Focus 580; Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues

In this part of focus 580 will be talking a bit about the history of the blues and about one blues performer specifically his name is Robert Johnson a man who has become at least in this time a certified blues legend. He was embraced by the rock superstars of the 1980s particularly a lot of the British white British musicians. Today he enjoys a level of fame though that he never enjoyed during his lifetime. In fact our guest for this part of focus writes about it like this he died virtually unknown in a backwater without making any appreciable dent on the blues world of his day. How is it that this brilliant but obscure musician came to be hailed long after his death as the most important artist in early blues and the founding father of rock n roll. That is the question we'll try to explore this morning with our guest Elijah Wald. He is a writer and also musician. His previous books including The award winning biography of blues man Josh White He's also written a book titled narco corridos. It's an expert Bryson of the Mexican pop ballads dealing with drugs and politics

and his new book is titled escaping the delta. Robert Johnson and the invention of the blues honest doubt is the publisher on this book. That's a division of Harper Collins. It's out in bookstores now and questions are certainly welcome here on this program if you'd like to call in and talk with our guests. The number here in Champaign Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. We also have a toll free line. It's good anywhere that you can hear us and that is 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 so at any point here if you have questions or comments you can give us a call. Mr. world. Hello. I bet thanks for having me on. Well thanks very much for talking with us we certainly appreciate it. Well let me start out by asking proposing this question that you indeed the deal with right up front in the book is that and that is given the fact that you're writing here a history of the blues in a sense and given the fact that Johnson was really not Robert Johnson was not that well-known or that popular in his own time. Why build an

entire book about the blues around him. For two reasons one of them is simply that he is ready when people come to the blues. I think that there are probably a lot of people I know there are a lot of people probably a lot of people visiting today who the only record they own any blues music from what to it is about the chops and completely. According to an answer since people already starting at that point it seems like a logical way to start a book to sort of take them in deeper. The other reason is I think he's an ideal person through to see the clues because he arrived fairly late on the scene and the first clues and his work stand up that it had come before it. So by listening to its records you really get an introduction to that whole world and then looking at how differently its reputation has been seen by white fans. Then after that first Blues boom it really gives you the

contrast between the two audiences between the black audience that supported this music in its heyday and the wide audience that now is its main supporter. Well I think it's it's really interesting to look at this music and to play and to try as you do in the book to try to place it in its context and look at it from that perspective and try to think about how people and Robert Johnson's time thought about it and then set that oh alongside how people today are thinking about it when it's a music that it tends to be kind of an esoteric corner of the musical world that has a lot of very dedicated followers but but not very many dedicated followers who look at it as kind of a not as a living music but almost as a museum piece. Quite a few people who look at it as a living music and in fact some of them are probably going to be pretty irritated with me for saying that it's great that you know that blues probably has what units now

then ever in history just in terms of having people around the world who are listening to it. But at the same time it has a very small audience left among the people who originally supported it who were sort of the mass black pop audience that now would be listening to you know rap and and neo soul. Well I know it you know maybe I begun to regret having said what I just said. I guess I do want to say that yes there are a lot of people who do believe it's a living music while you're you play it so obviously you believe that it's a living music. I mean I believe it's still a great music. It's not a living music the way it was in the 30s. I mean it's it's getting to be more like jazz so like classical music that sort of played bad you know a bit about if not we don't have any Duke Ellington's or Beethoven's around anymore and I would say we also don't have any Robert Johnson's But there still is enough great music there that it's still very much worth going out and listening to those people who are trying to keep it alive.

