Robert Johnson
Subtitle: lost and found
By: Barry Lee Pearson and Bill McCulloch
Contributors: McCulloch, Bill
Series: Music in American life
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2003
Place of publication: Urbana
Language: eng
Number of pages: 142
Subjects: Johnson, Robert, -- d. 1938; Blues musicians -- Mississippi -- Biography
Genres: Biography
Description: "With just forty-one recordings to his credit, Robert Johnson (1911-38) is widely regarded as one of the greatest performers in the history of blues music. Johnson's vast influence on twentieth-century American music, combined with his mysterious death at the age of twenty-seven, has allowed speculation and myth to obscure the facts of his life. Perhaps the most famous legend in American music depicts a young Johnson standing at a dusty crossroads at midnight and selling his soul to the Devil in exchange for prodigious guitar skills." "In this volume, Barry Lee Pearson and Bill McCulloch examine the full range of writings about Johnson (such as books, articles, and record notes) and sift fact from fiction. They compare conflicting accounts of Johnson's life, weighing them against interviews with blues musicians and others who knew the man. Through their extensive research Pearson and McCulloch uncover a life every bit as compelling as the fabrications and exaggerations that have sprung up around it. In examining Johnson's life and music, and the ways in which both have been reinvented and interpreted by other artists, critics, and fans, Robert Johnson: Lost and Found charts the broader cultural forces that have mediated the expression of African American artistic traditions."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 129-136) and index
Table of contents: title: Making of a paper trail; title: Our hero; title: Anecdotes; title: Early notices; title: Reissue project, phase one; title: Reissue, phase two; title: Myth eclipses reality; title: Reissue, phase three, or fifteen minutes of fame; title: A myth to the twenty-first century; title: Satan and sorcery; title: The song texts; title: A house of cards; title: Who was he, really?