Boogie Woogie”—Louis Jordan (2)

“Romance in the Dark”—Lil Green

C
HICKEN
S
HACK

“There's Something Within Me”—Sister Rosetta Tharpe

“Beer Drinking Woman”—Memphis Slim

“Buckin' the Dice”—Fats Waller

“Blue Flame”—Woody Herman

“Blues”—Artie Shaw

“Come Back Baby”—Walter Davis

“Throw this Dog a Bone”—Ollie Shepard

“Love Me”—Lil Green

“Goin' to Chicago Blues”—Count Basie

“Call Me a Taxi”—Bob Crosby

“Daddy”—Sammy Kaye

“Saxa-Woogie”—Louis Jordan

“Pan-Pan”—Louis Jordan

“Down, Down, Down”—Count Basie

“Jelly Jelly”—Earl Hines

“My Mellow Man”—Lil Green

“I'm Falling for You”—Earl Hines

“Keep Cool Fool”—Ella Fitzgerald

“Yes Indeed”—Bing Crosby

“Stand By Me”—Sister Rosetta Tharpe

D
IPSIE
D
OODLE

“Romance in the Dark”—Lil Green

“All that Meat and No Potatoes”—Fats Waller

“Undecided Blues”—Count Basie

“Key to the Highway”—Jazz Gillum

“Beer Drinking Woman”—Memphis Slim

“Stand By Me”—Sister Rosetta Tharpe

“Because of You”—Erskine Butterfield

“Yes I Got your Woman”—Washboard Sam

“Wee Baby Blues”—Art Tatum

“Whiskey Head Man”—Tommy McClennan

“Boogie Woogie's Mother-in-law”—Buddy Johnson

“Shortnin' Bread”—Fats Waller

“My Mellow Man”—Lil Green

“Come Back Baby”—Walter Davis

“Love Me”—Lil Green

“Pine Top's Boogie Woogie”—Louis Jordan

“My Blue Heaven”—Artie Shaw

“Rocking Chair Blues”—Big Bill

“Please Mr. Johnson”—Buddy Johnson

“Jelly Jelly”—Earl Hines

L
UCKY'S

“Throw this Dog a Bone”—Ollie Shepard

“Goin' to Chicago Blues”—Count Basie

“Jelly Jelly”—Earl Hines

“Boogie Woogie's Mother-in-law”—Buddy Johnson

“My Blue Heaven”—Artie Shaw

“Do You Call that a Buddy?”—Louis Jordan

“Good Feeling Blues”—Blind Boy Fuller

“Look Out for Yourself”—Peetie Wheatstraw

“What You Know Joe”—Jimmy Lunceford

“Buckin' the Dice”—Fats Waller

“Red Wagon”—Lou Holden

“Please Mr. Johnson”—Buddy Johnson

“Love Me”—Lil Green

“All that Meat and No Potatoes”—Fats Waller

“2:19 Blues”—Louis Armstrong

“Stand By Me”—Sister Rosetta Tharpe

“Beer Drinkin Woman”—Memphis Slim

“Saxa-Woogie”—Louis Jordan

“Come Back Baby”—Walter Davis

“Summit Ridge Drive”—Artie Shaw

N
EW
A
FRICA

“Summit Ridge Drive”—Artie Shaw

“All that Meat and No Potatoes”—Fats Waller

“Cross Your Heart”—Artie Shaw

“Undecided Blues”—Count Basie

“New Please Mr. Johnson”—Buddy Johnson

“Pan-Pan”—Louis Jordan

“I Been Dealing with the Devil”—Sonny Boy Williamson

“Fine and Mellow”—Andy Kirk

“Dig these Blues”—The Four Clefs

“Mama Knows What Papa Wants When Papa's Feeling Blue”—Georgia White

“Knock Me Out”—Honey Dripper

“Blue Flame”—Woody Herman

“That's the Blues Old Man”—Johnny Hodges

“My Mellow Man”—Lil Green

“Keep Cool Fool”—Erskine Hawkins

“Blues Part 2”—Artie Shaw

“Come Back Baby”—Walter Davis

“Twenty Four Robbers”—Jimmie Lunceford

“Fan It”—Woody Herman

“Red Wagon”—Count Basie

“Do You Call that a Buddy”—Larry Clinton

“Just Jivin' Around”—Sam Price

“Chocolate”—Jimmie Lunceford

“T-Bone Blues”—Louis Jordan