Well let's talk about ask you to talk about Robert Johnson and interestingly enough I guess there is not a whole lot known about Robert Johnson. Now he is something of a mystery. I would have to add that because so many people have investigated him we now actually know more about him then we know about almost any of the major stars of his time. He was born and was certainly in 1911 very poor to an illegitimate and south of the Mississippi delta and then grew most of his life in. The Mississippi Delta way out in the country but luckily enough right near a place where a great singer and slide guitar named from the house was playing every weekend. And he seems to have really been inspired by some house the spot playing music and went on then to study the latest records that were coming in from Chicago and St. Louis which was really for kids generation he was born. As I

say and I think you know weapon which makes him the generation that we think of as the electric players people like Howlin Wolf and others but they didn't get to record till later he did and he was thinking in that big city way and created this land of sort of the Delta and the big city sound. But then just as it was really coming together and it just made its first series of recordings he was killed. The story is poisoned by a jealous husband and I see no reason not to believe it. Ann died at age 27 Well before we get too much further I think before we better play a little music here. There are a lot of people I'm sure are listening to us. Maybe you won't have heard Robert Johnson we just we have a few. We've pulled a few cuts. Saw a few of those that are fairly well known and we we told you which view we had. What would you like to start out What do you think you'd like to have us play or we'd like to play.

Well it's sort of. Obviously it's the start of Sweet Home Chicago because people are so familiar with what other versions of it. All right well this is from the Robert Johnson The Complete Recordings we got here that we're going to have cued up we're getting ready to go here. OK this is sweet home Chicago. Right. Didn't get it. And I

want to. Thank you. Thank. You.

All right that is Robert Johnson sweet home chicago What year was that recording that hit 36 1936. So I guess you know you talked about the beginning of the program that there may be some people that in their record collections or CD collection they have only one blues recording in this is that it's this this gets that the complete Robert Johnson so that and I haven't heard that and Recchi in hearing that and saying oh yes that's that's blues I know that I know it when I hear it was is that blues. Well it's an example of you know I put together a CD that actually goes with the book called back to the Crossroads the roots of Robert

Johnson and what you find there is that that song we just heard is simply his reworking of a hit for a guy named culpable Arnold who was in fact a big star from Chicago but who sang it sweet home Kokomo which was. So what if he bets the wrong horse. Kokomo Indiana did not come home and sing Robert Johnson's version. But yeah that was very much the sort of mean stream hit blues style for the mid 30s and the theme was a theme very much appealing to people in the areas of the South. I mean I called the book at escaping the delta because I wanted us to remember that we have this idea that you get into the Mississippi Delta in order to get the real blues feel. But of course these guys were playing it in order to get out of the Mississippi Delta. Our guest in this part of focus 580 Alija Walt he is a musician and a writer. He's author of the book Escaping the Delta Robert Johnson and the invention of the blues it's published by almost on which

is a division of Harper Collins and if you have questions comments of course you can pick up a telephone call us 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 2 2 2 9 4 5 5. Well you know one of the things that I think you really tried to do in the book and as I said is that establish some sort of context with this music and in fact that the CD that you've talked about I think their idea is there to to say OK maybe you're interested in Robert Johnson or blues or you heard some of his music this is the music that he was he would have heard exactly that might have influenced him in him. He might have taken taken things from individual performers so that and I think you are what you're trying to suggest to people is if you've heard Robert Johnson and you think that is the blues you would say that he is that yes that is the blues but that's not all there was to this music. And that in fact if you look at what people were performing and listening to at the time they were performing all kinds of music that in fact that's right.

What was it that reflected what their Audie what they and their audiences were interested in. And it wasn't only this kind of it wasn't only that but I think it's very important to remember that this was not folk music in the 1920s and 30s blues was a hop new pop style. And in most parts of the South it was coming in on record it wasn't what the old people played already on their front porches and people like Robert Johnson you know they were professional musicians we now think of them as blues men. But that's really sort of an accident because that's what the recording companies happened to want from pocket top. Players in Mississippi a guy like Robert Johnson he was famous for the fact that he could play anything that he would just be sitting there having dinner with you would and you know listening to the radio in the back of his mind and then would go up the street and play all the songs that had been on the radio. You know he could play the latest big Crosby hits. Gene Autry he could yodel like Jimmy Rodgers but we don't have any of that on record. All we have is the blues. So we think of him that way.

