The video is a piece of amusing, misleading trash.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. And, oh, BTW, Robert Johnson made a pact with the devil at the crossroads. Interested in some Florida swampland, while I'm at it?
Johnson got good on guitar because he went away for a couple of years and studied with Ike Zinnerman in Beauregard, Mississippi. He got lessons from a master musician, not the devil, and he practiced real hard. Some of the lessons may have taken place in a graveyard in Beauregard. A graveyard is not the same thing as a crossroads.
This was not posted to mislead anyone. Just for entertainment to my buds on the forum. Sometimes the myth is better than the reality. I'm sure Robert and his music would not be near as popular without the myth. If this turns some kid on to the blues...why not
This has been rehashed so many times and debunked so many times. I´m not sure why this kind of falsification is OK "if it turns some kid on to the blues"?
I always liked the story, even if it is purely apocryphal. The tradition of blaming someone else's good fortune on luck or something supernatural is pretty old. The idea that the devil is sneaky and always gets his due is an old idea. It goes back at least as far as Greek mythology, where poor Persephone is stolen away by Hades into the underworld to be his queen. Zeus sends Hermes to tell Hades to release her. In the time she has been trapped down there she hadn't eaten a bite. As Hermes is taking her back to her mother he entices her to eat a single pomegranate seed, which seals her fate. From then on she has to spend half her time in Hades and can spend half her time free. Her mother, Demeter, mourns by making the earth barren for the half the year she is away.
Of course, Charlie Daniels has flipped the story with his fiddler. The fiddler actually wins against the devil. That never set right with me, so I wrote my own version of the deal with the devil at the crossroads (only featuring a harp player, because, well, why not...)
(I do it in F# on a B harp. Wish I had a good recording. It might be the only straight 12 bar song I've actually written.)
The Devil Always Wins
I went down to the crossroads Down in Mississippi Line about a mile long To bet their souls with me
Some boys brought their fiddles Some brought their guitars Only one who gave me trouble Was the one who brought his harp
He kept it in a pocket In a pair of well worn jeans He smiled when he whipped it out But his stare was cold and mean
(harp)
I blew out Little Walter I blew out Sonny Boy I blew out my best Cotton My set list set to destroy
I played Oh Suzanna backwards I copied Magic Dick But he destroyed my Whammer Jammer With each and every lick
He played like a hoary devil Like he owned the Delt' He only ever slowed it down Was when his reeds started to melt
(harp)
I knew I should be worried About this little pup He held a note for 43 minutes 64th notes to warm up
And so I stood there, panting My lips had gone bone dry I had no words or notes left I just couldn't beat this guy
He demanded my whole kingdom And a harp of gold But I got me the recording rights Man, this job never gets old!!!
The Devil always wins The Devil always wins On harp or violin The Devil always wins
The Devil always wins The Devil always wins Don't matter where or when The Devil always wins
Again and again and again The Devil always wins (yeah yeah/woo!)
Come on Martin. It is hard to say how many people were first turned on to the blues by the movie Crossroads back in the mid-80s. I loved the story so much I bought a copy. Did I believe the story? No, but if I had that would have been okay too. I'm sorry guys but as blues lovers and blues promoters we should embrace this lore. It is probably one of the best promotional tools ever for the blues right up there with the music itself. If the fantasy world is a part of our genre then it can only be a plus. I also doubt if the maker of the cartoon cares what the real truth is or not. I don't think he meant it as racist, demonic, or anything else. Just his take on the story for entertainment purposes. By the way...Harry Potter was a real person and the movies are true.
Last Edited by harpdude61 on May 11, 2013 10:49 PM
I'm a little surprised at you Adam. You used the crossroads to promote Hill Country Harmonica and even asked the participants to meet there. You also made a fantastic video and CD using the Crossroads song. You perform it live.
All of these are promoting the myth rather than the truth. How is this any different than the cartoon?
