So many huge­ly suc­cess­ful and tal­ent­ed musi­cians have died at age 27 that it almost seems rea­son­able to believe the num­ber rep­re­sents some mys­ti­cal coef­fi­cient of tal­ent and tragedy. But sev­er­al decades before Jimi Hen­drix, Janis Joplin, Jim Mor­ri­son, Kurt Cobain, or Amy Wine­house left us too soon, Robert John­son—the man who pio­neered sell­ing one’s soul for rock and roll—died in 1938, at age 27, under mys­te­ri­ous and like­ly vio­lent cir­cum­stances. He was already a leg­end, and his sto­ry of meet­ing Satan at the cross­roads to make an exchange for his extra­or­di­nary tal­ent had already per­me­at­ed the pop­u­lar cul­ture of his day and became even more ingrained after his death—making him, well, maybe the very first rock star.

John­son’s few record­ings—29 songs in total—went on to influ­ence Eric Clap­ton, Kei­th Richards, 27 club mem­ber Bri­an Jones and so many oth­ers. And that’s not to men­tion the hun­dreds of Delta and Chica­go blues gui­tarists who picked John­son’s brain, or stopped short of sell­ing their souls try­ing to out­play him. But John­son, begins the ani­mat­ed short above (which tells the tale of the blues­man­’s infer­nal deal) “wasn’t always such an amaz­ing gui­tarist.” Leg­end has it he “cov­et­ed the tal­ents of Son House” and dreamed of star­dom. He acquired his tal­ent overnight, it seemed to those around him, who sur­mised he must have set out to the cross­roads, met the dev­il, and “made a deal.”

The rest of the story—of Robert Johnson’s fatal encounter with the jeal­ous hus­band of an admirer—is a more plau­si­ble devel­op­ment, though it too may be apoc­ryphal. “Not all of this may be true,” says the short film’s title cards, “but one thing is for cer­tain: No Robert John­son, No Rock and Roll.” This too is anoth­er leg­end. Oth­er ear­ly blues­men like Blind Willie John­son and Robert’s hero Son House exert­ed sim­i­lar influ­ence on 60s blues revival­ists, as of course did lat­er elec­tric play­ers like Mud­dy Waters, Howl­in’ Wolf, and B.B. King. John­son was a phe­nom­e­nal inno­va­tor, and a sin­gu­lar voice, but his repertoire—like those of most blues play­ers at the time—consisted of vari­a­tions on old­er songs, or respons­es to oth­er, very tal­ent­ed musi­cians.

Most of the songs he record­ed were in this vein—with at least two very notable excep­tions: “Cross Road Blues” (or just “Cross­roads”) and “Me and the Dev­il Blues,” both of which have con­tributed to the myth of John­son’s pact with Lucifer, includ­ing the part about the dark angel com­ing to col­lect his debt. In the lat­ter song, ani­mat­ed in a video above, Satan comes knock­ing on the singer’s door ear­ly in the morn­ing. “Hel­lo Satan,” says John­son, “I believe it’s time to go.” Much of what we think about John­son’s life comes from these songs, and from much rumor and innu­en­do. He may have been mur­dered, or—like so many lat­er stars who died too young—he may have sim­ply burned out. One blues singer who claims she met him as a child remem­bers him near the end of his life as “ill” and “sick­ly,” reports the Austin Chron­i­cle, “in a state of phys­i­cal dis­re­pair as though he’d been roughed up.”

John­son schol­ar Eli­jah Wald describes his his­to­ry like that of many founders of reli­gious sects: “So much research has been done [on John­son] that I have to assume the over­all pic­ture is fair­ly accu­rate. Still, this pic­ture has been pieced togeth­er from so many tat­tered and flim­sy scraps that almost any one of them must to some extent be tak­en on faith.” John­son’s “spir­i­tu­al descen­dants,” as Rolling Stone’s David Fricke calls his rock and roll prog­e­ny, have no trou­ble doing just that. Nor do fans of rock and blues and oth­er artists who find the Robert John­son leg­end tan­ta­liz­ing.

