I’ve wondered about this for years. Why does Robert Johnson have such an exalted reputation? To me, his playing does not seem particularly remarkable compared to that of other delta blues guitarists. Also, there are a lot of acoustic blues guitarists, generally more urban, whose playing seems much more interesting to me. Lightnin’ Hopkins, Reverend Gary Davis, and Blind Willie McTell come to mind.
I’ve thought about this before. My answer is cynical.
[ul]
[li]He has a rather containable discography, so it’s easy to say you have everything by the bluesman who matters.[/li][li]He was good.[/li][li]He died in a romantic way, and young.[/li][li]Clapton said he was great, and covered one of his songs.[/li][/ul]
I think Lightning Hopkins is too recent to get any sort of seminal bluesman recognition.
I play Charley Patton more often (on my iPod, not on the guitar), myself.
Part of it is certainly that his music was in the right place at the right time: Clapton didn’t just record one song, he championed his stuff and told a lot of other musicians about it. I think Clapton once said there was a period of several years where if he met someone and they weren’t familiar with Robert Johnson, he wouldn’t talk to them. I can believe that. Anyway that made Johnson’s music a staple for many of the electric blues bands of the 60s and 70s and exposed his stuff to a much wider/whiter audience. And the mystique of Robert Johnson is enormous.
That being said, don’t discount the music. Some of the writing is very intense, his voice sounds legitimately haunted, and the guitar playing shows a lot of technique. The voice and guitar sound less unreal when you consider they were probably sped up as the records were made, but still.
His music is great on its own; his death rubber-stamped his legend, like Kurt Cobain (as a young player starting out, RJ was okay but green; he went away for a bit a woodsheded; came back excellent - and singing about the devil - so the legend of selling his soul to the devil was an explanation for how he got so good AND good press).
I will say this: his music, along with songs written by **Willie Dixon **- more than most other early acoustic bluesmen (RJ) or Chicago electric bluesman (WD - a principal songwriter for Chess Records) - well, the music of those two guys seem to **foreshadow **rock a bit more. The structures of their songs and the lyrics seem to lend themselves to the stripped-down boom-smack rhythms, aggressive guitars, and pushed-up-front bass of blues-rock.
I kinda think of their music like the Les Paul guitar: for its original intent - jazzy, commercial pop that LP himself played - it was great; but when amps got big and guitars got distorted, it turned out to be transcendent in a genre it was never designed for. I would argue that RJ’s and WD’s songs fit that bill.
And his legend is the perfect one to get obsessed with as a fanboy - and Clapton was that fanboy and he casts a huge shadow. (to tie my analogy even closer - Les Paul guitars are the legendary rock and blues guitars they are thoughts of as today due to Mr. Clapton as well. Guess he has been a bit of an influence. ;))
I think Robert Johnson is the guy who translates better to a modern audience.
The growling gravelly-voice thing that people like Charley Patton and Willie Johnson did was a distinctive feature of early blues, but it’s kind of an acquired taste now. Blind Willie McTell played a much gentler style of blues. Robert Johnson stands out because he rocked-out a bit more. It’s much easier to rearrange his songs for a standard rock band configuration (drums, bass, two guitars).
For an interesting take on this question, read Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues by Elijah Wald. He makes the case the Johnson was minor figure while he was alive, and remained obscure until he was rediscovered by the British rockers of the early sixties. Wald argues against the idea that Johnson was a seminal, primitive blues musician who was an important influence on the form. Rather, Johnson was a canny pop musician who happened to have recorded several blues records before he died.
I think the haunted quality is what the big deal is. I find him to be very interesting, but he couldn’t seem to stay on tempo. I really like him, though. I think that there’s a certain white fan tendency to want black people to play up the black and sing more about black hardship. I find it a little too anthropological and wish they’d give money to black colleges instead.
Half of Robert Johnson’s legend is due to people conflating it with Tommy Johnson’s.