Robert Johnson-- King of the Delta Blues Singers

Compulsory 100 %

I'm sitting in my office at work, so I thought I would do a quick post. I'm supposed to go to this party, which I never feel much up for anymore but I feel like should try to be social tonight, but first: Robert Johnson!

King of the Delta Blues Singers is probably the best and most important single album in the history of the blues. Even if you have never heard the name Robert Johnson, you have heard a half dozen of his songs. On King of the Delta Blues Singers alone you can find such standards as "Walking Blues," "Cross Road Blues", "Kind-Hearted Woman Blues," "32-20 Blues," "Rambling on My Mind"-- elsewhere in Johnson's repetoire are great blues numbers like "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom", "Love in Vain", "Sweet Home Chicago", and "They're Red Hot" (which you probably know from a very silly Red Hot Chili Peppers cover).

It was Robert Johnson who, according to legend, sold his soul to the devil for the ability to play guitar. What you find in Johnson is not so much virtuoso talent (you find that too) as the ability to create really extraordinary multi-layered accompaniment on the guitar. It is always just Johnson and a guitar-- but he transforms his guitar into a standard four-piece rock outlet-- it's drums, bass, rhytm and lead guitar all rolled into one. I've seen Johnson called both the greatest blues guitarist and the greatest folk guitarist-- I think I actually prefer the second because it demonstrates a bit more perception and imagination. This is folk music played from a reality that was the blues.

It is probably a cliche twice over by now, but you can't help but hear a Robert Johnson haunted by that same devil. Whether literally in "Hellhound on my Trail" or figuratively in songs of violence and temptation like "32-20 Blues" and "Drunken-Hearted Man." He has the emotional power of the perfect and unreachable 'original' bluesman. It would be almost incorrect to describe Johnson as singing. More accurately, he howls on pitch-- squeezing sound out of himself like water from a wet cloth.

Every song on King of the Delta Blues Singers has the stink of a timeless classic. What distinguishes Johnson I think more than anything else is his sense of rhythm and syncopation. He constantly switches back between double and triple time and songs will often thrillingly accelerate or stop dead in their tracks when they hit the break-- see the break to "Kind Hearted Woman" or "Phonograph Blues."

I have to go to this party now, but if you add one ancient Blues recording to your collection, make it King of the Delta Blues Singers (or go straight for the Complete Recordings of Robert Johnson, which really is only about 20-25 songs).