In the film above, “Hot Tamales,” ani­ma­tor Ric­car­do Maneglia adapts the myth, and quotes from “Cross­road Blues,” to tell the sto­ry of Bob, who jour­neys to the cross­roads to meet sin­is­ter voodoo deity Papa Leg, replay­ing John­son’s sup­posed ren­dezvous in a dif­fer­ent reli­gious con­text. In “Cross­road“ ‘s lyrics, John­son is actu­al­ly “plead­ing with God for mer­cy,” writes Frank DiGia­co­mo in Van­i­ty Fair, “not bar­gain­ing with the dev­il.” Nonetheless—legendary or not—his evo­ca­tion of dev­il­ish deals in “Me and the Dev­il Blues” and grit­ty, emo­tion­al account of self-destruc­tion in “Cross­roads” may on their own add suf­fi­cient weight to that far-reach­ing idea: “No Robert John­son, No Rock and Roll.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

B.B. King Explains in an Ani­mat­ed Video Whether You Need to Endure Hard­ship to Play the Blues

Kei­th Richards Wax­es Philo­soph­i­cal, Plays Live with His Idol, the Great Mud­dy Waters

Leg­endary Folk­lorist Alan Lomax: ‘The Land Where the Blues Began’

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

A quick heads up, Wilco just released its ninth stu­dio album, Star Wars. And right now you can down­load it for free via Wilco’s web­site. But don’t dil­ly dal­ly, the free down­load will only be avail­able for 30 days. On the band’s Insta­gram account, Jeff Tweedy gave a sim­ple expla­na­tion for the unex­pect­ed give­away: “Well, the biggest rea­son, and I’m not sure we even need any oth­ers, is that it felt like it would be fun.” Indeed.

Last week: we high­light­ed a cou­ple more down­loads that will be free for a lim­it­ed time. Find them below.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and  share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: Down­load Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Short Course, The Inex­plic­a­ble Uni­verse, in Audio or Video For­mat

Down­load The 4‑Hour Chef by Tim Fer­riss as a Free Audio Book

Les Paul, known pri­mar­i­ly for the icon­ic gui­tar that bears his name, also invent­ed most of the record­ing tech­nol­o­gy we still use today, includ­ing the use of reverb as a stu­dio effect. But of course he didn’t invent rever­ber­a­tion any­more than he invent­ed the gui­tar; he just turned both of them elec­tric. Reverb has exist­ed as long as there have been sound­waves, obsta­cles for them to hit, and ears to hear what hap­pens when they do. In every pos­si­ble space—landscape, cityscape, and archi­tec­tur­al formation—the effect announces itself dif­fer­ent­ly, though we’re sel­dom aware of it unless we’re in grand, cav­ernous spaces like a cathe­dral or moun­tain gorge.

But musi­cians and audio engi­neers like Les Paul have always paid spe­cial atten­tion to the way sound man­i­fests in space, as have singers like the gent above, who calls him­self the Wik­isinger, real name Joachim Müll­ner. With “no arti­fi­cial reverb added,” Müll­ner demon­strates how much envi­ron­ment con­tributes to the qual­i­ty of what we hear with a mon­tage of sound and video clips from several—very aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleasing—locations.

In each place, Müll­ner sings the same strange song: in a tun­nel, an attic, a field before an oil der­ricks, the nave of a cathe­dral, and an ane­choic chamber—which resem­bles the inte­ri­or of an alien space­craft and pro­duces no reflec­tions what­so­ev­er. Some­times the effect is sub­tle, invit­ing you to lean in and lis­ten more close­ly; some­times it’s out­sized and oper­at­ic.

