This album was released in 1961, a compilation of sixteen of Robert Johnson's recordings, thirteen previously unreleased. At the time, when there was a revival of interest in the genre, little detail was known about the lives of bluesmen who had recorded these songs in the 1930s. The back cover was still then a key source of what little information there was available on the featured recording artist. More academic biography and musical analysis than we are used to today. On this album the back cover spent a fair amount of its space just defining what constituted 'country blues'.
The notes on the back started:
"Robert Johnson is little, very little more than a name on aging index cards and a few dusty master records in the files of a phonograph company that no longer exists. A country blues singer from the Mississippi Delta that brought forth Son House, Charlie Patton, Bukka White, Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker, Robert Johnson appeared and disappeared, in much the same fashion as a sheet of newspaper twisting and twirling down a dark and windy midnight street."
The album's Wikipedia entry notes the potential unreliability of the information: "At the time of its release very little scholarship had been done on Johnson's life, and the album liner notes contain some inaccuracies and false conclusions, and a speculative portrait of Johnson's personality. As the two surviving portraits of him were discovered a decade later, the cover painting depicts a faceless musician in field clothes."
It is easy see how intoxicating these albums must have been for new listeners, and how important the liner notes became, accurate or not.
Come 1971, a second compilation of recordings was released. With the unearthing of the first known photographs of Johnson still a year away, both back and front covers still had to resort to artistic interpretations. This time depicting the makeshift sessions in San Antonio, Texas in November 1936, recorded in the Gunter Hotel at 205 East Houston Street where the record company had rented Rooms 413 and 414. The former used as the control room while Johnson was playing in the latter.
The cover artwork was produced by Tom Wilson and, on the front, it depicts Johnson playing in Room 414. The back showed what is assumed to be Art Satherly (the record company's recording director) and Don Law (their A&R man) at their recording equipment in Room 413 and with a cable going under the door to Johnson's microphone. With effectively the whole of the 60s between volumes, the back cover had witnessed a material change. No lengthy essay (although still much was unknown about Johnson) and the introduction of some colour. What it did say was hard to argue with though:
"What you hold in your hands is a collection of 16 songs by the greatest down-home blues singer of all time, Robert Johnson. This, the second volume of "King of the Delta Blues Singers," completes the release of Johnson's total recorded output.
Robert Johnson's influence on contemporary rock is just beginning to be felt. The Stones included one of the tunes from this collection (Love in Vain) on their "Let It Bleed" album....So if you dig contemporary music, especially the blues, give a listen to Robert Johnson, the original master." (Jon Waxman)
Sources: Gioia, Ted, 2008. Delta Blues. New York: W W Norton & Company Inc. Dixon, R M W and Godrich, J, 1970. Recording the Blues. London: Studio Vista Limited. http://www.tdblues.com/?p=526. The liner notes for Volume 1 reference The Country Blues by Sam Charters (Rhinehart 1959) and Blues Fell This Morning by Paul Oliver (Cassell, Ltd., 1960) as sources. With thanks to John Seaton.
No comments:
Post a Comment