But you know I keep thinking about how much of his blues style may have been affected by the fact that he could also sing big crusty. Well can you when you hear him do you hear that. Yes. But I'm not sure what I'm hearing at first hand the road car with the most influential male blues singer of this period. Huge huge star and people you know people like Ray Charles and Sam Cooke were still singing Levi caught 30 years later and. Very much was the big Crosby of the blues world he was the person who took advantage of that new intimacy that came with microphones and recording. Before that of course you know you had to sing loud enough to be heard over a band or to be heard in a room full of dancers. And suddenly there was this new world where people could bring records right into their living rooms and listen quietly. And if you were performing by if you could have a microphone and so you could have this new intimacy. And we absolutely hear it out on Robert Johnson's

recordings. I mean something like Come on in my kitchen. You couldn't hear some of that. You know within a few feet away from him he's almost whispering. And you couldn't possibly have done anything like that in a blues scene in the delta even five years earlier. You know it's interesting you did one of the things you talk about is what what performers like Johnson and others in his time would have aspired to what kind of life what kind of lifestyle. And it wasn't sitting on a front porch somewhere. Picking a good time for anybody who might happen to stroll by he and other people were interested in being stars. To the extent that one could be a star in that time they wanted to be popular entertainers they wanted they wanted to be. They wanted people to buy the records they wanted people to come hear them play they wanted to make money they said they wanted to to be popular and judged just like most performers do.

It was interesting to me actually because I was aware that this was pop music but when I was working on this book I had actually gone back and gone through the Chicago Defender which was the main black newspaper for that period and just looked at all the record advertising and what you find is people like Duke Ellington Jelly Roll Morton you know the big what we think of as the big jazz starts was very very minor figures compared to Bessie Smith. I don't cock small Raney the great blues Queens and then but Lemon Jefferson Lonnie Johnson the men start to. I mean toward the end of the 20s and really blues was the mainstream black popular music and particularly when you listen to Robert Johnson virtually all of his recordings with the exception of this tiny little bunch he did at the end of his first session all reworkings up hits from the previous two years coming out of Chicago and St. Louis he really was going for it but hit sound of that

moment. He was covering he was he was a cover artist. He was he wasn't covering because he tended to write his own variation. But you know in the sense that Christina Aguilera doesn't cover Britney Spears but it's pretty damn simple. And in the same way I mean Robert Johnson was not trying to sound like somehow he was trying to sound like Petey Weitz through Kokomo Arnold's Learoyd car. These are not names a lot of your listeners probably know. But I mean when people talk about you know this business about Robert Johnson and the devil. Well one place that could well come from is that the singer he probably most imitated was a guy named Petey we struggle with a big star from St. Louis a piano player and we stress records were built as Petey we struck up a devil son in law you know that was a very popular. You know it was appealing it was exciting it was fun. Well but you're referring to this story that maybe people haven't heard nothing else about

Robert Johnson. The story was that he sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his ability to play. And that's something that that's a story I guess that people really like. Where did that that. Do we know where that got started and did he in fact start that and was that something that he would have not in a not in a serious way but the kind of thing he would have said with a chuckle. Well he certainly sang a couple of songs that mention the devil. Yeah exactly what you just said. My feeling is you know one time I have actually heard or seen an interview with someone who knew him. It's a guy named Willie. Coffee who grew up with him and continued to know him through his life and it's a wonderful film in which a blues expert asks Will a coffee so did he ever tell you that he sold his soul to the devil and cop because he was always kidding around like that we never took it seriously. I think really people started taking that seriously when the white fans got into it and

they were looking for this sort of mysterious figure. And then of course you know most of us today came to blues and came to Robert Johnson through the Rolling Stones and dark image of Robert Johnson is really at sort of this father grandfather opened up Keith Richards you know that dangerous thing and and the Rolling Stones you know with their sake tannic Majesties Request and sympathy for the devil really was looking for that for exactly what Robert Johnson is. Well why don't we play something else. Sure. What do you think I did for a play crossroad that's kind of was I was thinking about to well let's do that again this is from Robert Johnson The Complete Recordings this is Cross Road Blues. Me.

Hey hey hey.

Hey. Thanks. Mary. Meredith banana.

Right that's crossroads Blues by Robert Johnson going out to all those people who thought Jack Bruce and Eric Clapton wrote that folks know had version from. From cream of the 1960s talk about Johnson and and he says what he brought to the music with what is very distinctive about him a couple of things I think the main thing is he is the perfect fusion of the Doppler sound and the more sort of urban hip sound at that time. I mean the players who are people like Bob house Charlie Patton were playing sort of a rock for grittier sound. And Robert Thompson had started off with that and he had still kept a lot of that. But so being younger is listening to the hip guys coming out of Chicago

and he has that smoothness and his soul and so put together very carefully a lot of the older guys they were just saying a lot of different verses but something like Crossroads. You very clearly has you know started in one place and he's going forward and the song Fields It's very well it's a well constructed piece of pop music. Well that's you know. It offered a place for 15 or 20 minutes with a single saw and they just weren't used to putting together a perfect three minute soft wrapped. I think the other thing he brought to it which always has contributed to making him the legend he is is because of that fusion He also is the perfect way for people like me a white guy born in Boston who maybe if I had just heard Charlie Patton it would have been too rough or too weird for me. But Robert chops and smoothed it out enough that he lets us sample. Was that it was there a wide audience for this music in its time. Or was it

truly pretty much just just a black Americans listened to a white audience but it was very small. I mean there were always white people who were buying flus records and I mean in some strange places I was talking to a man who grew up in Oxford England and he said that one of his parents friends used to get the whole house about race cataloged race was the term Jennifer Black Music used to get the whole power I'm outraged catalogue said to him in Oxford. But there were very few people like that down in the south in the US there were more. I mean all these guys. Like Robert Johnson would play for white picnics as well as playing for black gigs. But they probably would have played a lot less blues when they were doing those. What's interesting is not very long ago I talked with a fellow who's just recently written a biography of Bessie Smith which talks about the fact that she did perform for a lot of mixed race audiences but that that that primarily was in the south which kind

of surprised me. I mean you know to put it in its simplest terms American racism never prohibited black people from dancing or singing for white people. They just didn't want them. You're not being on an equal basis and Bessie Smith. They used to have. These things called Midnight Ramble in the black theaters say in Memphis. There would be a black theater and Bessie Smith would play it there and then there'd be a special midnight show which would be for an all white audience and which would often be broadcast on the radio. And so you know it it's not that it wasn't segregated but there was also in the song Revolution that was true that you know people like Otis Redding Instantly there was a white audience for those guys. I want to have you talk about how it is that some white with white figures first of all we had people like John Hammond who was a very

famous record producer and Alan Lomax who was a famous ethno musicologist to one collected some of this music and then perhaps later White guitarist primarily a lot of these guys were British So were people like Eric Clapton and others at the time who became interested in this music. How that ended up shaping what a lot of people think of as blues and as you write about in this book in the process selecting somebody like Johnson who was not all that big. Figure of his time selecting somebody like him and elevating him to too to this very high status while at the same time perhaps dismissing other performers who who were in their time big stars I mean how did all of this happen. Well obviously that's a big question and I spend several chapters on it but I guess the sure way of looking at it is the first people who came to it you mentioned John Hammond and Alan Lomax and for John

Hammond he was a jazz fan and what he was listening for in blues was the roots of jazz. Basically you know for him blues was where Louis Armstrong and count basi came from. And so he was looking for somebody who was up in Chicago being a contemporary star he was looking for the roots. And Alan Lomax was a folklorist and he was looking for the black equivalent of say the Appalachian British ballots. So he again was looking for the roots. And so when they presented blues they were presenting the most popular artists. They were trying to present people who were out there and could be seen as you know the farthest back the deepest. Then the next. Adoration when you get into the people like Eric Clapton The Rolling Stones. Basically you know they've grown up in England and then they had heard Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry

and it had just changed their lives. And as they were getting the Chuck Berry records they began getting a few records of muddy waters of Howlin Wolf and that was the next stage that was really her. It was wilder. And for them it was even more exciting. And when they heard Robert Johnson which John Abbott who we mentioned earlier led to this LP coming out which was the first LP of early blues to ever come out on a major label except for Bessie Smith and they heard that LP and it was the roots of Muddy Waters and Howlin Wolf. I mean you know rubber chops it really does sound absolutely back to the roots of Muddy Waters. But it's this odd coincidence. That they got him to Chicago and the Chicago once had come from Mississippi. If what they had got into with T-Bone Walker and the L.A. sound and I mean the L.A. electric guitarists were much much more popular in muddy waters state than Muddy Waters. I mean people like T-Bone Walker at Little full sun and great shots were much bigger

stars. And those guys all came from Oklahoma and Texas so stuff that got into them they would have been down in Dallas not looking down in Clarksdale Mississippi in one of the reviews of the book. There was a wonderful story that the reviewer tells this is a review by Susan Larson and it appeared in The Times Picayune of New Orleans and she told us one of a story that she was told by Dave Van Ronk. That's actually from the book and it's actually from the book. Oh I'm so. OK the story but it's. Great you're still a rat. It's your story the way the regime is written up it makes it sound like it's her story. OK well the story goes that if your story comes about when Iraq was at a blues festival in New England and he came a little late and he wasn't sure who else was on the bill and he did his his show and he ended with Hoochie Coochie Man and a really strong tough aggressive kind of wild man performance and so he finishes and

everybody applauds and he comes off stage and comes face to face with Marty Rogers who is who. That was his song and he Muddy Waters had been watching Van Ronk play and the story was that that muddy kind of puts his arm around Dave and says that was very good son. But then he said but you know that's supposed to be a funny song. I love that story because it it it I think it speaks volumes of you know how how different people come to the music and what it is they think it's about. And also you know maybe a big difference between the way often. White audiences approach is mute. Again black audiences. Absolutely I mean you know for me one of the key moments working I've been that way before I was working on this book but they cut me thinking about it was reading an interview with John Hammond Jr. the son of the record producer who is a very very good blues singer in his own right and who you don't really know is his Robert Jobson. When complete recordings came up the magazine was interviewing him about it and he said you know what what

people miss is the humor in this. And then he quoted the line going to you know carry my body down at the highway side so my old restless spirit can catch a Greyhound bus and ride. He said Now I think that's a funny line. And you know we don't think about it because we think of a Greyhound bus as sort of being how poor people travel but a Greyhound bus in 1936 was a brand new thing in the Mississippi Delta. And the idea of this ghost down by the highway side wanted to catch a Greyhound bus it's like talking about you know bury me down by the Kennedy field so that my restless spirit can catch the Concorde to Paris. That's where we have about 20 minutes left in this part of focus 580 And again I guess I feel like we should play some more music. We had to have a couple of other cuts and I don't know again if you'd like to. The

one of the apparently love in vain isn't the audio quality is not real great so I guess maybe that leaves us with either a Hellhound on my trail which is one of those sort of famous Johnson tunes. And the other I believe I'll Dust My Broom on oh you want to you know one of the other that I would help out because we've been playing some lighter things and that's is you know that's a scary one. Yeah ok then they will do that this is again this is a Robert Johnson This is from the disc king of the Delta blues it's Hellhound on my trail. Family anyway.

Tony you are right that's Robert

Johnson Hellhound on my trail. We talked this morning with Elijah Wald He's a writer and also be a blues musician he's written a book about Johnson and about the blues which is titled escaping the delta. Robert Johnson and the invention of the blues it's published by. Which is an imprint of Harper Collins. Also if you're interested in listening to music not only Johnson but of the kinds of music that perhaps would have inspired him kind of music that he would have listened to. You might want to look for a CD that is just out that our guest has worked on. It is titled back to the Crossroads the roots of Robert Johnson and Yasu records as the Bible and questions are welcome 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. And I have a call I will get onto but anything in particular you want to say about that. That cut quickly. Yeah but the interesting thing about that because the talk about how he was imitating or you know building on records by made recently.

But that's so he wasn't just a pop musician. Song is based on the work of a man named Skip James who now is idolized but who was to Greenley little known at that time and who Johnson clearly had great affection for he covered to a skip James's records and so you know I don't want to over emphasize him as if he was just trying to be a pop musician. Let's talk with color here we have someone in Bourbonnais Lie Number one I think I have several quick questions if you will. The first is one of my broom. Me Mr. You didn't Dylan uses it. You never get it basically means I'm just going to get out of here I'm going to Dust My Broom I'm leaving. OK all right simple as that. Yeah the second thing is when I heard you referring to the complete records of Robert Johnson for the can. Yeah I remembered that I pop that and then when I got home and compared it with an older Robert Johnson

CD that I had it wasn't complete at all there were a couple of songs on my older one that were not new. Nope. All right. Nope there is one alternate track that is not on the comp. But other than that it is complete. I don't know what the songs would be that you're thinking of. OK well I can't get to it now so I'll have to recheck it. Also I guess I heard a story about Robert Johnson that at one point earlier in his career he went to a juke joint or something and was basically laughed off the stage for his plan. Oh yeah I went home again and would shut it for hours and hours every day. Yet I doubt used to tell that story Son House son absent a guy named Willie Brown used to play regularly around when Johnson was growing up and Johnson would come and play harmonica for them and he was a good harmonica player but house with the house that he kept wanting to take their guitars during their breaks and it was just the most god awful sound you ever COULD HEAR IS IT WAS A wouldn't want to listen to it. And

then Johnson went off depending on who you talk to for six months or a year and a half and came back and just completely blew everybody away. And you know what they can say it happened so quickly he must have sold his soul to the devil. But anybody who spent their lives in music knows that a 15 or 16 year old who has talent who runs off for a year can just come back and you know anything's possible. Yeah let's keep the ball going. I got that straight. A lot of our Crumb's book I'm sure that's a great book. When a crime is one of the two foetid 78 record collectors I mean he was one of the guys who back in the 60s already was holding out the outback looking for these old blues records and he it's interesting he really knows that side to fit on the other hand his job is to be a cartoonist. So you know if you get a lot more devils and a lot more down

and dirty then I think is in fact an accurate portrayal I mean one of the things I've got in my book is this poem that this guy took out in the Delta plantations and 940 asking people who is your favorite musician What's your favorite record and what you learned that the people out there in the juke joints in the wild and mysterious Delta IV were listening to Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman and you know if they were into blues it was the local sound they liked it but they by no means were a bunch of people who didn't know nothing but that stuff. They also were very conscious you know they knew Big Crosby was they just also appreciated Charlie Patton the magic of radio exactly at records. I mean they were jukeboxes by Robert Johnson today everywhere. OK. What does juke mean. It's another word for dancing. As far as I know to go out you can. But you know I'm not 100 percent on that one. Jukebox a juke joint. I believe it's just

dancing. OK. Have you seen a calendar that's not the future of all the blues label and bad. That's an interesting thing about the calendar put out by another record collector a man named John Tefteller who's put together a lot of power about records advertisements from the Chicago Defender and he included a CD that includes a couple of very odd and interesting things he found passing by Tommy Johnson and Tommy Johnson is one of the greatest of the Delta players and in fact is the one who we actually have the story from about meeting the devil at the crossroads. It was Tommy Johnson not Robert Johnson who told that story. And if it ever existed of Tommy Johnson with these deep Delta Blues cuts and now with that calendar is the CD to test that thing he did before he made his first recording for Paramount and he is singing basically a Jimmy Rogers type cowboy song and yodeling and I think it's a really

good example of how little we really know about these guys because the fashion of the time meant that all we have is their blues work and who knows I mean the waters went out. Max first discovered him in 1941 42 and what happened. He recorded a study with blues but he also took a repertoire list but he played seven Gene Autry songs he played Chattanooga Choo-Choo he played Red Sails in the sunset. It's one of the questions I think it's interesting on Jerry you've thought about this is what we have now because Johnson died as early as he did in his career never went any further. He and his music gets frozen in time. The interesting question is if he would have lived and continued to perform what sort of music he would have been playing and whether he would have been playing the same kinds of things that we know or would have whether he would have been doing something else. Well obviously I can't say with any certainty what he would have been doing. I would