Its a great piece of Americana like Washington cutting down the cherry tree , John Henry and the steam engine and Al Gore inventing the internet. They are FOLK tales but no less enjoyable. Would you rather hear abut a blues man that went to Berklee. Lighten up already-besides were you there?
Last Edited by Goldbrick on May 12, 2013 2:47 AM
The real story is kinda more interesting for me than the fairy tale. I dunno what Berklee has to do with anything though. Dr Faustus, yeah yeah whatever. ----------
@Jinx: "An, allegory, for heaven's sake." I'll enjoy believing that was on purpose(!), but just is case, and because it's Sunday... Truth? Evolution could be true but it's a theory. That means it's an explanation that permeates everything we know about life on earth. That's bigger than truth. Us human people like to be safe and know things for sure and we get fired up when we don't get it. Beget horror movies, holidays, the perfect harp amp and everything else that makes life "interesting". Robert Johnson sold his soul to Santa.
Some of you should have been Vulcans. No emotion and only deal with truth, facts, and logic. To me this is no different than watching your favorite crime drama or comedy on TV. It is not true but our emotional fantasy world is a cool place to be once in a while. I don't care how technically skilled you are. If you don't let some of this in your soul you will never play to your potential. Just last night I was playing a solo to Stormy Monday with my band and visualized myself being Robert Johnson going thru some hard times before he made it big. The crowd went crazy. Best I ever played.
"Robert Johnson at the Crossroads" is not a folk tale. The story was started by journalists and academics and it is now promoted by politicians and businessmen. It isn't part of blues culture at all.
In fact, the whole Robert Johnson cult and posthumous stardom is outside of blues culture: it began with John Hammond and really got rolling when English rock musicians took it up in the '60s.
Johnson actually had very little influence on the major figures of the blues. Read Elijah Wald's Escaping the Delta for more on Johnson place in blues history.
This thread is the most puzzling I have seen on here
Anybody old enuff to remember the premise of Liberty Valance -When the legend becomes fact, print the legend
When you play that 5 note scale you do connect with demons, devils ancestors etc. That hour you steal from your girl or kids to practice is a deal with YOUR devil. I dont know how you can play this stuff if the myth of the blues isnt part of your soul. I guess you just wanna sit in the corner and practice overblows until you can get the right squeak that nobody but another harp geek will notice ( and think he plays better than you can) Romance , myth, history to me are all part of art. Reminds me of the folks who will tell you that Van Gogh didn't really cut off his ear for love he was just bi polar. Nobody is saying that there weren't more important, better or influential players than RJ--He just was the guy that had the most interesting back story and was " lucky" enuff to die before he could be " debunked" by cable news networks. Some of you guys probably love telling little kids that there is no Easter Bunny. Reality sucks-Wasn't the Prez more interesting when u thought he had a fake birth certificate? Now he is just another dude in a suit with a red tie. A little legend goes a long way
Last Edited by Goldbrick on May 12, 2013 10:14 AM
@harpdude: If you're surprised at my reaction, then you haven't been paying attention. The three videos that I posted along with my reply have all been online for quite a while. I have never, ever, in any context, spoken about "the crossroads"--in Lafayette County or in the Delta or in any other location--as the place where Robert Johnson sold his soul to the Devil, or Satan, or Legba. I never even joke about it. I think the whole story is basically a crock of horse-slurry. Timeistight and I are in accord on this one. My attitude aligns pretty well with Elijah Wald's and also with Barry Lee Pearson's and Bill McCullough's book on RJ.
I recorded Crossroads Blues, and sing the song to this day, with great passion precisely because I take delight in reframing the song towards my earthly mentor and guide, Sterling Magee. I'm having fun with the fact that his name is Mister Satan, but I don't for one minute think of him as evil, or as somebody who has a lien on my soul. I think of him as akin to a Legba figure: a crossroads guide, a disruptive trickster figure who, for my purposes, is also capable--at least in my own memory--of annointing me in my current journey as a one-man band.