The filmmaker’s claim to “no arti­fi­cial reverb” sounds a lit­tle slip­pery after view­ing the Wikisinger’s per­for­mance since one of the most dra­mat­ic clips fea­tures his voice, and per­son, redu­pli­cat­ed sev­er­al times. And we should keep in mind that no record­ing tech­nol­o­gy is per­fect­ly trans­par­ent. Micro­phones and oth­er equip­ment always add, or sub­tract, some­thing to the sound. As slick as an adver­tise­ment, the short video uses a heav­i­ly medi­at­ed form to con­vey the sim­ple idea of nat­ur­al rever­ber­a­tion. You may, in fact, have seen some­thing just like this not long ago. Before the Wik­isinger, there was the Wikidrum­mer. In anoth­er “no reverb added” video above, he snaps, cracks, booms, and crash­es through the same beat in garages, open fields, and under­pass­es. With each abrupt shift in loca­tion comes an abrupt shift in the fre­quen­cy and dura­tion of the sounds, as the full spec­trum col­lides with met­al, con­crete, asphalt, and open air.

The ways in which sound and space inter­act can deter­mine the shape of a musi­cal form. This sub­ject has giv­en musi­cian, artist, and the­o­rist of music and art, David Byrne much to think about. As he puts in in a TED talk above, the “nature of the room”—the qual­i­ty of its reverb—guides the evo­lu­tion of musi­cal gen­res and styles. Begin­ning with the exam­ple of CBG­Bs and like dive bars around the coun­try, he describes how the art punk pio­neered by his band the Talk­ing Heads depend­ed on such spaces and “didn’t sound all that great” in places strict­ly designed for music, like Carnegie Hall. His talk then takes us to some fas­ci­nat­ing archi­tec­tur­al envi­ron­ments, such as the kinds of rooms Mozart com­posed and played in. Byrne speaks to the neo­phytes as well as to the audio­philes among us, and his talk works as a per­fect intel­lec­tu­al com­ple­ment to the son­ic and visu­al adven­ture on offer in the Wik­isinger and –drummer’s videos. Both approach­es equal­ly per­suade us of the prime sig­nif­i­cance of that intan­gi­ble won­der called reverb.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

What Ancient Greek Music Sound­ed Like: Hear a Recon­struc­tion That is ‘100% Accu­rate’

Lis­ten to the Old­est Song in the World: A Sumer­ian Hymn Writ­ten 3,400 Years Ago

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

Heavy Met­al owes many debts, though it doesn’t always acknowl­edge them—debts to clas­si­cal music, through gui­tarists like Yng­wie Malm­steen, to the blues, through Led Zep­pelin and Deep Pur­ple, and to jazz, through a host of play­ers, includ­ing Black Sabbath’s gui­tarist Tony Iom­mi. But while oth­er play­ers have picked up tech­niques from the jazz idiom like blast beats and sweep pick­ing, Iom­mi found some­thing else: the moti­va­tion to relearn to play the gui­tar after los­ing three of the fin­ger­tips on his right hand in an indus­tri­al acci­dent, on his last day on the job, right before he was to embark on a Euro­pean tour. He was only 17 years old. Iom­mi nar­rates the sto­ry him­self above in “Fin­gers Bloody Fin­gers,” a pow­er­ful ani­mat­ed short by illus­tra­tor Paul Blow and ani­ma­tor Kee Koo.

After the grue­some acci­dent, Iom­mi, “extreme­ly depressed,” trag­i­cal­ly resigned him­self to nev­er play the gui­tar again — that is, until his fac­to­ry man­ag­er vis­it­ed him in the hos­pi­tal and told him the sto­ry of Djan­go Rein­hardt, the Bel­gian-Romani swing gui­tarist who lost two fin­gers in a ter­ri­ble fire at age 18, him­self just on the verge of star­dom and high­ly sought after by the great­est band­lead­ers of the day. In the clip above from the French doc­u­men­tary Trois doigts de genie (Three Fin­gers of Genius), learn how Rein­hardt over­came his dis­abil­i­ty to become one of the most famous gui­tarists of his day, and see why Iom­mi was so inspired by his sto­ry. “A less­er musi­cian would have giv­en up,” wrote Mike Springer in a pre­vi­ous post, “but Rein­hardt over­came the lim­i­ta­tion by invent­ing his own method of play­ing.” Iom­mi, of course, did the same, also along the way intro­duc­ing a lighter gauge of string, which mil­lions of rock gui­tarists now use.

