Sonntag, 8. Mai 2016

08.05. Joe Bonamassa, Phil Wiggins, Robert Johnson * Graham Bond +




















1911 Robert Johnson*
1954 Phil Wiggins*
1974 Graham Bond*
1977 Joe Bonamassa*









Happy Birthday

 

Joe Bonamassa   *08.05.1977

 





ich habe in letzter Zeit viel von Joe Bonamassa gesehen und gehört. Die DVD „Tour de Force Royal Albert Hall (Acoustic / Electric Night)“ hat mich sehr beeindruckt, aber auch die CD „SeeSaw“ und das Video mit Beth Hart erzeugen ein Kribbeln in Hör- und Sehnerven.
Über Joe Bonamassa persönlich wusste ich bisher nicht viel. Darum habe ich mich entschlossen diese Kurzbiografie zu schreiben, um Joe besser kennen zu lernen, seine Musik kenne ich ausgiebig, habe ich doch fast alle CD´s in meiner Sammlung.
Der beste, im Moment noch auftretende Bluesgitarrist ist ohne Zweifel Eric Clapton. Joe Bonamassa hat das Zeug dazu, eines Tages diese Rolle zu übernehmen.
2010 waren beide beim Crossroad-Festival dabei. Auf Joe´s Europatournee 2009 standen beide zusammen auf der Bühne.
Ich weiß aber auch, dass sich an Joe die Geister scheiden, er polarisiert stark. Es liegt vielleicht daran, dass er oft leicht überheblich wirkt, oder am edlen Zwirn und der Pomade, oder aber auch an seiner Stimme. Diese Stimme kann man mögen oder aber auch nicht. Sein Gitarrenspiel wirkt dagegen oft schon perfekt. Es ist schon beeindruckend, wenn man bei einem Konzert seine Gitarrensammlung sieht, was er diesen Instrumenten so entlocken kann.

Wer ist nun dieser Mann, der seit 2000 16 Studioalben, 6 Live-Alben und 10 DVD´s herausgebracht hat und etwa 200 Live-Auftritte im Jahr bewältigt?
„Etwa 150 Songs hat er in seiner Karriere bislang geschrieben, ein Hit war nicht dabei. Etwas, auf das der Amerikaner fast stolz ist. Er wird von der Plattenindustrie nicht hofiert, er hat noch nie einen Grammy gewonnen, aber zu seinen Konzerten kommen in der Regel drei- bis fünftausend Zuschauer. "Der Grammy ist mir wirklich egal. Hat nicht diese tolle Popband Milli Vanilli mal einen bekommen?", fragt er nicht ohne Sarkasmus. Oder wurmt ihn die Missachtung doch mehr, als er zugibt?“4)

Joe wurde am 8. Mai 1977 in New Hartford (NY) geboren. Sein Vater besaß ein Gitarrengeschäft und es kam, wie es kommen musste – Joe fing schon mit 4 Jahren an Gitarre zu lernen. Dazu bekam er von seinem Vater eine kleine, im Maßstab gefertigte Chiquita-Gitarre1).
Mit 12 Jahren stand er schon mit B.B. King auf der Bühne, mit 14 Jahren begleitete er eine Veranstaltung des Musikgeräteherstellers Fender.
Während dieser Reise an der Westküste lernte er Berry Oakley jr., den Sohn des Allman-Brothers-Bassisten, kennen. Bonamassa und Oakley gründeten zusammen mit Erin Davis, Sohn von Miles Davis, und Waylon Krieger, Sohn von Robby Krieger, die Band Bloodline, mit der sie ein Album bei EMI herausbrachten. 3)
Mir liegt das Album Bloodline von Bloodline vor und dazu gibt es sogar ein Video:

 

 
Joe Bonamassa / Bloodline - Stone Cold Hearted - Live

Es interessant diesen „frühen“ Joe Bonamassa einmal zu beobachten. Man kann schon erkennen, dass dieser junge Mann Potenzial hat, was er bis heute reichlich bewiesen hat.

Bonamassa trennte sich von der Band und begann 2000 damit, eine lange Reihe von Solo-Studioalben und Live-Alben zu produzieren.
Ein Meilenstein für alle Bluesliebhaber ist sicherlich das Album „Blues-Deluxe“ aus dem Jahr 2003.
Ich liebe dieses Album wegen dem bluesigem Sound aber auch wegen Joe´s Gitarrenspiel. Es läuft gerade im Hintergrund und inspiriert mich.
Bein dem dritten Titel „Blues deluxe“ beweist Joe sogar, wie gute er den Blues singen kann.



1. You upset me baby 2. Burning hell 3. Blues deluxe 4. Man of many words 5. Woke up dreaming
6. I don't live anywhere 7. Wild about you baby 8. Long distance blues 9. Pack it up 10. Left overs
11. Walking blues 12. Mumbling word
Über das Line Up bei dieser CD habe ich leider nichts gefunden. Das kommt davon, wenn man nur mp3-CD´s sammelt. Selbst das Internetz schweigt sich dazu aus.

Joe spielte mit den unterschiedlichsten Musikern zusammen. So war er Mitglied der Black Country Communion
Die Black Country Communion war eine englisch-amerikanische Rockgruppe, eine sogenannte Supergruppe, bestehend aus dem Ex-Deep-Purple-Bassisten und Sänger Glenn Hughes, dem Schlagzeuger Jason Bonham, dem Keyboarder Derek Sherinian und dem Gitarristen und Sänger Joe Bonamassa. Hier schied Joe 2013 aus. Kurz danach löste sich die Band auf und es entstand California Breed, natürlich ohne Joe.2)

Über die momentane Bandzusammensetzung findet man auf Joe´s Homepage (http://jbonamassa.com/about-joe/about-band/) folgendes:

Carmine Rojas – Bass

Derek Sherinian - Keyboard

Tal Bergman - Drums



Bemerkenswert ist das Projekt Beth Heart/Joe Bonamassa. Hie kommt die gewaltige Stimme von Beth mir dem imposanten Gitarrenspiel von Joe zusammen. Eine überaus prickelnde Symbiose.
Zwei Alben (Don't Explain 2011, Seesaw 2013) sind das bisherige Ergebnis.











Abschliessen möchte ich meine kleine Biographie mit dem Hinweis auf das grandiose Konzert „An Acoustic Evening at the Vienna Opera“. Hier zieht Joe alle Register auf seinen Gitarren, dennoch ist das Album anders. Allseits bekannte Songs, wie "Dust Bowl", "Around The Bend", "The Ballard Of John Henry", "Slow Train", "Palm Trees", "Helicopters And Gasline", "Work Up Dreaming", "Sloe Gin", "High Water Everywhere", "Jockey Full Of Bourbon", "Mountain Time", "Black Lung Heartache", "Dislocated Boy" und "Stones In My Passway" werden vollkommen unkonventionell dargeboten. Joe ist diesemal nur mit einer Akustikklampfe bewaffnet und anstatt von seiner Stammband lässt er sich zum Teil von Garry O'Conner (Banjo), Mats Wester (Nyckelharpa), dem Tastenspezi Arlan Schierbaum und Lenny Castro (Conga) begleiten.
Ich liebe solche Darbietungen, zeigen sie doch deutlicher die Fähigkeiten des Künstlers, als wenn Schlagzeug und Bass nebenher dröhnen. Man darf hier also keinen sonst üblichen Bluesrock erwarten, sondern erlebt hier eine feine, perfekte Handarbeit auf der Gitarre.
Ich empfehle aber vor dem Kauf dieser CD/DVD sich einmal auf Youtube einzustimmen. Ich kann mir vorstellen, dass eingefleischte Bluesrockfans von diesem Konzert enttäuscht sein werden.

Bonamassa ist mit der schottischen Sängerin Sandi Thom liiert, was er im Booklet seiner im Mai 2012 erschienenen CD "Driving Towards the Daylight" unter den Danksagungen bekannt gibt.

Neben seiner normalen musikalischen Arbeit gründete und leitet JB die gemeinnützige Keeping The Blues Alive- Stiftung , um das Erbe des Blues für die nächste Generation durch Musikstipendien zu fördern und um die Musikerziehung in öffentlichen Schulen zu ergänzen.




So viel Blues hatte Joe Bonamassa noch nie


»Muddy Wolf At Red Rocks« ist wohl die bluesigste CD, die Joe je gemacht hat.