Bessie Smith and Lonnie Johnson each recorded something like six songs in which they invoke the devil. RJ recorded precisely one: "Me and the Devil Blues." There are several terrific and haunting songs about the crossroads and the devil, above all Cousin Leroy's "Crossroads." And of course there's Tommy Johnson's story of his crossroads encounter with the devil. Nobody seems particularly interested in those unholy encounters; they're only interested in RJ, who pointedly DOESN'T mention the devil in "Cross Road Blues." Nor are they interested in the actual chronology of RJ's emergence into virtuosity, especially the two years he spent with Ike Zinnerman. They mangle time and suggest that in roughly six months he went from very bad to very good and that only a deal with the devil can explain that. Nonsense.
You want some inspiration? Here's Cousin Leroy. This is a badass song:
I was having fun with the crossroads idea by saying "Let's meet there" and "Come join Satan & Adam at the crossroads." I think that crossroads are interesting, useful places, but NOT because I think some fanged version of Ratfink-as-the-Devil is going to show up there.
If you'd posted the video in question and said, "Of course we all know the crossroads stuff is hooey, but I like the way this video has fun with the legend," I'd probably have agreed with you. The problem is that some folks actually believe this crap. They don't care that black folk invoked the devil, and the idea of selling oneself to the devil, in all kinds of ways and for all kinds of reasons--above all, to put young people, including RJ's generation in the Delta, in their place. Quite a bit of damage has been done to the truth, in this case, by those invested in the legend.
Last Edited by kudzurunner on May 12, 2013 10:23 AM
That is a badass song...both of them. I respect your comments. However, when you asked everyone to meet at the crossroads, you did not post a disclaimer stating that you did not believe any of the hooey. You knew what the lure to people was and I'm sure it was all in fun. If you had said meet in the Wal-Mart parking lot then you would not have been promoting the myth. Even if you did not mention RJ,the devil, or state the truth of the story at the time...you knew that the myth would draw people. I'm sorry, but if people actually believe that you can sell your soul to the devil for worldly gains then their problems are way beyond this story.
Don't worry, my folks are Christian fundies and they believe every single literal word of the Bible, despite hyperbole being rife in Bronze Age Middle Eastern cultures.
My view is that it's cool if it true and cool if it's not. The veracity isn't going to affect my world either way. ;-)
The great thing about Robert was the music he left behind. Would his music be as popular and his influence on music and some of it's finest artist be as wide-spread without the myth? I doubt it.
Who knows? Robert may love the fact that his music became so powerful and influential, yet his life is spattered with myth,mystery, and even darkness. Many people prefer this as their legacy. Did Robert? We don't know? What does his music say? Possibly, by bringing out the facts and trying to kill the myth, we may be undoing what Robert would have preferred.
I was, and to a certain degree still am, a metal head. I was shown a clip of the Steve Vai guitar duel from Crossroads 1986. Awesomely tasty. I was then intrigued with the rest of the movie. I don't believe the whole crossroads rubbish, but the movie did help influence me in picking up my grandfathers harps.
I PERSONALLY don't believe Robert Johnson would have as much appeal if there were loads of pictures and authentically documented article of him. There are, and I stand under correction, three separate places RJ is believed to be buried.
Going from Harpdude and Jared's comments, I personally find RJ a very hard listen for the most part. I've also heard that the 29 recordings he made were nothing like his working set list which was much happier including covers. Apparently the market for race records dictated the running order of recordings.
It appears the whole RJ myth wasn't limited to the Crossroads story.
@harpdude: "Come on Martin. It is hard to say how many people were first turned on to the blues by the movie Crossroads back in the mid-80s. (..) Did I believe the story? No, but if I had that would have been okay too. I'm sorry guys but as blues lovers and blues promoters we should embrace this lore."