Rein­hardt toured and record­ed with his own ensem­bles and with Duke Elling­ton and oth­ers. Unfor­tu­nate­ly pre­cious lit­tle footage of him exists, but you can see him above with vio­lin­ist Stephane Grap­pel­li in their Quin­tette du Hot Club and in a few oth­er short clips in this post. Once you hear Djan­go’s sto­ry of over­com­ing adver­si­ty, and once you hear him play, you’ll under­stand why he inspired Iom­mi to push through his own pain and lim­i­ta­tions to become one of the most influ­en­tial gui­tarists of his gen­er­a­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Djan­go Rein­hardt and the Inspir­ing Sto­ry Behind His Gui­tar Tech­nique

Djan­go Rein­hardt Demon­strates His Gui­tar Genius in Rare Footage From the 1930s, 40s & 50s

Heavy Met­al: BBC Film Explores the Music, Per­son­al­i­ties & Great Cloth­ing That Hit the Stage in the 1980s

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

We’ve seen Euro­peans cov­er famous rock and met­al bands in an Amer­i­can folk style—Finnish musi­cians play­ing AC/DC, Iron Maid­en, and Dio in Appalachi­an folk, to be exact. Now, pre­pare to hear famous rock and met­al bands in a dis­tinc­tive­ly Euro­pean folk style: Medieval Belaru­sian folk, played by the beau­ti­ful­ly named Stary Olsa. The band’s name derives from a stream in East Belarus—their cloth­ing, instru­men­ta­tion, and rhythms from an ear­ly Lithuan­ian state called the Grand Duchy—but the songs are all 20th cen­tu­ry radio fod­der. Above, see them do Deep Purple’s “Child in Time,” and below, they tack­le the Red Hot Chili Pep­pers’ “Cal­i­for­ni­ca­tion.”

Stary Olsa’s cov­er of Metallica’s “One” (fur­ther down), already an incred­i­bly dra­mat­ic song, works par­tic­u­lar­ly well in their syn­co­pat­ed Spar­tan style. The sounds and cos­tum­ing of the accom­plished Belaru­sian musi­cians will inevitably remind you—if you haven’t been under a rock in Belarus—of that Medieval-style fan­ta­sy show in which your favorite char­ac­ters meet hor­ri­bly vio­lent ends week after week.

When we look at the bloody his­to­ry of Medieval Europe, the grue­some­ness of Wes­t­eros can seem like only a slight exaggeration—dragons and ice zom­bies aside—of the so-called “dark ages.” These asso­ci­a­tions, and the solem­ni­ty of the song selec­tion and stark­ness of the voic­es and instru­ments, lend Stary Olsa’s per­for­mances a grav­i­tas that, frankly, ele­vates some of the mate­r­i­al far above its pop ori­gins (I’m look­ing at you, Red Hot Chili Pep­pers).

In order for such meld­ings of styles, peri­ods, and cul­tures to work, whether they be played for laughs or deeply seri­ous, the musi­cian­ship must be top notch. Such was the case with Finnish blue­grass met­al cov­er band Steve ‘N’ Seag­ulls, and such is cer­tain­ly the case with Stary Olsa, who have appeared on Belaru­sian TV (from which some of these videos come) and are cur­rent­ly find­ing a lev­el of pop­u­lar­i­ty out­side their native coun­try that few Belaru­sian bands have achieved. It’s unlike­ly we’ll see them soon on the rock fes­ti­val cir­cuit, but their sta­tus as an inter­net sen­sa­tion is all but guar­an­teed. Just below, see the band trans­late a med­ley of The Bea­t­les’ “Obla-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” and “Yel­low Sub­ma­rine” into their musi­cal idiom, prov­ing that they don’t just do dark, haunt­ing, and mys­te­ri­ous; they’re also pos­i­tive­ly dance­able.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Finnish Musi­cians Play Blue­grass Ver­sions of AC/DC, Iron Maid­en & Ron­nie James Dio

