A Newly Discovered Recording Lets You Hear Delta Blues Legend Robert Johnson in Stunning Clarity

Great swathes of rock music since the nine­teen-six­ties would nev­er have exist­ed, we’re some­times told, were it not for the record­ings of Robert John­son. Cer­tain­ly the likes of Kei­th Richards, Eric Clap­ton, Robert Plant, and Bob Dylan have nev­er hes­i­tat­ed to acknowl­edge his influ­ence. “From the first note the vibra­tions from the loud­speak­er made my hair stand up,” Dylan writes in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy of his first encounter with John­son’s music. “The stab­bing sounds from the gui­tar could almost break a win­dow. When John­son start­ed singing, he seemed like a guy who could have sprung from the head of Zeus in full armor. I imme­di­ate­ly dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed between him and any­one else I had ever heard.” Not bad for a record­ing old­er than Dylan him­self.

In the ear­ly nine­teen-six­ties, the blues as John­son played it seems to have sound­ed elec­tri­fy­ing­ly rev­e­la­to­ry to the gen­er­a­tion of then-young musi­cians who man­aged to hear it, regard­less of their own ori­gins. All such record­ings date from 1936 or 1937, the fruits of just two ses­sions in makeshift Texas stu­dios over­seen by pro­duc­er Don Law.

Though the “king of the Delta blues singers” left behind only this small body of work after his still-unex­plained death at the age of 27, it’s been end­less­ly scru­ti­nized by the gen­re’s enthu­si­asts. All of them will sure­ly regard as a god­send the new­ly dis­cov­ered shel­lac mas­ter test press­ing above of “Cross Road Blues,” a song that plays an out­sized part in the leg­end of Robert John­son, who some say sold his soul to the dev­il at just such a loca­tion in exchange for his for­mi­da­ble gui­tar skills.

Though it con­tains no ref­er­ence to any such unholy pact, nor to any denizen of the under­world, “Cross Road Blues” does have a haunt­ing sound that goes with the shad­owy ambi­ence of the man’s short life sto­ry. Some of that had to do with the less-than-ide­al qual­i­ty of the record­ings that have long cir­cu­lat­ed, but this test press­ing of John­son’s sec­ond take sounds dif­fer­ent. Uploaded by sound restor­er Nick Del­low, it was orig­i­nal­ly made in 1940 straight from the met­al mas­ter by Colum­bia Records pro­duc­er George Avakian, who would go on to work with every­one from Miles Davis to Edith Piaf to John Cage. The son­ic mud­di­ness of most Robert John­son releas­es thus far has done its part to pre­vent mod­ern-day lis­ten­ers from get­ting quite what the big deal was about him. But per­haps the unprece­dent­ed clar­i­ty of this record­ing will get the hair of young musi­cians and mature con­nois­seurs alike stand­ing on end.

via Ted Gioia

Relat­ed con­tent:

Kei­th Richards Shows Us How to Play the Blues, Inspired by Robert John­son, on the Acoustic Gui­tar

Cov­er­ing Robert Johnson’s Blues Became a Rite of Rock ‘n’ Roll Pas­sage: Hear Cov­ers by The Rolling Stones, Eric Clap­ton, Howl­in’ Wolf, Lucin­da Williams & More

Robert John­son Final­ly Gets an Obit­u­ary in The New York Times 81 Years After His Death

Jimi Hen­drix Plays the Delta Blues on a 12-String Acoustic Gui­tar in 1968, and Jams with His Blues Idols, Bud­dy Guy & B.B. King

The Leg­end of How Blues­man Robert John­son Sold His Soul to the Dev­il at the Cross­roads

A Brief His­to­ry of Mak­ing Deals with the Dev­il: Nic­colò Pagani­ni, Robert John­son, Jim­my Page & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.