Do you mean that as a "blues lover/promoter" I also ought to believe in this kind of myth (actually more of a meta-myth or para-myth than anything else)? Or should I just "promote" it? The movie where Karate Kid gets lost in the blues jungle did absolutely nothing for me, but that´s something we may value differently; the crossroads crap however purports to say something "real" about RJ and da blooze and that´s been de-constructed a number of times and not a whole lot remains -- outside of the self-generating media hype. (And that´s very hard to kill.) Generally I´m not at all convinced that the instrumental function of something ("it attracts kids to the blues") should mean that I must like it. A successfull selling in of some notion, say, "playing the blues will make you rich", may draw the occasional bozo to the blues -- but why is that a good thing?
"WHat Robert would have preferred" is a rather spurious notion and in lieu of that the truth is better.
We´re in complete agrement however on RJ´s music being the great thing!
There have been times were I thought Little Walter may be Lucifer himself...Is that a 666 on his forehead?
Last Edited by Frank on May 13, 2013 5:29 AM
Your last point is a good one, harpdude. There's another way of looking at this whole issue, one that I made at the end of a talk at Chapel Hill: it's possible that RJ did not have one stable orientation towards the devil, but rather than his orientation shifted radically. He may have begun, early in his career, by invoking the devil in "Me and the Devil Blues" as a way of mocking the Christians of his day and titillating the interests of his youthful audience, sort of like a rocker these days who says "I'm bad, baby." Chicks will sleep with guys like that. But it's also possible that later in his life he suddenly grew fearful and decided that what might have initially seemed like a lark was in fact a dangerous trafficking in bad, evil stuff. I see "Me and the Devil Blues" as a lighthearted, playful, joky song designed to flirt with his woman. But "Hellhound on My Trail" is darker.
I made this claim because I know that Sterling Magee has an unstable relationship with his own "Mr. Satan" identity. He was very strong, even cocksure, about who he was for many years when we played together. But after his breakdown in 1998, I spoke with him at a moment when he said, "Call me Sterling" and actually said "The whole Satan thing was a mistake." A broken man--at that point. But now he's back to Mr. Satan. So who knows? An individual blues musician may have several different psychospiritual orientations towards the devil in the course of a career. Bluesmen are human, too.
This is not the same thing as saying that Robert Johnson made a deal with the devil, I should note. But he grew up at a time when even to joke about such things could, if one was in the wrong mood and feeling less then cocky and self-assured, come to feel like a really foolish thing to have done. "You been showing your ass for a long time now, boy. You gonna get what's coming to you." Those sorts of admonishments on the part of the old folk could, at some moments and in some moods, seem prophetic to a nervy trailblazer like RJ.
IMHO...the myths, meta-myths, or para-myths along with the boozing,womanizing, hard times, being hungry, hoboing a train, busking, discrimination, playing from the soul while feeling the pain, making your own instrument,lying about your identity, etc. etc. are part of the history of the blues and are the foundation of where blues is today.
If the music is the cake then the stories, truth or myth, are the icing. The music is great entertainment along with everything that is the blues. To try and change what made the blues what it is, is just wrong.
Nobody is asking anybody to "believe" anything. Like I said, if you do beleive a lot of these blues tales then you have your own demons to deal with.
I say absorb it all, let it enrich your soul, believe what you like, and enjoy the rest for what it is.If you want to know the real truth, fine. If you want to enjoy the fantasy, fine.
I love sharing the "story" of Robert Johnson. He may grin a little grin everytime spreads his myth.
Best line of the movie "all he wanted anybody to say was..he could really play, he was good".
Just read your last paragraph Adam. Interesting stuff that I am unaware of. When I have time I will listen to all your videos and educate myself. You do go much deeper than probably any of the hardest hardcore blues fans ever would.
I know Robert Johnson was a real person. There are stories about him that are not true. The real question is...do they really dehumanize him or lift up his name?
Wow, why take this so seriously? I never believed that someone could sell their soul for a minute but everything and every myth added to the culture of the Blues and was part of my growing interest. Just as the story of Howlin Wolf's mother coming to meet him and wouldn't accept money from him because it came from playing the devils music. You all know that this was a prevailing thought amongst some of the people from that area and era. In my opinion this attitude was due to the music playing about womanizing, drinking, gambling, etc. all of which were activities that weren't godly. Harpdude, I agree with your first two paragraphs. Thank you for the reference to Ike Zinnerman. I have never heard that part and I am interested in that too. I'm interested in all of it.