Joe Bonamassa (born May 8, 1977) is an American blues rock musician, singer and songwriter. Bonamassa opened for B.B. King when he was only 12 years old.[2] In the last 13 years Bonamassa has put out 15 solo albums through his independent record label, J&R Adventures. Eleven of his solo albums have reached #1 on the Billboard Blues charts.[3][4] He has played alongside such artists as Stephen Stills, Eric Clapton, Foreigner, Buddy Guy, Steve Winwood, Warren Haynes, and Derek Trucks among others.[5] His career highlights include performances at Royal Albert Hall and a Grammy Award nomination in 2013. In addition to his music career, Joe Bonamassa runs a nonprofit organization called the "Keeping The Blues Alive Foundation" whose mission is to further music education by funding scholarships and providing music education resources to schools in need.[6]
Life and career
Solo career

Joe Bonamassa was born in New Hartford, New York State. He started playing guitar at age four. His father was an avid music fan and exposed Bonamassa to records by Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. Joe was very inspired by these British blues rock records. When he was 12 years old, he had his own band called Smokin' Joe Bonamassa. The band gigged around western New York and Pennsylvania, cities such as Scranton and Buffalo, on weekends since Joe had school on weekdays. The guitar Bonamassa played, which he called "Rosie," was a crimson 1972 Fender Stratocaster that Bonamassa's father bought him from a store in Utica, New York, called Big Apple Music. Bonamassa was asked to open for B.B. King at approximately twenty shows, which he did.[7] Before he reached 18 years old, Bonamassa was playing in a band called Bloodline with the sons of Miles Davis, Robby Krieger, and Berry Oakley. Although Bloodline did not become a famous act, it attracted some attention to Bonamassa's guitar chops.[8]
His debut studio album, A New Day Yesterday was released in 2000 and features both original tunes and covers of such artists as Rory Gallagher, Jethro Tull, and Warren Haynes.[9] The album features a guest appearance by Gregg Allman on the tune "If Heartaches Were Nickels" and was produced by Tom Dowd.[10] The album reached #9 on the Billboard Blues chart.[11]
Between 2002 and 2007, Bonamassa saw 3 studio albums hit #1 on the Billboard Blues Charts, and all five of his solo studio albums made the top 10.[12]
In 2009, Bonamassa fulfilled one of his childhood dreams by playing at Royal Albert Hall in London. Eric Clapton performed during the show along with Bonamassa.[13]
Bonamassa's live album Beacon Theatre–Live from New York was released in 2012. The show featured one of Bonamassa's musical heroes, Paul Rodgers, formerly of the bands Free and Bad Company, as a guest.[14]
March 26, 2013 saw the release of his live, acoustic album An Acoustic Evening at the Vienna Opera House, which was released as a CD/DVD/Blu-Ray set.This concert marked the first time Bonamassa played a wholly acoustic show. The acoustic ensemble that performed the show was assembled with the help of Bonamassa's longtime producer, Kevin Shirley.[15]
The concluding, three-night stand of Bonamassa's spring 2013 tour occurred at the famous Beacon Theatre in New York City.[16]
Over the summer of 2013, Bonamassa performed four shows in London featuring three different bands and, at one show, a horn section, covering four different sides of his music. Each show had a unique setlist. The shows were recorded for a DVD release and the set of DVDs was released in October, 2013 under the name "Tour de Force."[17]
On December 6, 2013, Bonamassa and Beth Hart were nominated for a Grammy Award for their 2013 collaborative album SeeSaw in the Best Blues Album category.[18]
Bonamassa's album Different Shades of Blue is his first solo studio album to showcase only original songs, except for one short instrumental Jimi Hendrix cover. The Hendrix cover is a 79-second partial performance of "Hey Baby (New Rising Sun)."[19][20] To write the album, Bonamassa went to Nashville and collaborated with three songwriters there: Jonathan Cain, who has written for Journey; James House, known for his work with Diamond Rio, Dwight Yoakam, and Martina McBride; and Jerry Flowers, who has written for Keith Urban. Bonamassa explained to the writers that he wasn't interested in creating three minute radio hits, but just wanted to write some serious blues rock.[21] The recording of the album was accomplished in Las Vegas at a music studio in the Palms Hotel.[22] On the Billboard charts, the album reached #8 on the Billboard 200, #1 on the Blues Chart, and #1 on the Indie Chart as well.[23]
November 8, 2014 marked exactly 25 years that Bonamassa has been playing as a professional musician.[24]
Collaboration with Beth Hart
Bonamassa was first exposed to Beth Hart's music after seeing her play several television performances. The two would often cross paths when playing shows separately in Europe, and Bonamassa became very impressed with Hart when he caught her show at the Blue Balls festival in Lucerne, Switzerland. While recording his album Dust Bowl and listening to the expanded edition of the Rolling Stones' Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out! that features tracks by Ike and Tina Turner, Bonamassa became inspired to try pairing up with a female, and Beth Hart came to mind. The two musicians met up in a hotel bar in Dublin and soon Bonamassa floated the idea, which Hart accepted immediately, although she was at first under the impression that he was asking her to sing backup vocals on his next album. When she realized that his intention was for her to sing lead vocals, she said "I was floored."[25]
Bonamassa, Hart, and producer Kevin Shirley wrote down lists of soul songs they liked to come up with material for the album, which was named Don't Explain. The group settled on twelve songs, although only ten ended up being recorded. Bonamassa and Hart chose five songs for the album each. Some of Hart's favorite tracks on the album, included "For My Friend" by Bill Withers and "Sinner's Prayer" by Ray Charles. Bonamassa had always wanted to do versions of Brook Benton's "I'll Take Care of You" and "Well Well" written by Delaney Bramlett & Bonnie Bramlett.
Their followup album, Seesaw was nominated for a Grammy Award in the category of Best Blues Album.
Other side projects
Bonamassa served as the guitarist for the hard rock supergroup Black Country Communion. The band released three studio albums.[26]
He is also a member of the jazz-funk band Rock Candy Funk Party. They released their debut album, We Want Groove in 2003 and followed it up with Rock Candy Funk Party Takes New York - Live at the Iridium. The show was recorded over a three night stand at the Iridium Jazz Club in New York City. The band played Conan on February 10, 2014.[27]
Influences
Bonamassa's influences are British and Irish blues acts, rather than American artists. In an interview in Guitarist magazine he cited three albums that had the biggest influence on his playing: John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton (the Beano album), Rory Gallagher's Irish Tour and Goodbye by Cream.[28] He also noted that Stevie Ray Vaughan's Texas Flood had a big influence when Bonamassa was young. Among other bands, he listed the early blues playing of Jethro Tull as an influence, and named both Martin Barre and Mick Abrahams as important musicians to him.[29][30]
He elaborated on his influences in a 2007 interview:
    "You know, my heroes were the Columbia guys – Paul Kossoff, Peter Green, Eric Clapton. There’s so many – there’s Gary Moore, Rory Gallagher – another Irish musician who played the same things, but don't tell him that. But those guys were my guys – Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page. There's a certain sophistication to their approach to the blues that I really like, more so than the American blues that I was listening to. B.B. King's a big influence – he's probably my biggest traditional influence. I love Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson and T-Bone Walker and stuff like that, but I couldn't sit down. I was always forcing myself to listen to whole records by them, where I'd rather listen to Humble Pie do "I'm Ready" than Muddy Waters, you know? I think, the English interpretation of the blues just hit me a lot better, you know?"[31]
In an October 2008 interview with Express & Star he said:
    "When I heard Kossoff playing "Mr. Big" and when I heard Clapton playing "Crossroads" and when I heard Rory Gallagher playing "Cradle Rock", I was like, 'This is way cooler'.... "British blues are my thing. When I heard Rod Stewart and the Jeff Beck Group singing "Let Me Love You", it changed my life. I knew exactly what I wanted to do. Those are my influences".
And in an December 2012 interview with MusicRadar:
    "My friends would ask me, 'Have you heard the new Van Halen record?' And I'd be like, 'Nope.' I was listening to Frank Marino and Mahogany Rush".






