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Chapter 11: Acoustic Roots: Delta Blues and Its Country Cousins
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When Johnson sold his soul to the devil
(or did he)?
Robert Johnson wasn’t always referenced with
the devil. The myth only began in 1965 after
blues scholar Pete Welding interviewed Son
House. House talked about the amazing
progress Johnson made on the guitar in such a
short time and said, “He must have sold his soul
to the devil to play like that.”
Eric Clapton and his band Cream perpetuated the
myth, perhaps inadvertently, when they changed
Johnson’s opening lines of “Crossroads Blues”
from “I went to the cross road — fell down on my
knee. I asked the Lord above, ‘Have mercy —
Save poor Bob, if you please’” to “‘I went down to
the cross road, fell down on my knees, saw the
devil. I went up and I said, ‘Take me if you please.’”
Johnson’s command of the blues may have seemed to exceed his command
of geography. In “Sweet Home Chicago,” he states, “Back to the land of
California, Sweet Home Chicago.” Many modern performers have changed the
words completely by leaving out the California reference or by changing the
preposition “to” to “from,” which gives an interesting, new meaning to the
phrase. In fact, “California” was used from the mid-19th century on after the
gold rush to represent the land of golden opportunity — which was Chicago
for rural African Americans in the 1930s.
Country Ragtime: The Piedmont Blues
The Piedmont blues feel is achieved by an alternating bass, where the bass
plays on every quarter note, with accents and a root-fifth scheme on the first
and third beats. This variation lends a two-beat, or boom-chick, sound. The
sound of Piedmont blues is joyous and happy and is generally played more
uptempo than Delta blues. The bouncy ragtime syncopations of ragtime
piano — and especially the independence of the bass and treble voices — are
often emulated in Piedmont blues, which further enhances its infectious,
upbeat sound.
Practitioners of Piedmont picking include Blind Blake, Blind Boy Fuller,
Barbecue Bob, Reverend Gary Davis, and Blind Willie McTell.
Blind Willie McTell (1898–1959), one of the most famous early practitioners
from the early Piedmont school, was a virtuoso 12-string guitarist. His
“Statesboro Blues” from 1928, though neither his best nor most famous song,
is a modern classic with the driving, electric shuffle version recorded by the
Allman Brothers Band on Live at the Fillmore East in 1971.
TEAM LinG