There are a lot of things we humans can do while here on earth, (smoke, drink, drugs, cheat, steal, etc )But, often - the fantasy is better to keep alive rather then living the reality of the consequences of a foolish life style ( STD's, Addiction, Death, loneliness, Jails, straight jackets, etc )?
Last Edited by Frank on May 13, 2013 7:15 AM
thank you for ruining the robert johson story for me as a kid back when i had time to read books i read everything by carlos castaneda go ahead ruin that for me too.
what was the name of the song by jerry mc cain where he makes a deal with the devil, for a womans love? does anyone have a copy of that? my copy is damaged, off, this stuff just kills me
Howlin' Wolf played the blues because he was a beaten, abused child. In MOANIN' AT MIDNIGHT, their biography of Wolf, James Segrest and Mark Hoffman make clear that he was beaten badly, repeatedly, by his boyhood caregivers, something that filled him with anger and a need for what psychologists call "compensatory grandiosity." Later on, when he had power, he beat the musicians in his band. They all talked about this. Some Chicago musicians wouldn't tour with Wolf because they weren't willing to be beaten like women. Hubert Sumlin took his abuse; Sumlin was willing to be his boy.
Of course it's much more thrilling to talk about Wolf like he was an inhuman force of nature. The human truths--the inner sadness, loneliness, and sense of emotional abandonment--are where the blues comes from. And of course Wolf had talent, ambition, and a willingness to remake himself, persevering in the face of stuff that might have depressed anybody else to the point of death.
RJ, too, was beaten by his father for not working in the fields and for staying out late at night to visit jukes where Son House was playing.
The devil lore is, at this point, very much a part of the history of the blues. It's part of the intellectual and reception history of the music.
I saw Crossroads when the film first came out, around the same time I first started playing with Mr. Satan. It had a powerful effect on me. I show it to my blues classes at Ole Miss and we deconstruct it.
Last Edited by kudzurunner on May 13, 2013 8:57 AM
That saddens me that somebody needs a class to understand the movie Crossroads. The blues is not for them. Do they deconstruct Footloose for a dance class? You know what Louie said about Jazz.
Kids post slavery were often treated worse than mules ( mules were expensive) These were kids from multiple parents in many cases fit as labor only. Not all of them obviously turned out bluesmen or artists. Lots turned out to be regular folks and some turned out as criminals
We all sell our souls metaphorically speaking ( to the devil to the company store or to the "guvmint"-( maybe you cant sell what you might not have anyway)
Check out the Ananci tales sometimes or Norse tales of Loki-or even the signifying monkey. Art, music , life itself is rife with myth-and its way more interesting than video games. " pleased to meet you hope you guessed....". The fact taht this topic stimulates so much discussion is a win for free thought( devil or otherwise)
Last Edited by Goldbrick on May 13, 2013 11:14 AM
I must be a bit older than you guys. My Robert Johnson myths were the ones from the liner notes of this record:
By the time of the Crossroads movie, I'd been listening to the blues for thirty years and Robert Johnson for twenty. I remember eagerly anticipating it before it was released, but I was quite disappointed in it when I saw it. Not being any kind of "metalhead" (I'd jumped off the brit-rock bandwagon when Black sabbath came along) I didn't see Steve Vai dueling with himself as having anything to do with the blues. I felt then and still feel now that the movie trivialized the blues and marginalized its creators in order to sell popcorn to kids.