Eric Clapton Plays with Joe Bonamassa LIVE on Joe's Euro Tour 


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1mzm6j6Urk 

Joe Bonamassa with Beth Hart - I'll Take Care of You 


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLR_bSzPTiY 


Joe Bonamassa - Driving towards the Daylight LIVE at Vienna 


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpgd2xB8wDQ 



Joe Bonamassa - Stuff You Gotta Watch - Muddy Wolf at Red Rocks


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvOwOrBrxNI&index=21&list=RDjf40OEJTnQU 



Discografie:





Phil Wiggins   *08.05.1954

 



Phil Wiggins (* 8. Mai 1954 in Washington D.C.) ist ein US-amerikanischer Mundharmonikaspieler.
Die Sommer seiner Kindheit verbrachte er oft bei seiner Großmutter in Alabama, bei der er die Kirchenhymnen im traditionellen Call-and-response-Stil kennenlernte. Schon bald faszinierte ihn die Bluesharmonika, und er spielte mit Washingtons wichtigsten Bluesmusikern wie Archie Edwards und John Jackson. Sein Harmonikastil entwickelte sich durch das Hören von Klavier und Trompetenmusik, aber auch durch die Musik von Sonny Terry, Sonny Boy Williamson I., Little Walter, Big Walter Horton und Junior Wells.
1976 traf er John Cephas auf dem Smithsonian's Festival of American Folklife. Gemeinsam mit ihm, dem Pianisten Wilbert "Big Chief" Ellis und dem Bassisten James Bellamy formierten sie sich als "Barrelhouse Rockers". Nach Ellis Tod bildete sich das Duo Cephas & Wiggins, das den Piedmont Bluesstil auf Konzerten in der ganzen Welt verbreitete. John Cephas starb 2009.

b. 8 May 1954, Washington DC, USA. Though partnered since 1976 by fellow Washingtonian John Cephas, Wiggins first developed his harmonica style playing with street singer Flora Molton. Having learned the basics on a plastic harmonica, he appropriated his sister’s instrument and, having watched Molton play, the 14-year-old Wiggins went to her house to jam. Through her festival appearances, he met musicians like Johnny Shines and Wilbert ‘Big Chief’ Ellis. He first met Cephas in 1974 and the pair joined up with Ellis to form the Barrelhouse Ramblers, a band that lasted until Ellis’ death in 1977. Cephas and Wiggins have worked as a duo ever since, touring throughout America and Europe on a regular basis. Although he claims to have learned from most of the musicians with whom he has played, Wiggins attributes particular importance to Sonny Terry’s complex style. Both Dog Days Of August and Guitar Man won W.C. Handy Awards in their respective years. 
John Cephas and Phil Wiggins - Baby, What You Want Me To Do?, Walking Blues (1999) 


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Bd-u7vZoi0 






Robert Johnson   *08.05.1911



Robert Lee Johnson (* 8. Mai 1911 in Hazlehurst, Mississippi; † 16. August 1938 in Greenwood, Mississippi) gilt als einer der bekanntesten Gitarristen, Sänger und Songwriter in der Geschichte des Blues. Er wird als King of the Delta Blues bezeichnet, in Anspielung auf das Mississippi-Delta.
Kindheit und Jugend
Robert Johnson wurde als unehelicher Sohn von Julia Ann Dodds, geborene Majors, und ihrem Geliebten Noah Johnson in Hazlehurst als Robert Leroy Dodds geboren. Er hatte insgesamt elf ältere Halbgeschwister mütterlicherseits, darunter ein Zwillingspaar, das bereits bei der Geburt gestorben war. Seine Großeltern waren noch als Sklaven geboren worden.
Seine Mutter war eigentlich mit Charles Dodds verheiratet, der jedoch vor Roberts Geburt in einem Kampf einen Weißen verletzt hatte und vor einem Lynchmob nach Memphis fliehen musste, wo er seinen Nachnamen von Dodds in Spencer änderte. Um 1914 zog Roberts Mutter dann gemeinsam mit ihrem Sohn nach Memphis zu ihrem Ehemann nach, wo sie dessen neuen Namen annahmen. Einige Jahre später verließ sie ihren Mann, ließ Robert aber bei ihm. Robert hatte kein allzu gutes Verhältnis zu seinem Stiefvater, der ihn häufig schlug. Ungefähr 1918 schickte Dodds/Spencer ihn dann wieder zu seiner Mutter, die zwischenzeitlich Willie „Dusty“ Willis geheiratet hatte. Nachdem seine Mutter ihm als Teenager erklärte, wer sein leiblicher Vater war, änderte Robert den von ihm bisher getragenen Nachnamen Spencer in Johnson.
Gemeinsam mit seiner Mutter und seinem Stiefvater zog Robert 1918 nach Robinsonville, etwa 30 Kilometer von Memphis entfernt, wo er dann bis 1927 auch zur Schule ging. Dort besuchte er von 1924 bis 1927 die Indian Creek School in Commerce. Die Schule brach er allerdings vorzeitig ab.
Man nimmt an, dass sein Schulabbruch mit einem Augenleiden zusammenhing; vermutlich hatte er im linken Auge einen grauen Star. Seine Halbschwester Carrie berichtet, sie habe ihm eine Brille gekauft, die er aber selten getragen habe. Nach seiner Schulzeit war Johnson dann zunächst als Plantagenarbeiter tätig.
Musikalische Anfänge
Robert Johnson spielte bereits seit seiner Kindheit Mundharmonika. Als Teenager erwarb er seine erste Gitarre und baute sich zusätzlich einen Ständer für die Mundharmonika, um beide Instrumente gleichzeitig spielen zu können. Eines der ersten Stücke, das er auf der Gitarre erlernte, war Leroy Carrs How Long – How Long Blues.
1928 lernte Robert Johnson in Robinsonville den damals im Mississippi-Delta bekannten Bluesmusiker Willie Brown kennen, der zu dieser Zeit Sideman von Charley Patton war, dem „Vater des Delta-Blues“. Brown wurde Johnsons erster Gitarrenlehrer, und gelegentlich folgte Johnson Patton und Brown zu Auftritten, bei denen er durch Beobachtung sein Spiel zu verbessern suchte.
Im Februar 1929 heiratete Johnson Virginia Travis, die jedoch bereits am 19. April 1930 im Kindbett zusammen mit dem Kind starb. 1929 war auch der Bluesmusiker Son House in Robinsonville eingetroffen und spielte bald häufig mit Patton und Brown. Houses schlichter, aber intensiver Stil beeindruckte Johnson stark, der jedoch keinen Anschluss an das Trio fand; überliefert ist eine Äußerung von Son House, nach der Johnson ein schlechter Gitarrist gewesen sei, aber ein passabler Bluesharp-Spieler. Häufig war Johnson jedoch nur Zielscheibe des Spotts der drei. Zu dieser Zeit spielte Johnson gemeinsam mit Frank House (dem Bruder von Son House) und dem Pianisten Punk Taylor sowie mit Wash Hemp und Willie Moore. 1931 verließ er Robinsonville.
Er ging nach Hazlehurst auf die Suche nach seinem Vater und lernte auf dieser Reise neben seiner zweiten Ehefrau Caletta „Callie“ Craft, die er noch 1931 heiratete, auch den Bluesmusiker Ike Zinnermann kennen, der ein exzellenter Gitarrist war und ihn während des gemeinsamen Wanderjahres unterrichtete. 1932 kehrte Johnson zurück nach Robinsonville und überraschte mit der exzellenten Gitarrentechnik, für die er später berühmt werden sollte.
Kreuzung in Clarksdale, Mississippi, wo Johnson seine Seele dem Teufel verkauft haben soll
Da Robert Johnsons Gitarrenspiel sich innerhalb kurzer Zeit so stark verbessert hatte, erzählte man sich, er habe seine Seele an den Teufel verkauft und sei von diesem im Gegenzug in die Geheimnisse des Gitarrenspiels eingewiesen worden. Diese Aussage geht zurück auf eine Äußerung von Son House, der damit die ursprünglich Tommy Johnson zugeschriebene Legende auf seinen Namensvetter übertrug. Robert Johnson sollte diese Legende bereitwillig adaptieren und zu einer seiner zentralen Metaphern ausbauen.
Im Laufe der folgenden Jahre wurde Robert Johnson zu einem gefragten Musiker für samstagabendliche Veranstaltungen in Mississippi.
Karriere als Musiker
1934 kam Robert Johnson auf seinen mittlerweile vagabundenhaften Wanderschaften in die Stadt Helena in Arkansas und traf dort auf eine Reihe damals schon bekannter Bluesmusiker. Mit seinem Gitarrenspiel beeindruckte er hier die Musiker Sonny Boy Williamson II., Robert Nighthawk, Howlin’ Wolf sowie Memphis Slim. 1936 kam es dann zu den ersten Aufnahmen für die American Record Company. Seine erste Veröffentlichung, der Terraplane Blues, verkaufte sich einigermaßen gut (etwa 500 Stück), so dass Johnson 1937 in einer zweiten Aufnahmesitzung weitere Lieder einspielen konnte. Allen weiteren Veröffentlichungen war jedoch kein kommerzieller Erfolg beschieden; teilweise wurden nur zweistellige Verkaufszahlen erzielt. Insgesamt nahm Robert Johnson in seinen beiden Sessions 29 Songs in 41 Takes auf.
Tod
Im August 1938 starb Johnson im Alter von 27 Jahren an den Spätfolgen einer Syphilis connata. Die vielfach kolportierte und auf Sonny Boy Williamson II. zurückgehende Geschichte, er sei von einem eifersüchtigen Ehemann vergiftet worden, wurde 1998 anhand der Todesurkunde widerlegt. Begraben wurde Robert Johnson wahrscheinlich auf einem kleinen Friedhof in dem Ort Three Forks; die genaue Grabstätte ist jedoch unbekannt. Außerdem wird er gelegentlich dem Klub 27 genannten Kreis bekannter Musiker, die mit 27 Jahren starben, zugerechnet. In Morgan City (Mississippi) findet sich ein Gedenkstein an Robert Johnson mit der folgenden Aufschrift:
    „Robert Johnson. ‚King of the Delta Blues Singers.‘ His Music struck a Chord that continues to resonate. His Blues adressed Generations he would never know and made Poetry of his Visions and Fears.“
Werk
Johnsons Verdienst liegt vor allem in der Umwandlung der frühen Bluesmusik von Charlie Patton, Son House und Skip James (Delta Blues) zu einem neuen Stil, der dann von Musikern wie Muddy Waters und Elmore James aufgegriffen wurde. Anders als die Songs seiner Zeitgenossen zeichneten sich seine Kompositionen durch große Geschlossenheit aus. Diese Geschlossenheit ist eine Folge davon, dass Johnson seine Stücke speziell auf die Bedingungen der Schellackplatte hin komponierte, die pro Seite eine maximale Spieldauer von drei Minuten bot. Bisher hatten Country-Blues-Musiker Aufbau und Struktur ihrer Stücke an die Auftritte in Juke Joints und auf Festen angepasst, wo Lautstärke und Länge zählten; ihre Aufnahmen waren meist nur Ausschnitte daraus, die nach drei Minuten unterbrochen wurden.
Eine weitere Besonderheit der Lieder Johnsons besteht darin, dass er sich teilweise mit Gesang und Gitarrenspiel in verschiedenen Rhythmen bewegte. So entstand der Eindruck, als ob mehrere Personen spielten. Auch sein Gesangsstil, der manchmal fast weinend und manchmal jauchzend klingt, ist für die damalige Blues-Musik untypisch und macht seine Lieder unverkennbar. Sein Gitarrenspiel war immer mit dem Gesang verknüpft, lediglich in seinem allerersten aufgenommenen Song Kind Hearted Woman Blues spielte er zu Beginn des Stücks ein kurzes Gitarrensolo. In der Standardstimmung der Gitarre bevorzugte er die Tonarten A und E, in offenen Stimmungen (Offene D-Stimmung, Offene G-Stimmung), die auch open tunings genannt werden, nutzte er meist G und C. Die jeweilige Dominante oder Subdominante hielt er dabei entweder mit einem ausgestreckten Finger oder mit einem Glas oder Metallzylinder, welches er über einen Finger der linken Hand stülpte (Bottleneck-Technik).
Wie viele Bluesmusiker seiner Zeit verarbeitete er in seinen Kompositionen vor allem Alltagsbegebenheiten. Etliche Lieder handeln von seinen Wanderschaften, so auch der bekannte Walkin' Blues. Darin reflektiert Johnson seine musikalische Lehrzeit bei Son House, indem er zwischen einem ruhigen und gelehrigen Schülerspiel und dem aufsässigen eigenen Stil wechselt. Weitere Songs dieses Themas sind etwa der Travelling Riverside Blues und I’m a steady rollin' man. Seine Texte waren inspiriert von Frauen (Kind Hearted Woman Blues, Little Queen of Spades) und Geld (Sweet Home Chicago), aber auch von einer Handfeuerwaffe (32–20 Blues) und einem Automobil (Terraplane Blues nach dem Hudson Terraplane).
Johnson gilt als originärer Songwriter, der durch ältere Musiker wie Kokomo Arnold, Skip James, Peetie Wheatstraw, Lonnie Johnson u. a. inspiriert wurde und eine Vielzahl an Blues-Klassikern hinterließ, die sich im Repertoire von so unterschiedlichen Musikern wie Eric Clapton, den Rolling Stones, Elmore James, Muddy Waters, aber auch dem älteren Big Bill Broonzy wiederfinden, der in den fünfziger Jahren seine Version von Kind-hearted Woman – ebenso wie Waters vor ihm – aufnahm. So ist der 32–20 Blues eine Variation von Skip James' 22–20 Blues, Kokomo Arnolds Old Original Kokomo Blues und Milk Cow Blues wurden zu Sweet Home Chicago bzw. Milkcow’s Calf Blues, aus Peetie Wheatstraws King Of Spades wurde die Little Queen Of Spades, Lonnie Johnsons Life Saver Blues findet sich in Malted Milk und Drunken Hearted Man.

Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911 – August 16, 1938) was an American singer-songwriter and musician. His landmark recordings in 1936 and 1937 display a combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that has influenced later generations of musicians. Johnson's shadowy, poorly documented life and death at age 27 have given rise to much legend, including the Faustian myth that he sold his soul at a crossroads to achieve success. As an itinerant performer who played mostly on street corners, in juke joints, and at Saturday night dances, Johnson had little commercial success or public recognition in his lifetime.
It was only after the reissue of his recordings in 1961 on the LP King of the Delta Blues Singers that his work reached a wider audience. Johnson is now recognized as a master of the blues, particularly of the Mississippi Delta blues style. He is credited by many rock musicians as an important influence; Eric Clapton has called Johnson "the most important blues singer that ever lived."[1][2] Johnson was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an early Influence in their first induction ceremony in 1986.[3] In 2010, David Fricke ranked Johnson fifth in Rolling Stone′s list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.[4]
Life and career
Early life
Robert Johnson was born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi possibly on May 8, 1911,[5] to Julia Major Dodds (born October 1874) and Noah Johnson (born December 1884). Julia was married to Charles Dodds (born February 1865), a relatively prosperous landowner and furniture maker with whom she had ten children. Charles Dodds had been forced by a mob to leave Hazlehurst following a dispute with white landowners. Julia left Hazlehurst with baby Robert but after some two years sent him to live in Memphis with her husband, who had changed his name to Charles Spencer.[6]
Circa 1919, Robert rejoined his mother in the Mississippi Delta area around Tunica and Robinsonville, Mississippi. Julia's new husband was known as Dusty Willis; he was 24 years her junior. Robert was remembered by some residents as "Little Robert Dusty,"[7] but he was registered at Tunica's Indian Creek School as Robert Spencer. In the 1920 census he is listed as Robert Spencer, living in Lucas, Arkansas, with Will and Julia Willis. Robert was at school in 1924 and 1927[8] and the quality of his signature on his marriage certificate[9] suggests that he was relatively well educated for a boy of his background. One school friend, Willie Coffee, has been discovered and filmed, recalling that Robert was already noted for playing the harmonica and jaw harp.[10] He also remembers that Robert was absent for long periods, which suggests that he may have been living and studying in Memphis.[11]
After school, Robert adopted the surname of his natural father, signing himself as Robert Johnson on the certificate of his marriage to sixteen-year-old Virginia Travis in February 1929. She died in childbirth shortly after.[12] Surviving relatives of Virginia told the blues researcher Robert "Mack" McCormick that this was a divine punishment for Robert's decision to sing secular songs, known as "selling your soul to the Devil". McCormick believes that Johnson himself accepted the phrase as a description of his resolve to abandon the settled life of a husband and farmer to become a full-time blues musician.[13]
Around this time, the blues musician Son House moved to Robinsonville where his musical partner, Willie Brown, lived. Late in life, House remembered Johnson as a "little boy" who was a competent harmonica player but an embarrassingly bad guitarist. Soon after, Johnson left Robinsonville for the area around Martinsville, close to his birthplace Hazlehurst, possibly searching for his natural father. Here he perfected the guitar style of Son House and learned other styles from Isaiah "Ike" Zinnerman.[14] Zinnerman was rumored to have learned supernaturally to play guitar by visiting graveyards at midnight.[15] When Johnson next appeared in Robinsonville, he had seemed to have acquired a miraculous guitar technique.[16] House was interviewed at a time when the legend of Johnson's pact with the Devil was well known among blues researchers. He was asked whether he attributed Johnson's technique to this pact, and his equivocal answers have been taken as confirmation.[5]
While living in Martinsville, Johnson fathered a child with Vergie Mae Smith. He also married Caletta Craft in May 1931. In 1932, the couple moved to Clarksdale, Mississippi, in the Delta. Here Caletta died of childbirth and Johnson left for a career as a "walking" or itinerant musician.[14]
Itinerant musician
From 1932 until his death in 1938, Johnson moved frequently between large cities like Memphis, Tennessee, and Helena, Arkansas, and the smaller towns of the Mississippi Delta and neighboring regions of Mississippi and Arkansas.[17][18] On occasion, he traveled much farther. Fellow blues musician Johnny Shines accompanied him to Chicago, Texas, New York, Canada, Kentucky, and Indiana.[19] Henry Townsend shared a musical engagement with him in St. Louis.[20] In many places he stayed with members of his large extended family or with women friends.[21] He did not marry again but formed some long term relationships with women to whom he would return periodically. One was Estella Coleman, the mother of the blues musician Robert Lockwood, Jr. In other places he stayed with a woman seduced at his first performance.[22][23] In each location, Johnson's hosts were largely ignorant of his life elsewhere. He used different names in different places, employing at least eight distinct surnames.[24]
Biographers have looked for consistency from musicians who knew Johnson in different contexts: Shines, who traveled extensively with him; Lockwood who knew him as his mother's partner; David "Honeyboy" Edwards whose cousin Willie Mae Powell had a relationship with Johnson.[25] From a mass of partial, conflicting, and inconsistent eye-witness accounts,[26] biographers have attempted to summarize Johnson's character. "He was well mannered, he was soft spoken, he was indecipherable".[27] "As for his character, everyone seems to agree that, while he was pleasant and outgoing in public, in private he was reserved and liked to go his own way".[28] "Musicians who knew Johnson testified that he was a nice guy and fairly average—except, of course, for his musical talent, his weakness for whiskey and women, and his commitment to the road."[29]
When Johnson arrived in a new town, he would play for tips on street corners or in front of the local barbershop or a restaurant. Musical associates have said that in live performances Johnson often did not focus on his dark and complex original compositions, but instead pleased audiences by performing more well-known pop standards of the day[30] – and not necessarily blues. With an ability to pick up tunes at first hearing, Johnson had no trouble giving his audiences what they wanted, and certain of his contemporaries later remarked on Johnson's interest in jazz and country music. Johnson also had an uncanny ability to establish a rapport with his audience; in every town in which he stopped, Johnson would establish ties to the local community that would serve him well when he passed through again a month or a year later.
Fellow musician Shines was 17 when he met Johnson in 1933. He estimated Johnson was maybe a year older than himself. In Samuel Charters' Robert Johnson, Shines describes Johnson:
    Robert was a very friendly person, even though he was sulky at times, you know. And I hung around Robert for quite a while. One evening he disappeared. He was kind of a peculiar fellow. Robert'd be standing up playing some place, playing like nobody's business. At about that time it was a hustle with him as well as a pleasure. And money'd be coming from all directions. But Robert'd just pick up and walk off and leave you standing there playing. And you wouldn't see Robert no more maybe in two or three weeks ... So Robert and I, we began journeying off. I was just, matter of fact, tagging along.[31]
During this time Johnson established what would be a relatively long-term relationship with Estella Coleman, a woman about 15 years his senior and the mother of musician Robert Lockwood, Jr. Johnson reportedly cultivated a woman to look after him in each town where he played. He supposedly asked homely young women living in the country with their families whether he could go home with them, and in most cases he was accepted, until a boyfriend arrived or Johnson was ready to move on.
In 1941, Alan Lomax learned from Muddy Waters that Johnson had performed in the Clarksdale, Mississippi area.[32] By 1959, historian Samuel Charters could only add that Will Shade of the Memphis Jug Band remembered Johnson had once briefly played with him in West Memphis, Arkansas.[33] In the last year of his life, Johnson is believed to have traveled to St. Louis and possibly Illinois, and then to some states in the East. In 1938, Columbia Records producer John H. Hammond, who owned some of Johnson's records, had record producer Don Law seek out Johnson to book him for the first "From Spirituals to Swing" concert at Carnegie Hall in New York. On learning of Johnson's death, Hammond replaced him with Big Bill Broonzy, but still played two of Johnson's records from the stage.
Recording sessions
Robert Johnson records
In Jackson, Mississippi, around 1936, Johnson sought out H. C. Speir, who ran a general store and doubled as a talent scout. Speir put Johnson in touch with Ernie Oertle, who, as a salesman for the ARC group of labels, introduced Johnson to Don Law to record his first sessions in San Antonio, Texas. The recording session was held on November 23, 1936, in room 414 of the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio,[34] which Brunswick Records had set up to be a temporary recording studio. In the ensuing three-day session, Johnson played 16 selections, and recorded alternate takes for most of these. Johnson reportedly performed facing the wall, which has been cited as evidence he was a shy man and reserved performer. This conclusion was played up in the inaccurate liner notes of the 1961 album King of the Delta Blues Singers. Slide guitarist Ry Cooder speculates that Johnson played facing a corner to enhance the sound of the guitar, a technique he calls "corner loading".[35]
