Robert Johnson - Unforgettable (All Tracks Remastered) '2021

Tracks list

Tracklist:

01. Cross Road Blues (Remastered)
02. Come on In My Kitchen (Remastered)
03. Kind Hearted Woman Blues (Remastered)
04. Me and the Devil Blues (Remastered)
05. Milkcows Calf Blues (Remastered)
06. If I Had Possession over Judgement Day (Remastered)
07. Hellhound on My Trail (Remastered)
08. Terraplane Blues (Remastered)
09. 32-20 Blues (Remastered)
10. Ramblin on My Mind (Remastered)
11. Last Fair Deal Gone Down (Remastered)
12. Walkin Blues (Remastered)
13. Preachin Blues (Up Jumped the Devil) (Remastered)
14. Traveling Riverside Blues (Remastered)
15. When You Got a Good Friend (Remastered)


 Read MoreAs success came with live performances and phonograph recordings,
Johnson remained tormented, constantly haunted by nightmares of hellhounds on
his trail, his pain and mental anguish finding release only in the writing and
performing of his music. Just as he was to be brought to Carnegie Hall to
perform in John Hammonds first Spirituals to Swing concert, the news had come
from Mississippi; Robert Johnson was dead, poisoned by a jealous girlfriend
while playing a jook joint. Those who were there swear he was last seen alive
foaming at the mouth, crawling around on all fours, hissing and snapping at
onlookers like a mad dog. His dying words (either spoken or written on a piece
of scrap paper) were, I pray that my redeemer will come and take me from my
grave. He was buried in a pine box in an unmarked grave, his deal with the Devil
at an end.

Of course, Johnsons influences in the real world were far more disparate than
the legend suggests, no matter how many times its been retold or embellished. As
a teenage plantation worker, Johnson fooled with a harmonica a little bit, but
seemingly had no major musical skills to speak of. Every attempt to sit in with
local titans of the stature of Son House, Charley Patton, Willie Brown, and
others brought howls of derision from the older bluesmen. Son House: Wed all
play for the Saturday night balls, and thered be this little boy hanging around.
That was Robert Johnson. He blew a harmonica then, and he was pretty good at
that, but he wanted to play a guitar. Hed sit at our feet and play during the
breaks and such another racket youd never heard. He married young and left
Robinsonville, wandering the Delta and using Hazelhurst as base, determined to
become a full-time professional musician after his first wife died during
childbirth. Johnson returned to Robinsonville a few years later and he
encountered House and Willie Brown at a juke joint in Banks, Mississippi;
according to House, When he finished all our mouths were standing open. I said,
Well, aint that fast! Hes gone now! To a man, there was only one explanation as
to how Johnson had gotten that good, that fast; he had sold his soul to the
Devil.

But Johnsons skills were acquired in a far more conventional manner, born more
of a concentrated Christian work ethic than a Faustian bargain with old Scratch.
He idolized the Delta recording star Lonnie Johnson -- sometimes introducing
himself to newcomers as Robert Lonnie, one of the Johnson brothers -- and the
music of Scrapper Blackwell, Skip James, and Kokomo Arnold were all
inspirational elements that he drew his unique style from. His slide style
certainly came from hours of watching local stars like Charley Patton and Son
House, among others. Perhaps the biggest influence, however, came from an
unrecorded bluesman named Ike Zinneman. Well never really know what Zinnemans
music sounded like (we do know from various reports that he liked to practice
late at night in the local graveyard, sitting on tombstones while he strummed
away) or how much of his personal muse he imparted to Johnson, if any. What is
known is that after a year or so under Zinnemans tutelage, Johnson returned with
an encyclopedic knowledge of his instrument, an ability to sing and play in a
multiplicity of styles, and a very carefully worked-out approach to song
construction, keeping his original lyrics with him in a personal digest. As an
itinerant musician, playing at country suppers as well as on the street, his
audience demanded someone who could play and sing everything from blues pieces
to the pop and hillbilly tunes of the day. Johnsons talents could cover all of
that and more. His most enduring contribution, the boogie bass line played on
the bottom strings of the guitar (adapted from piano players), has become
part-and-parcel of the sound most people associate with down-home blues. It is a
sound so very much of a part of the musics fabric that the listener cannot
imagine the styles of Jimmy Reed, Elmore James, Eddie Taylor, Lightnin Slim,
Hound Dog Taylor, or a hundred lesser lights existing without that essential
component part. As his playing partner Johnny Shines put it, Some of the things
that Robert did with the guitar affected the way everybody played. Hed do
rundowns and turnbacks. Hed do repeats. None of this was being done. In the
early 30s, boogie on the guitar was rare, something to be heard. Because of
Robert, people learned to complement theirselves, carrying their own bass as
their own lead with this one instrument. While his music can certainly be put in
context as part of a definable tradition, what he did with it and where he took
it was another matter entirely.

Although Robert Johnson never recorded near as much as Lonnie Johnson, Charley
Patton, or Blind Lemon Jefferson, he certainly traveled more than all of them
put together. After his first recordings came out and Terraplane Blues became
his signature tune (a so-called race record selling over three or four-thousand
copies back in the early to mid-30s was considered a hit), Johnson hit the road,
playing anywhere and everywhere he could. Instilled with a seemingly
unquenchable desire to experience new places and things, his wandering nature
took him up and down the Delta and as far a field as St. Louis, Chicago, and
Detroit (where he performed over the radio on the Elder Moten Hour), places Son
House and Charley Patton had only seen in the movies, if that. But the end came
at a Saturday-night dance at a juke joint in Three Forks, MS, in August of 1938.
Playing with Honeyboy Edwards and Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller), Johnson
was given a jug of moonshine whiskey laced with either poison or lye, presumably
by the husband of a woman the singer had made advances toward. He continued
playing into the night until he was too sick to continue, then brought back to a
boarding house in Greenwood, some 15 miles away. He lay sick for several days,
successfully sweating the poison out of his system, but caught pneumonia as a
result and died on August 16th. The legend was just beginning.

King of the Delta Blues SingersIn the mid-60s, Columbia Records released King of
the Delta Blues Singers, the first compilation of Johnsons music and one of the
earliest collections of pure country blues. Rife with liner notes full of
romantic speculation, little in the way of hard information and a painting
standing for a picture, this for years was the worlds sole introduction to the
music and the legend, doing much to promote both. A second volume -- collecting
up the other master takes and issuing a few of the alternates -- was released in
the 70s, giving fans a first-hand listen to music that had been only circulated
through bootleg tapes and albums or cover versions by English rock stars.
Finally in 1990 -- after years of litigation -- a complete two-CD box set was
released with every scrap of Johnson material known to exist plus the holy grail
of the blues; the publishing of the only two known photographs of the man
himself. Columbias parent company, Sony, was hoping that sales would maybe hit
20,000. The box set went on to sell over a million units, the first blues
recordings ever to do so.

In the intervening years since the release of the box set, Johnsons name and
likeness has become a cottage growth merchandising industry. Posters, postcards,
t-shirts, guitar picks, strings, straps, and polishing cloths -- all bearing
either his likeness or signature (taken from his second marriage certificate) --
have become available, making him the ultimate blues commodity with his image
being reproduced for profit far more than any contemporary bluesman, dead or
alive. Although the man himself (and his contemporaries) could never have
imagined it in a million years, the music and the legend both live on. ~ Cub
Koda

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