@Frank: That's a great song from Frank's Wild Years "Un Operachi Romantico in Two Acts". In it, Waits is playing a character, one of the fire-and-brimstone preachers that Dr. Gussow talks about in his videos.
not all robert johnsons song may have been in fact his.many were based on earlier songs. there was also a meeting of robert johnson, elmore james, aurthur crudup, sonny boy williamson, and robert lockwood. certain songs were obviously exchanged like "mr downchild" and "dust my broom" i think he copied dust my broom from elmore. and i can hear crudup "father of rock n roll" in some of johnsons songs. strange things, lockwood became robert johnson jr and crudup recorded as elmo james, elmore james became the biggest promoter of dust my broom ever recording many versions. its like rock n roll was invented at this meeting and they made a pact to make sure certain songs made it to shellac. wonder what they sounded like all together.
That's a far more interesting story. Given these guys were scraping a living whichever way they could, a marketing pact or player's union would make a lot of sense.
@goldbrick: Since you've mocked my mission as a blues educator, I'm going to mock your attitude--all in good fun, and all within the limits of the forum creed, of course.
Fred Flinstone: Hey Barney, put down that book and shaddup. Whaddya think, you're better than the rest of us? We're CAVEMEN, Barney! They haven't even invented books yet.
Seriously, some of us are interested in the stories that America tells itself about its people and its culture(s). That's the spirit in which my class and I watched and then discussed CROSSROADS. I teach my students how to frame cultural artifacts--in this case, a popular film--relative to the historical moments that gave rise to them.
My own take on the film is based on the fact that it culminates with a battle NOT between "white blues" and "black blues," but between two white bluesmen, both of whom are in productive alliances with older black men--and, in the case of Jack Butler, in an alliance with a younger black woman as well, the slinky dancer who cavorts around him onstage during the battle sequence.
The film was written and produced during the period when Stevie Ray Vaughan was becoming hugely popular among white audiences--a period that was arguably a second great white blues awakening, following the huge popularity of blues among white audiences between 1965 and 1970 or so. The film is a white fantasy that purifies white blues, in a sense, by endorsing one version of white blues--the Willie Brown-sponsored, Willie-Brown certified, Willie-Brown-rescuing "real" blues played by Ralph Macchio--and rejecting another version, the degraded, theatricalized, rocked-out, sold-out Jack Butler/Steve Vai version. What emerges after the battle scene (a scene won by Macchio, it should be noted, when he throws "white music," Paganini, into the mix) is a battle-tested, morally purified white/interracial blues. Lightnin' Boy, great white hope, will succeed the southern black blues father, Willie Brown, and keep the blues alive.
Jack Butler is a scapegoat for the anxieties of an increasingly whitened mid-1980's blues culture, one entranced by Stevie Ray but aware that the old guys, the Willie Browns (and Muddy Waters's, d. 1983), were dying off; one also aware that the big money was being made by the white guys. Jack Butler has sold his soul to the devil, but his success, such as it is at the moment Macchio encounters him, has been too easy; he hasn't taken the deep blues pilgrimage that it is the whole point of CROSSROADS to dramatize. Once Macchio has taken that journey and been mentored by Willie, once he demonstrates improvisatory genius in the battle scene, drawing on his own deepest gifts (he's got a gift for the classical stuff), he's the annointed successor.
And so CROSSROADS makes white blues audiences feel good about themselves. They like the real stuff--the stuff that Macchio and Willie Brown play. Whites aren't degrading the music as they embrace it, the film insists, or at least some of them aren't degrading it the way that Jack Butler does but ALSO the way that black intellectuals in the 1960s insisted that white folks degraded it.
White blues is valid: that's the whole point of the film. Blues is transmissible culture; it can cross the color line with its soul intact. The blues endorsed by CROSSROADS is interracial, from the standpoint that it represents, at best, the fruit of an interracial alliance and mentoring process. But ultimately that process produces a white blues inheritor, not a black blues inheritor.
That's the whole point of CROSSROADS: there are no young black men around who give a shit about Willie Brown. Only the Long Island white boy.
It's an interesting film. Some of us like to talk about films and figure out what makes them tick. Some don't. That's fine with me. I'd prefer, though, that the people who just want to watch them and don't particularly want to think about them not insult those of us who like to think and talk about them.
Last Edited by kudzurunner on May 14, 2013 10:00 AM
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