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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! > OT New Robert Johnson understanding
OT New Robert Johnson understanding
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Michael Rubin
615 posts
Jul 18, 2012
9:04 AM
I have been reading Bob Dylan's autobiography Chronicles Volume 1. First off, it's a great book.

In it he talks about getting signed by Columbia and John Hammond Sr. handing him a one of the Robert Johnson records that Columbia had yet to release.

This must have been the early 60's. That means that even though Johnson recorded in the 30's, he was not brought to the general public's ear until the sixties.

I was under the impression that his work was readily available early on and that Columbia was just reissuing it.

This gets me excited to think what hidden harmonica treasures there are waiting to be unleashed.
timeistight
706 posts
Jul 18, 2012
9:35 AM
Johnson's records did not sell well when first released and he wasn't terribly popular or even widely known in his contemporary black community.

Johnson's wider popularity had it's roots in John H. Hammond's "Spirituals to Swing" Carnegie Hall concert in 1938 (shortly after Johnson's death) where two of his records were played from the stage. It didn't really explode until after the release of the LPs in the sixties and his consequent idolization by British blues-rock musicians. The whole "devil at the crossroads" horseshit just helped it along.

A great book on the whole phenomenon is Elijah Wald's "Escaping the Delta".

Last Edited by on Jul 18, 2012 9:40 AM
FreeWilly
279 posts
Jul 18, 2012
10:03 AM
Thanks for sharing, hadn't realized that either.
kudzurunner
3384 posts
Jul 18, 2012
10:15 AM
Robert Johnson recorded in two sessions roughly a year apart, and in many cases he did two takes. Columbia picked a "release" take and released most of them in the late 1930s as 78 rpm discs.

In the early 60s, Columbia put together the first LP compilation, KING OF THE DELTA BLUES SINGERS (something like that). They used a number of the previously released takes. In several cases, I believe, they used the safety takes. Elijah Wald covers all this in his book on RJ, ESCAPING THE DELTA. I agree with timeistight on the importance of this book

But no, almost all of what Columbia released on that first LP was previously released stuff, if not quite all of it. And it was that LP that Clapton, Richards, and the other British blues guys heard and were blown away by.

In 1990, all the takes--the released takes, the safety (unreleased) takes--were finally released in CD form, and that album went platinum.

Last Edited by on Jul 18, 2012 10:16 AM
ElkRiverHarmonicas
1241 posts
Jul 18, 2012
11:03 AM
Back in the 1920s, when all this stuff started, the record companies would set up in a hotel someplace, put an ad in the newspaper, folks would come. They'd play some songs and the record guys would pick a couple that they thought might sell. The guys would sing those songs in the can, get a little pocket money and go back home. I don't know how much they paid, but it was enough to make it worthwhile for guys like Frank Hutchison to take a few days off from the mines and buy a train ticket from West Virginia to New York. Jimmy Rodgers got $100 for his first two songs.
It was a grass-roots kind of thing and hit or miss for the record company. Most of the time, the records sold moderately well, or not well at all. Occasionally, they struck gold. Ralph Peer held one of those auditions in Bristol in 1929 and Jimmie Rodgers AND the Carter Family were discovered there.
When the depression started, the recording industry drastically changed. I'm sure they paid far less, but it was a lot more like getting a record contract now, you had to seek the company out and prove your worth before they ever would listen to you.
If Johnson had recorded just a few years earlier, he'd probably have some harp accompaniment or something, but at the time he recorded, things were drastically different.
Kelly Harrell recorded a lot of stuff that would become very big later on "New River Train" and "I was Born 10,000 Years Ago" are a couple of them. Kelly was a singer only, couldn't play an instrument, and the studio was unwilling to pay session musicians to back him. So no more Kelly Harrell recordings. Ever.
You had to be HUGE like Jimmy Rodgers to get the record companies to really put any effort into you.
So Robert Johnson had to work to get his stuff recorded. He had to seek out a talent scout, who heard him and worked with the record company to get him a recording session.
So the records didn't sell well. For the ones that did sell, these 78s were just sitting around in Victrola cabinets. There's one unreleased Jimmy Rodgers recording even that we don't have because the master was recycled into planes or something during World War II - if that gives you an idea of the effort people put into preservation of this stuff. To give you an idea of how many of these 78s survived, a Robert Johnson 78 will fetch you thousands of dollars today...
Then rock n' roll happened. Everybody forgot about everything else. Even Bill Monroe was pretty much starving at the time because of rock - and I've always found that ironic, because I believe his "Rocky Road Blues" in 1945 was the first song that had all the elements of rock, minus electric instruments. Nobody started caring until the folk revival in the 1960s, when somebody started listening to this stuff and deemed it good.
By that time, so much had been lost. There was a huge effort to find these guys and get them recording again. Most of them, like Frank Hutchison, Robert Johnson, etc. were dead. Some of these guys, like Doc Boggs, were still alive and they got them recording again. So many legends were nobodies before this. They found Son House and got him recording again in the mid 1960s. Before that, Son House had only had one actual recording session with a label (in 1930).
When all this stuff was "discovered" the music had largely faded so much that it was almost gone from collective memory. Before that point, it was always about what the new record was. That was the first time we collectively looked back.