say with absolute certainty he would not have kept. The same stuff and he would not have ended up sounding like Muddy Waters or Elmore James which is what most people think which is basically just an electrified version of that deep Delta sound. Johnson was clearly a hipper musician and they were. Which clearly by the time he died already very much moving into you know sort of the mainstream of the younger hipper styles. And my guess is he would have ended up sounding you know more in the direction of jump blues like you know T-Bone Welker or Charles Brown. People who were smooth who had you know a lot of jazz sound sort of I don't know almost electric cafe blues but not that sort of hard bar room sound. He would because he was a guitarist in the. That's no doubt part of the reason that the British guitarists latched on to him in his music when the primary jazz were the primary blues instrument of

the time Robert Johnson's time would have been the piano. Certainly I mean guitar was big then. But it's true I mean most of the big stars even if they played guitar there was always a piano on the records and the biggest stars Leroy Carhart Petey wheat straw Bumblebee slam were mostly piano players. And that's right. It's very much the rock world that and also the folk world because of course the folk singers you know Woody Guthrie it was also guitar and piano players really kind of got written out of blues history which is just a complete rewriting of the story. So how was it that you got interested in blues and became a blues guitarist yourself you know I guess Chad. I had an older half brother considerably older who was a blues fan and who left his records with me when I was a kid and saw it and I mean I started up with Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. But when I heard blues it was just so exciting and

you know that I'm a guitar player myself. And it's one of the great virtue or so I mean there's just something about it. But why blues and not something else you know. How do any of us know at the end that what we have maybe about five minutes away but less in this part of focus with Elijah Wald questions are recently welcome 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. Wonder what it is that. Perhaps in having this very limited view of what the blues are is never sure which way that should go. About this music what is it with that we lose what sort of appreciation do we gain by having this broader sort of perspective that says that says Yeah Robert Johnson was was a great performer and there's a lot of wonderful things in his music but that's not that's not the only thing that blues is. And there were all kinds of other sorts of things. It was in

kind of going in different directions and with different flavors at that at the point when it was a big music in and of itself. I think there are a few things we lose. One of the obvious things is that blues has but very male music in terms of the fans and in terms of who's playing it and blues was for its first 15 years. Well the stars were women and even straight through muddy waters age. Most of them. Record buyers as long as it was black pop music were women. I mean if this intensely male thing is definitely an addition. You know if the post Rolling Stone's world. So we've lost that. Also it was just much broader and I think a lot of people who think they don't like blues really what it is is they've only heard that one side of blues and there's plenty else there that they would like. And then of course you know we've lost just the idea that these

guys were smocked professional musicians. We've got this idea that you know that Robert Johnson was a magnificent mobster and he wasn't a magnificent monster he was a very intelligent young musician with a very good idea of what the music world of his day looked like and how he could fit into it. I think that that's interesting that somehow in the part of the whole blues mythology we have come to elevate amateurism as if somehow polish and drive and the desire to be a big star whatever that meant at the time as if there was something wrong with the bad with that. Yes absolutely. Obviously part of that you know there are two sides. It's that one spot if that is the aesthetic that gave us punk rock. And you know that just said energy it counts for more than you know. And part of it of course is race and racism. You know it is the idea that what's great about black culture

is primitive emotion whereas what's great about white culture is Shakespeare and Mozart and you know that's just flat out. I mean frankly what's great about white culture involves a lot of emotion as well and what's great about black culture God knows involves just as much intelligence and skilless as any of any other culture. Well there we'll leave it with again the suggestion people would like to read more about the blues you can look for this book we talked about escaping the delta. Robert Johnson in the invention of the blues it's published by Amazon which is an imprint of HarperCollins. And then if you're interested in listening to some music you can go on and look for the CD that we've mentioned to back to the Crossroads the roots of Robert Johnson from you hazza records and I think that's just out. Our guest Alija Wald he is a writer and a blues musician. Thanks very much. Thank you very much for having me on. Let me just quickly mention I do also have a website it's just my name you Lige it won't dot com car right.

Well again thanks much we appreciate it.