Today is the 75th anniversary of the death of one of the greatest rural blues musicians the United States has ever given the world, Blind Willie Johnson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWb4XcVwIeI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNj2BXW852g
https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/johnson-blind-willie
So little can be firmly documented about Johnson's life that even if there is officially a biography about Johnson reader consensus is that the biography adds little to nothing you can't find out in liner notes. It "may" be better to run with Jas Obrecht's book Early Blues instead. There is now agreement that he died September 18, 1945, although an earlier account placed Johnson's death in 1949, so there's an outside possibility that if the later date could be confirmed as correct this wouldn't be the 75th anniversary of Johnson's death, after all. Still, to go by contemporary consensus, today is that day.
https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/the-soul-of-a-man/
If you have never heard Blind Willie Johnson's music and have any interest at all in early blues then do yourself a favor and get his complete recordings, whether through Amazon or maybe preferably your local music shop.
https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Blind-Willie-Johnson/dp/B0000028QB
POSTSCRIPT 9-19-2020
There's a musical homage to Blind Willie Johnson online over here if you want to hear what a classical guitarist who is a fan of Johnson has written to pay tribute to Johnson's formidable musical legacy. It's not really in Johnson's style, exactly, but it's inspired and informed by it. For alert long-time readers, Ragtime and Sonata Forms can be thought of as a 131 page postscript to a guitar sonata.
No comments:
Post a Comment