Among the songs Johnson recorded in San Antonio were "Come On In My Kitchen", "Kind Hearted Woman Blues", "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom" and "Cross Road Blues". The first to be released were "Terraplane Blues" and "Last Fair Deal Gone Down", probably the only recordings of his that he would live to hear. "Terraplane Blues" became a moderate regional hit, selling 5,000 copies.
His first recorded song, "Kind Hearted Woman Blues", was part of a cycle of spin-offs and response songs that began with Leroy Carr's "Mean Mistreater Mama" (1934). According to Wald, it was "the most musically complex in the cycle"[36] and stood apart from most rural blues as a through-composed lyric, rather than an arbitrary collection of more-or-less unrelated verses.[37] In contrast to most Delta players, Johnson had absorbed the idea of fitting a composed song into the three minutes of a 78 rpm side.[38] Most of Johnson's "somber and introspective" songs and performances come from his second recording session.[39]
In 1937, Johnson traveled to Dallas, Texas, for another recording session with Don Law in a makeshift studio at the Vitagraph (Warner Brothers) Building, 508 Park Avenue,[40] where Brunswick Record Corporation was located on the third floor.[41] Eleven records from this session would be released within the following year. Johnson did two takes of most of these songs and recordings of those takes survived. Because of this, there is more opportunity to compare different performances of a single song by Johnson than for any other blues performer of his time and place.[42] Johnson recorded almost half of the 29 songs that make up his entire discography in Dallas.
Playback speed hypothesis
In The Guardian's music blog from May 2010, Jon Wilde speculated that Johnson's recordings may have been "accidentally speeded up when first committed to 78 [rpm records], or else were deliberately speeded up to make them sound more exciting."[43] He does not give a source for this statement. Biographer Elijah Wald and other musicologists strongly dispute this hypothesis on various grounds, including that Johnson's extant recordings were made on five different days, spread across two years at two different studios, making uniform speed changes or malfunctions highly improbable.[44] In addition, fellow musicians, contemporaries and family who had worked with or witnessed Johnson perform spoke of his recordings for more than 70 years preceding Wilde's hypothesis without ever suggesting that the speed of his performances had been altered.[44]
Death
Johnson died on August 16, 1938, at the age of 27, near Greenwood, Mississippi. Although the cause of death is still unknown, there have been a number of theories offered, based on several differing accounts about the events preceding his death. Johnson had been playing for a few weeks at a country dance in a town about 15 miles (24 km) from Greenwood. According to one theory, Johnson was murdered by the jealous husband of a woman with whom he had flirted. In an account by fellow blues legend Sonny Boy Williamson, Johnson had been flirting with a married woman at a dance, where she gave him a bottle of whiskey poisoned by her husband. When Johnson took the bottle, Williamson knocked it out of his hand, admonishing him to never drink from a bottle that he had not personally seen opened. Johnson replied, "Don't ever knock a bottle out of my hand." Soon after, he was offered another (poisoned) bottle and accepted it. Johnson is reported to have begun feeling ill the evening after and had to be helped back to his room in the early morning hours. Over the next three days his condition steadily worsened and witnesses reported that he died in a convulsive state of severe pain. Musicologist Robert "Mack" McCormick claims to have tracked down the man who murdered Johnson, and to have obtained a confession from him in a personal interview, but has declined to reveal the man's name.[45]
While strychnine has been suggested as the poison that killed Johnson, at least one scholar has disputed the notion. Tom Graves, in his book Crossroads: The Life and Afterlife of Blues Legend Robert Johnson, relies on expert testimony from toxicologists to argue that strychnine has such a distinctive odor and taste that it cannot be disguised, even in strong liquor. Graves also claims that a significant amount of strychnine would have to be consumed in one sitting to be fatal, and that death from the poison would occur within hours, not days.[46] Contemporary David "Honeyboy" Edwards similarly noted that the poison couldn't have been strychnine, since Johnson would have died much more rapidly, instead of suffering for three days.
In addition, LeFlore County Registrar Cornelia Jordan, after conducting an investigation into Johnson's death for the state director of Vital Statistics, R.N. Whitfield, wrote on Johnson's death certificate, "I talked with the white man on whose place this negro died and I also talked with a negro woman on the place. The plantation owner said the negro man, seemingly about 26 years old, came from Tunica two or three weeks before he died to play banjo at a negro dance given there on the plantation. He stayed in the house with some of the negroes saying he wanted to pick cotton. The white man did not have a doctor for this negro as he had not worked for him. He was buried in a homemade coffin furnished by the county. The plantation owner said it was his opinion that the negro died of syphilis."[47]
Gravesite
The exact location of his grave is officially unknown; three different markers have been erected at possible church cemetery burial sites outside of Greenwood.
    Research in the 1980s and 1990s strongly suggests Johnson was buried in the graveyard of the Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church near Morgan City, Mississippi, not far from Greenwood, in an unmarked grave. A one-ton cenotaph in the shape of an obelisk, listing all of Johnson's song titles, with a central inscription by Peter Guralnick, was placed at this location in 1990, paid for by Columbia Records and numerous smaller contributions made through the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund.
    In 1990 a small marker with the epitaph "Resting in the Blues" was placed in the cemetery of Payne Chapel near Quito, Mississippi by an Atlanta rock group named the Tombstones, after they saw a photograph in Living Blues magazine of an unmarked spot alleged by one of Johnson's ex-girlfriends to be Johnson's burial site.[48]
    More recent research by Stephen LaVere (including statements from Rosie Eskridge, the wife of the supposed gravedigger) indicates that the actual grave site is under a big pecan tree in the cemetery of the Little Zion Church, north of Greenwood along Money Road. Through Stephen LaVere Sony Music has placed a marker at this site which bears LaVere's name as well as Johnson's.
An interviewee in the documentary The Search for Robert Johnson (1991) suggests that owing to poverty and lack of transportation Johnson is most likely to have been buried in a pauper's grave (or "potter's field") very near where he died.
Devil legend
According to legend, as a young man living on a plantation in rural Mississippi, Robert Johnson had a tremendous desire to become a great blues musician. He was instructed to take his guitar to a crossroad near Dockery Plantation at midnight. There he was met by a large black man (actually the Devil) who took the guitar and tuned it. The Devil played a few songs and then returned the guitar to Johnson, giving him mastery of the instrument. This was in effect, a deal with the Devil mirroring the legend of Faust. In exchange for his soul, Robert Johnson was able to create the blues for which he became famous.
Various accounts
This legend was developed over time, and has been chronicled by Gayle Dean Wardlow,[49] Edward Komara[50] and Elijah Wald, who sees the legend as largely dating from Johnson's rediscovery by white fans more than two decades after his death.[51] Son House once told the story to Pete Welding as an explanation of Johnson's astonishingly rapid mastery of the guitar. Welding reported it as a serious belief in a widely read article in Down Beat in 1966.[52] Other interviewers failed to elicit any confirmation from House and there were fully two years between House's observation of Johnson as first a novice and then a master.
Further details were absorbed from the imaginative retellings by Greil Marcus[53] and Robert Palmer.[54] Most significantly, the detail was added that Johnson received his gift from a large black man at a crossroads. There is dispute as to how and when the crossroads detail was attached to the Robert Johnson story. All the published evidence, including a full chapter on the subject in the biography Crossroads by Tom Graves, suggests an origin in the story of blues musician Tommy Johnson. This story was collected from his musical associate Ishman Bracey and his elder brother Ledell in the 1960s.[55] One version of Ledell Johnson's account was published in David Evans's 1971 biography of Tommy,[56] and was repeated in print in 1982 alongside Son House's story in the widely read Searching for Robert Johnson.[57]
In another version, Ledell placed the meeting not at a crossroads but in a graveyard. This resembles the story told to Steve LaVere that Ike Zinnerman of Hazlehurst, Mississippi learned to play the guitar at midnight while sitting on tombstones. Zinnerman is believed to have influenced the playing of the young Robert Johnson.[58]
Recent research by blues scholar Bruce Conforth, in Living Blues magazine, makes the story clearer. Johnson and Ike Zimmerman did practice in a graveyard at night, because it was quiet and no one would disturb them, but it was not the Hazlehurst cemetery as had been believed. Zimmerman (his actual name as it was reportedly spelled on census records for the family going back into the early 1800s, his social security card, social security death notice, funeral program, and by his daughters) was not from Hazlehurst but nearby Beauregard, Mississippi. And he didn't practice in one graveyard, but in several in the area.[59] Johnson spent about a year living with and learning from Zimmerman, who ultimately accompanied Johnson back to the Delta to look after him.
While Dockery, Hazlehurst and Beauregard have each been claimed as the locations of the mythical crossroads, there are also tourist attractions claiming to be "The Crossroads" in both Clarksdale and Memphis.[60] Locals in Rosedale, Mississippi, claim Johnson sold his soul to the Devil at the intersection of highways 1 and 8 in their town, while the 1986 movie Crossroads was filmed in Beulah, Mississippi. Blues historian Steve Cheseborough writes that it may be impossible to discover the exact location of the mythical crossroads, because "Robert Johnson was a rambling guy".[61]