Pak­istani Musi­cians Play Amaz­ing Ver­sion of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Clas­sic, “Take Five”

Watch Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile’ Per­formed on a Gayageum, a Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Instru­ment

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

It’s easy to write off the Grate­ful Dead—and I’ll admit I did for years—as aging “hip­pies stuck in the Sum­mer of Love,” as a recent Wired arti­cle puts it. But this rep­u­ta­tion belies a musi­cal depth due in part, as we point­ed out yes­ter­day, to the band’s lyri­cal sophis­ti­ca­tion. But it isn’t only their lyri­cism, or their self-sus­tain­ing sub­cul­ture, that has con­sis­tent­ly won them gen­er­a­tions of devot­ed fol­low­ers born long after Jer­ry Gar­cia and com­pa­ny got their start at Ken Kesey’s Acid Test par­ties. “Long before it became nec­es­sary (or cool) to do so,” writes Wired, “the band embraced a DIY ethos in every­thing from man­u­fac­tur­ing its own gear to pub­lish­ing its own music dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem. The Dead­’s obses­sion with tech­nol­o­gy was almost insep­a­ra­ble from the band’s psy­che­del­ic ambi­tion and artis­tic inde­pen­dence.”

Not only has the Dead fos­tered what is sure­ly the most wide­spread boot­leg indus­try in exis­tence, but they also “pio­neered rock con­cert broad­casts,” start­ing with a Carousel Ball­room show in 1968. Thanks to the spread of the Grate­ful Dead gospel through chan­nels both offi­cial and unof­fi­cial, we have access to qual­i­ty record­ings of Jer­ry Gar­ci­a’s last show with the Grate­ful Dead twen­ty years ago, and to their last shows as a band, played just this past week in a two-city, 50th anniver­sary “Fare Thee Well” series of con­certs in San­ta Clara and at Chicago’s Sol­dier Field. The final shows are now large­ly avail­able online thanks to the efforts of an enter­pris­ing “taper,” as the dili­gent ama­teur record­ing engi­neers who cap­ture each Dead show are called.

At the top, hear “The Gold­en Road (To Unlim­it­ed Devotion)”—the first song on the band’s 1967 debut album—taped at the July 4th farewell gig. (Head over to NYC­ta­per’s site to hear/download the com­plete show.) And above, hear “Pas­sen­ger” from the pre­vi­ous night. (Get the com­plete 7/3/2015 show here). The final July 5th show is sure to come online soon. Or you can find the shows on Archive.org here:

July 3

July 4

July 5

Opin­ions on these final gigs have var­ied wide­ly, but no mat­ter how uneven some of the per­for­mances, as always—scattered amidst the ram­shackle jams—the Dead con­jure trance states of inter­lock­ing rhythms and har­monies that make all the lis­ten­ing worth­while. We may nev­er get the chance to see them sprawl out live on stage again, but thanks to the stal­wart taper com­mu­ni­ty, near­ly every moment of the Dead­’s 50 year career in rock and roll—from the con­fus­ing­ly nood­ly to the tru­ly sublime—has been pre­served for the ages. Thou­sands of con­certs can be found at The Inter­net Archive, one of the best sanc­tioned Grate­ful Dead boot­leg archives on the web. Don’t miss it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Every Grate­ful Dead Song Anno­tat­ed in Hyper­text: Web Project Reveals the Deep Lit­er­ary Foun­da­tions of the Dead’s Lyrics      

The Grate­ful Dead’s “Rip­ple” Played by Musi­cians Around the World

10,173 Free Grate­ful Dead Con­cert Record­ings in the Inter­net Archive

The Grate­ful Dead’s “Ulti­mate Boot­leg” Now Online & Added to the Library of Con­gress’ Nation­al Record­ing Reg­istry

The Acid Test Reels: Ken Kesey & The Grate­ful Dead’s Sound­track for the 1960s Famous LSD Par­ties

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness