"Blind" Willie Johnson was a gospel blues singer and guitarist. While the
lyrics of his songs were usually religious, his music drew from both
sacred and blues traditions. It is characterized by his slide guitar
accompaniment and tenor voice, and his frequent use of a lower-register 'growl'
or false bass voice. Life
According to his death certificate, Johnson was born in 1897, in
Independence, near Brenham, Texas. When he was five, he told his father he
wanted to be a preacher and then made a cigar box guitar for himself. His mother
died when he was young, and his father remarried soon after her death.
Johnson was not born blind. Although it is not certain how he lost his sight,
his alleged widow Angeline Johnson told Samuel Charters that when Willie was
seven his father beat his stepmother after catching her going out with
another man, and that she, out of spite, blinded young Willie by throwing lye in
his face. It is believed that Johnson married at
least twice. He was married to Willie B. Harris. Her recollection of their
initial meeting was recounted in the liner notes for Yazoo Records's album
Praise God I'm Satisfied. He was later alleged to have been married to a woman
named Angeline. Johnson was also said to be married to a sister of blues artist
L. C. Robinson. No marriage certificates have yet been discovered. As Angeline
Johnson often sang and performed with him, the first person to attempt to
research his biography, Samuel Charters, made the mistake of assuming it was
Angeline who had sung on several of Johnson's records. However, later
research showed that it was Willie B. Harris.
Johnson remained poor until the end of his life, preaching and singing in the
streets of several Texas cities including Beaumont. A city directory
shows that in 1945, a Rev. W. J. Johnson, undoubtedly Blind Willie,
operated the House of Prayer at 1440 Forrest Street, Beaumont, Texas. This is
the same address listed on Johnson's death certificate. In 1945, his home
burned to the ground. With nowhere else to go, Johnson lived in the burned ruins
of his home, sleeping on a wet bed in the August/September Texas heat. He
lived like this until he contracted malarial fever, and died on September
18, 1945. In an interview, Angeline said that she tried to take him to a
hospital, which refused to admit him because he was blind. Other sources
report that the refusal was due to his being black.
According to his death certificate, he was buried in Blanchette Cemetery,
Beaumont. The location of that cemetery had been forgotten until it was
rediscovered in 2009. His exact gravesite remains unknown; but in 2010,
the researchers who had identified the cemetery erected a monument there in his
honor. Musical career
His father would often leave him on street corners to sing for money.
Tradition has it that he was arrested for nearly starting a riot at a New
Orleans courthouse with a powerful rendition of "If I Had My Way I'd Tear
the Building Down", a song about Samson and Delilah. According to Samuel
Charters, however, he was simply arrested while singing for tips in front
of the Customs House by a police officer who misconstrued the title lyric and
mistook it for incitement. Timothy Beal argued that the officer did not, in
fact, misconstrue the meaning of the song, but that "the ancient story
suddenly sounded dangerously contemporary" to him.
Johnson made 30 commercial recording studio record sides in five separate
sessions for Columbia Records from 1927–1930. On some of these recordings
Johnson uses a fast rhythmic picking style, while on others he plays slide
guitar. According to a reputed one-time acquaintance, Blind Willie McTell,
Johnson played with a brass ring; but the bluesman Tom Shaw, interviewed by
Guido van Rijn in 1972, says that he used a knife. However, in enlargement,
the only known photograph of Johnson seems to show that there is an actual
bottleneck on the little finger of his left hand. While his other fingers are
apparently fretting the strings, his little finger is extended straight—which
also suggests there is a slide on it as well.
Legacy Several of Blind Willie Johnson's songs
have been interpreted by other musicians, including "Jesus Make Up My
Dying Bed", "It's Nobody's Fault but Mine", "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the
Ground", "John the Revelator", "You'll Need Somebody on Your Bond", "Motherless
Children" and "Soul of a Man". "Dark Was the Night" is one of the music
tracks on the Voyager Golden Record, copies of which were placed in 1977 on
both the unmanned Voyager Project space probes. It is the penultimate track,
preceding only the Cavatina from Beethoven's String Quartet Op. 130: the
blind musician and the deaf one side by side. The astronomer Timothy Ferris, who
worked with Carl Sagan in selecting those tracks, has said:
"Johnson's song concerns a situation he faced many times, nightfall with no
place to sleep. Since humans appeared on Earth, the shroud of night has yet to
fall without touching a man or woman in the same plight."
Ry Cooder's slide guitar title song and soundtrack music of the Wim Wenders film
Paris, Texas was based on "Dark Was the Night".
"Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" was played in the TV series The
West Wing episode 13, The Warfare of Genghis Khan. "It's Nobody's Fault but
Mine" was played in the TV series The Walking Dead episode 4 Slabtown.
See also List of songs recorded by Blind Willie
Johnson Notes
References Charters, Samuel. The Country Blues.
United Kingdom: Jazz Book Club. — Some facts in the book are at variance with
those given in this article and may represent an earlier stage of research
D. N. Blakey. Revelation Blind Willie Johnson the Biography. LULU PR. ISBN
978-1-4303-2899-5. Retrieved 30 August 2011.
External links