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David

____________________
At the time of his birth, it was widely accepted that no one man could play that much music so well or raise that much hell. He proved them all wrong.
R.I.P. H. Cecil Payne
Elk River Institute for Advanced Harmonica Studies

Elk River Harmonicas on Facebook



"I ain't gonna sing no 'Home on the Range.' No. sir. Not if it m

Last Edited by on Jul 18, 2012 11:08 AM
Hobostubs Ashlock
1887 posts
Jul 18, 2012
11:42 AM
A very interesting read guys thanks for posting
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Hobostubs
LIP RIPPER
609 posts
Jul 18, 2012
1:13 PM
Dammit Dave, now every stinkin time I go to the thrift store or to an auction I'm gonna be lookin for that disc of gold in the piles of 78's. Do you realize what you've done to me?

LR
ElkRiverHarmonicas
1243 posts
Jul 18, 2012
7:44 PM
I absolutely do. Don't do it, Stacey, when you go through a pile of 78s, for every one record that you would remotely want to listen there are a thousand "Jackass Magee and the Oliver Klothesoff Douchebag Orchestra" playing "Thinking of Home And Old Folks at the Sunny Old Home Place in Hawaii."
I spent years going through every bunch of 78s I came across. Of those I bought maybe 15. A couple of Bill Monroe, one Hank Williams, one Frank Hutchison and about 10 Jimmie Rodgers records is all I bought in that time... although I am very proud of those records, especially Frank Hutchison.
I still do it when I feel like it, but not always. I've never once seen a Doc Boggs or Gwen Foster record in anything I've ran through. I don't know if the records from the 1920s were recycled for the war or something, but there are very few of them. Most 78s seem to be from the late 1940s. If many from the 1920s or 1930s survived, you'd be seeing tons of Vernon Dalhart on there. That dude sold more records probably than the Beatles and Led Zeppelin combined, he had stuff that went - if they'd had record-sales designations in those days - triple-dog, infantessimal platnium - yet I don't recall seeing any Vernon Dalhart records in anything I've gone through. If records from that time had survived, half of those 78s would be from Vernon Dalhart and Jimmie Rodgers. Those dudes were rock stars.
;)

----------
David

____________________
At the time of his birth, it was widely accepted that no one man could play that much music so well or raise that much hell. He proved them all wrong.
R.I.P. H. Cecil Payne
Elk River Institute for Advanced Harmonica Studies

Elk River Harmonicas on Facebook



"I ain't gonna sing no 'Home on the Range.' No. sir. Not if it means I rot in here another month. I'm gonna sing what I'm a gonna be! A free man in the morning!"
Andy Griffith (as Lonesome Rhodes, "A Face in the Crowd).

Last Edited by on Jul 18, 2012 11:11 PM
ElkRiverHarmonicas
1244 posts
Jul 18, 2012
7:59 PM
I checked, Dalhart's 1924 "Wreck of the Old 97" sold 7 million copies. That's well above my threshold for triple-dog, infinity platnium. The fact you don't see many of his records in the 78 bins at the flea markets says a lot about the preservation of records from that era.

Listen to Vernon Dalhart sometime. Then listen to Robert Johnson. It's a testament to the fact that uniqueness and musical prowess did not ensure fame, just like today.

----------
David

____________________
At the time of his birth, it was widely accepted that no one man could play that much music so well or raise that much hell. He proved them all wrong.
R.I.P. H. Cecil Payne
Elk River Institute for Advanced Harmonica Studies

Elk River Harmonicas on Facebook



"I ain't gonna sing no 'Home on the Range.' No. sir. Not if it means I rot in here another month. I'm gonna sing what I'm a gonna be! A free man in the morning!"
Andy Griffith (as Lonesome Rhodes, "A Face in the Crowd).

Last Edited by on Jul 18, 2012 11:13 PM


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