Interpretations
Some scholars have argued that the devil in these songs may not refer only to the Christian story of Satan, but also to the African trickster god Legba, himself associated with crossroads. Folklorist Harry M. Hyatt wrote that, during his research in the South from 1935–1939, when African-Americans born in the 19th or early-20th century said they or anyone else had "sold their soul to the devil at the crossroads," they had a different meaning in mind. Hyatt claimed there was evidence indicating African religious retentions surrounding Legba and the making of a "deal" (not selling the soul in the same sense as in the Faustian tradition cited by Graves) with this so-called "devil" at the crossroads.[62]
    The Blues and the Blues singer has really special powers over women, especially. It is said that the Blues singer could possess women and have any woman they wanted. And so when Robert Johnson came back, having left his community as an apparently mediocre musician, with a clear genius in his guitar style and lyrics, people said he must have sold his soul to the devil. And that fits in with this old African association with the crossroads where you find wisdom: you go down to the crossroads to learn, and in his case to learn in a Faustian pact, with the devil. You sell your soul to become the greatest musician in history.[63]
This view that the devil in Johnson's songs is derived from an African deity was strenuously challenged by blues scholar David Evans. In an essay published in 1999, Demythologizing the Blues, Evans wrote:
    There are ... several serious problems with this crossroads myth. The devil imagery found in the blues is thoroughly familiar from western folklore, and nowhere do blues singers ever mention Legba or any other African deity in their songs or other lore. The actual African music connected with cults of Legba and similar trickster deities sounds nothing like the blues, but rather features polyrhythmic percussion and choral call-and-response singing.[64]
Musicologist Alan Lomax dismissed the myth by stating "In fact, every blues fiddler, banjo picker, harp blower, piano strummer and guitar framer was, in the opinion of both himself and his peers, a child of the Devil, a consequence of the black view of the European dance embrace as sinful in the extreme".[65]
Musical style
Robert Johnson is today considered a master of the blues, particularly of the Delta blues style; Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones said in 1990, "You want to know how good the blues can get? Well, this is it." But according to Elijah Wald, in his book Escaping the Delta, Johnson in his own time was most respected for his ability to play in such a wide variety of styles—from raw country slide guitar to jazz and pop licks—and to pick up guitar parts almost instantly upon hearing a song.[66] His first recorded song, "Kind Hearted Woman Blues," in contrast to the prevailing Delta style of the time, more resembled the style of Chicago or St. Louis, with "a full-fledged, abundantly varied musical arrangement."[67] Unusual for a Delta player of the time, a recording exhibits what Johnson could do entirely outside of a blues style. "They're Red Hot," from his first recording session, shows that he was also comfortable with an "uptown" swing or ragtime sound similar to the Harlem Hamfats but, as Wald remarks, "no record company was heading to Mississippi in search of a down-home Ink Spots ... [H]e could undoubtedly have come up with a lot more songs in this style if the producers had wanted them."[68] Myers adds:
    To the uninitiated, Johnson's recordings may sound like just another dusty Delta blues musician wailing away. But a careful listen reveals that Johnson was a revisionist in his time... Johnson's tortured soul vocals and anxiety-ridden guitar playing aren't found in the cotton-field blues of his contemporaries.[69]
Voice
An important aspect of Johnson's singing was his use of microtonality. These subtle inflections of pitch help explain why his singing conveys such powerful emotion. Eric Clapton described Johnson's music as "the most powerful cry that I think you can find in the human voice." In two takes of "Me and the Devil Blues" he shows a high degree of precision in the complex vocal delivery of the last verse: "The range of tone he can pack into a few lines is astonishing."[70] The song's "hip humor and sophistication" is often overlooked. "[G]enerations of blues writers in search of wild Delta primitivism," writes Wald, have been inclined to overlook or undervalue aspects that show Johnson as a polished professional performer.[71]
Johnson is also known for using the guitar as 'the other vocalist in the song', a technique later perfected by B. B. King and his personified guitar known as 'Lucille': "In Africa and in Afro-American tradition, there is the tradition of the talking instrument, beginning with the drums ... the one-strand and then the six-strings with bottleneck-style performance; it becomes a competing voice ...or a complementary voice ... in the performance."[63]
Bob Dylan wrote that "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. The songs weren't customary blues songs. They were so utterly fluid. At first they went by quick, too quick to even get. They jumped all over the place in range and subject matter, short punchy verses that resulted in some panoramic story-fires of mankind blasting off the surface of this spinning piece of plastic."[72]
Instrument
Johnson mastered the guitar, being considered today one of the all-time greats on the instrument. His approach was highly complex and extremely advanced musically. When Keith Richards was first introduced to Johnson's music by his bandmate Brian Jones, he replied, "Who is the other guy playing with him?", not realizing it was Johnson playing on one guitar. "I was hearing two guitars, and it took a long time to actually realise he was doing it all by himself,"[73] said Richards, who would later add "Robert Johnson was like an orchestra all by himself."[69] "As for his guitar technique, it's politely reedy but ambitiously eclectic—moving effortlessly from hen-picking and bottleneck slides to a full deck of chucka-chucka rhythm figures."[69]
Lyrics
In The Story with Dick Gordon, Bill Ferris of American Public Media said: "Robert Johnson I think of in the same way I think of the British Romantic poets, Keats and Shelley, who burned out early, who were geniuses at wordsmithing poetry ... The Blues, if anything, are deeply sexual. You know, 'my car doesn't run, I'm gonna check my oil' ... 'if you don't like my apples, don't shake my tree'. Every verse has sexuality associated with it."[63]
Influences
Johnson fused approaches specific to Delta blues to those from the broader music world. The slide guitar work on "Rambling on My Mind" is pure Delta and Johnson's vocal there has "a touch of ... Son House rawness," but the train imitation on the bridge is not at all typical of Delta blues, and is more like something out of minstrel show music or vaudeville.[74] Johnson did record versions of "Preaching the Blues" and "Walking Blues" in the older bluesman's vocal and guitar style (House's chronology is questioned by Guralnick). As with the first take of "Come On In My Kitchen," the influence of Skip James is evident in James's "Devil Got My Woman", but the lyrics rise to the level of first-rate poetry, and Johnson sings with a strained voice found nowhere else in his recorded output.[75]
The sad, romantic "Love in Vain" successfully blends several of Johnson's disparate influences. The form, including the wordless last verse, follows Leroy Carr's last hit "When the Sun Goes Down"; the words of the last sung verse come directly from a song Blind Lemon Jefferson recorded in 1926.[76] Johnson's last-ever recording, "Milkcow's Calf Blues" is his most direct tribute to Kokomo Arnold, who wrote "Milkcow Blues" and who influenced Johnson's vocal style.[77]
"From Four Until Late" shows Johnson's mastery of a blues style not usually associated with the Delta. He croons the lyrics in a manner reminiscent of Lonnie Johnson, and his guitar style is more that of a ragtime-influenced player like Blind Blake.[78] Lonnie Johnson's influence on Robert Johnson is even clearer in two other departures from the usual Delta style: "Malted Milk" and "Drunken Hearted Man". Both copy the arrangement of Lonnie Johnson's "Life Saver Blues".[79] The two takes of "Me and the Devil Blues" show the influence of Peetie Wheatstraw, calling into question the interpretation of this piece as "the spontaneous heart-cry of a demon-driven folk artist."[71]
Legacy
Robert Johnson has had enormous impact on music and musicians—but outside his own time, place, and even genre for which he was famous. His influence on contemporaries was much smaller, due in part to the fact that he was an itinerant performer—playing mostly on street corners, in juke joints, and at Saturday night dances—who worked in a then undervalued style of music. He also died young after recording only a handful of songs. Johnson, though well-traveled and admired in his performances, was little noted in his lifetime, his records even less so. "Terraplane Blues", sometimes described as Johnson's only hit record, outsold his others, but was still only a minor success.
If one had asked black blues fans about Robert Johnson in the first twenty years after his death, writes Elijah Wald, "the response in the vast majority of cases would have been a puzzled 'Robert who?'" This lack of recognition extended to black musicians: "As far as the evolution of black music goes, Robert Johnson was an extremely minor figure, and very little that happened in the decades following his death would have been affected if he had never played a note".[80] With the album King of the Delta Blues Singers, a compilation of Johnson's recordings released in 1961, Columbia Records introduced his work to a much wider audience—fame and recognition he only received long after his death.
Rock and roll
Johnson's major influence has been on genres of music that weren’t recognized as such until long after his death: rock and roll and rock. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame included four of his songs in a set of 500[81] they deemed to have shaped the genre:

    “Sweet Home Chicago” (1936)
    “Cross Road Blues” (1936)
    “Hellhound on My Trail” (1937)
    “Love in Vain” (1937)

Johnson recorded these songs a decade and a half before the recognized advent of rock and roll, dying a year or two later. The Museum inducted him as an early influence in their first induction ceremony in 1986, almost a half century after his death. Marc Meyers of the Wall Street Journal wrote that, "His 'Stop Breakin' Down Blues' from 1937 is so far ahead of its time that the song could easily have been a rock demo cut in 1954."[69]
Rock music and related genres
Many of the artists who claim to have been influenced by Johnson the most, injecting his revolutionary stylings into their work and recording tribute songs and collections, are prominent rock musicians from the United Kingdom. His impact and influence on these future star musicians from England—who would then come to develop and define both the rock and roll and rock music eras—resulted not from personal appearances or direct fraternization. Instead, the artistic power of his exceptional talents and original compositions would be relayed across the Atlantic many years after his death through the compilation of his works released in 1961 by Columbia Records (King of the Delta Blues Singers).
Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones introduced bandmate Keith Richards to his first Robert Johnson album. The blues master's recordings would have as much impact on him as on Mick Jagger. The group performed his "Walkin' Blues" at the Rock and Roll Circus in 1968. They arranged their own version of "Love in Vain" for their album Let It Bleed and recorded "Stop Breakin' Down Blues" for Exile on Main Street. In addition, Mick Jagger, in his role as Turner in the 1970 film Performance, performs solo excerpts from "Come On In My Kitchen" and "Me and the Devil Blues."
Alexis Korner, referred to as "the Founding Father of British Blues", co-wrote and recorded a song entitled "Robert Johnson" on his The Party Album released in 1978. Other examples of the influence he had on English blues and blues-rock musicians and musical groups include:
    Eric Clapton, founder and member of many legendary groups, considered Johnson "the most important blues musician who ever lived."[73] He recorded enough of his songs to make Me and Mr. Johnson, a blues-rock album released in 2004 as a tribute to the legendary bluesman (also made into the film Sessions for Robert J). He'd earlier recorded "Crossroads", an arrangement of "Cross Road Blues", with Cream in 1968, leading some to consider him "the man largely responsible for making Robert Johnson a household name."[82]
    Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin referred to him on NPR's Fresh Air (recorded in 2004) as “Robert Johnson, to whom we all owed our existence, in some way.” His group recorded "Traveling Riverside Blues", a song that drew from Johnson's original and quoted a number of Johnson's songs in the lyrics. Not only the lyrics, but the music video was influenced as well—taking images of the 'Delta' that Johnson often wrote about in his own music.
    Fleetwood Mac were strongly influenced by Johnson in the group's early years as a British blues band. Guitarist Jeremy Spencer contributed two covers of Johnson-derived songs to the group's early albums, and lead guitarist Peter Green would later go on to record Johnson's entire catalog over the course of two albums, The Robert Johnson Songbook and Hot Foot Powder.
Sam Dunn's documentary Metal Evolution cites that Robert Johnson was the "great grandfather to all things heavy metal" with members of Rush and Slipknot agreeing that he played a major role in the future of rock music.
Bob Dylan wrote of Johnson in his 2004 autobiography Chronicles: Volume One, "If I hadn't heard the Robert Johnson record when I did, there probably would have been hundreds of lines of mine that would have been shut down—that I wouldn't have felt free enough or upraised enough to write."[72]
Guitar technique
His revolutionary guitar playing has led contemporary experts, assessing his talents through the handful of old recordings available, to rate him among the greatest guitar players of all time:
    In 1990 Spin magazine rated him first in its 35 Guitar Gods listing—on the 52nd anniversary of his death.[83]
    In 2008 Rolling Stone magazine ranked him fifth on their list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time—70 years after he died.[4]
    In 2010 Guitar.com ranked him ninth in its list of Gibson.com’s Top 50 Guitarists of All Time—72 years after he died.[84]
Musicians who proclaim his profound impact on them, including Keith Richards, Jimi Hendrix, and Eric Clapton, all rated in the top ten with him on each of these lists. The boogie bass line he fashioned for "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom" has now passed into the standard guitar repertoire. At the time it was completely new, a guitarist's version of something people would only ever have heard on a piano.[85]
Lifetime achievement
The Complete Recordings, a double-disc box set released by Sony/Columbia Legacy on August 28, 1990, containing almost everything Robert Johnson ever recorded, with all 29 recordings (and 12 alternate takes) won a Grammy Award for “Best Historical Album” that year. In 2006 he was awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (accepted by his son Claud).



Robert Johnson - Robert Johnson's Cross Road Blues


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxi4XkIVWLQ#t=12 















Graham Bond  +08.05.1974

 




Graham Bond (* 28. Oktober 1937 in Romford; † 8. Mai 1974 in London) war ein englischer Jazz- und Blues-Musiker, der angeblich sein eigenes Geburtsdatum nicht kannte und sich als unehelicher Sohn des Magiers Aleister Crowley ausgab. Er sang und spielte Saxophon und Keyboard. Zu seinen Verdiensten zählt, dass er die Hammond-Orgel und das Mellotron in die Rockmusik einführte. Außerdem war seine Band eine Talentschmiede, aus der, ähnlich den Formationen von Alexis Korner und John Mayall, bedeutende Musiker der englischen Szene hervorgingen, die dann in eigenen Bands erfolgreich wurden, z.B. John McLaughlin, Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker, Dick Heckstall-Smith und Jon Hiseman.

1963 gründete er in London die Graham Bond Organization, zuvor hatte er bei Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated Cyril Davies ersetzt. 1966 wurde er straffällig und löste die Band auf. 1968 ging er nach Amerika und nahm dort zwei Soloalben auf. 1970 war er Mitglied von Ginger Baker's Air Force wo er Saxophon spielte, er ist auch auf einigen ihrer Tonträger zu hören.

Graham Bond starb im Alter von 36 Jahren, als er in London in der U-Bahn-Station Finsbury Park von einem einfahrenden Zug der Piccadilly Line überfahren wurde. Bond konnte nur anhand seiner Fingerabdrücke identifiziert werden.

Kurz vor seinem Tod hatte er sich bei der Presse gemeldet und mitgeteilt, dass es ihm gut gehe und er neue musikalische Pläne verwirklichen wolle.

Graham John Clifton Bond (28 October 1937 – 8 May 1974) was an English musician, considered a founding father of the English rhythm and blues boom of the 1960s.

Bond was an innovator, described as "an important, under-appreciated figure of early British R&B",[1] along with Cyril Davies and Alexis Korner. Jack Bruce, John McLaughlin and Ginger Baker first achieved prominence in his group, the Graham Bond Organisation. Bond was voted Britain's New Jazz Star in 1961.[2][3] He was an early user of the Hammond organ/Leslie speaker combination in British rhythm and blues[4] – he "split" the Hammond for portability – and was the first rock artist to record using a Mellotron,[4] on his There's A Bond Between Us LP. As such he was a major influence upon later rock keyboardists: Deep Purple's Jon Lord said "He taught me, hands on, most of what I know about the Hammond organ".[5]

Biography

Bond was born in Romford, Essex. Adopted from a Dr. Barnardo's home,[4] he was educated at the Royal Liberty School in Gidea Park, East London, where he learned music.[4] His first jazz gig was in 1960 with the Goudie Charles Quintet, staying for a year. He first gained national attention as a jazz saxophonist as a member of the Don Rendell Quintet, then briefly joined Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated[6] before forming the Graham Bond Quartet with musicians he met in the Korner group, Ginger Baker on drums and Jack Bruce on double bass,[6] together with John McLaughlin on guitar; and adopting the Hammond organ as his main instrument.[4] The group then became The Graham Bond Organisation (GBO), while John McLaughlin was later replaced by Dick Heckstall-Smith on saxophones. Their album There's A Bond Between Us of October 1965 is considered the first recording of rock music that uses a Mellotron.

The group dissolved in 1967, because of relentless internal bickering between drummer Ginger Baker and bassist Jack Bruce (leading to the latter's ousting), Baker's and Bond's escalating drug abuse, and the group's lack of commercial success, put down to Bond being "unable to find a commercially successful niche. The jazz fraternity regarded Bond's band as too noisy and rock-based, while the pop audience found his music complicated and too jazzy".[4] With Bond's mental and physical health deteriorating, Baker left to form what would become Cream with Eric Clapton and Bruce. Baker's replacement, Jon Hiseman, and Dick Heckstall-Smith went on to form Colosseum, who would showcase the Bond song "Walkin' in the Park" on their first album.[4]

After the break-up of the Organization, Bond continued to exhibit mental disorders, with manic episodes and periods of intense depression, exacerbated by heavy drug use.[4] Moving to America, he recorded two albums and performed session work for Harvey Mandel and Dr. John among others, but he returned to England in 1969.[4] He then formed Graham Bond Initiation with his new wife Diane Stewart, who shared his interest in magick, and in 1970 Holy Magick, which recorded a self-titled album and We Put Our Magick On You. He was also re-united with old band members while playing saxophone in Ginger Baker's Air Force and spending a short time in the Jack Bruce Band.[4] Solid Bond, a double-album compiling live tracks recorded in 1963 by the Graham Bond Quartet (Bond, McLaughlin, Bruce and Baker) and a studio session from 1966 by the Graham Bond Organisation (Bond, Heckstall-Smith and Hiseman) was released that same year.

In 1972 he teamed up with Pete Brown to record Two Heads are Better Than One.[4] He also recorded an album with the John Dummer Band in 1973, although this was not released until 2008. After the near-simultaneous collapse of his band and his marriage, Bond then formed Magus with British folk-singer Carolanne Pegg and American bassist Marc Mazz, which disbanded around Christmas 1973 without recording. During that same period, he discovered American singer-songwriter-guitarist Mick Lee, and they played together live but never recorded. Plans to include Chris Wood of Traffic never materialized due to Bond's death.[citation needed]

Bond's financial affairs were in chaos, and the years of lack of commercial success and the recent demise of Magus had badly hurt his pride.[citation needed] Throughout his career he had been hampered with severe bouts of drug addiction, and spent January 1973 in hospital after a nervous breakdown.[citation needed] According to Harry Shapiro, in his biography The Mighty Shadow, Bond was considered as a possible replacement for Patrick Moraz in Refugee.[citation needed] On 8 May 1974, Bond died under the wheels of a Piccadilly line train at Finsbury Park station, London, at the age of 36. Most sources list the death as a suicide. Friends agree that he was off drugs, although becoming increasingly obsessed with the occult (he believed he was Aleister Crowley's son).[7]

Bond's legacy as a springboard for talent and as a Hammond Organ pioneer musician in his own right was largely overlooked for the latter part of the 20th century. However, his legacy has been somewhat re-examined in later years and in 2015 his work was the focus of a two-hour special on the Dr Boogie radio show.



The Graham Bond Organization - Hoochie Coochie Man 


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c56a_Jd5aPI 


The Graham Bond Organisation "Wade In The Water", "Big Boss Man" & "Early In The Morning" 


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6okZU9O2n1E 





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