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Article: Blues beyond time.(famous songs of Robert Johnson)
- Article from:
- Interview
- Article date:
- March 1, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 Brant Publications, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Robert Johnson got a few minutes in Phoenix, a 1997 cops-as-robbers bloodbath. In the Arizona bar she runs, Anjelica Huston leans over a jukebox, punching up Johnson's "Terraplane Blues," named for a '30s machine and a concatenation of woman-as-automobile metaphors that makes Prince's "Little Red Corvette" sound chaste. Cop Ray Liotta walks in, catches the tune: "My grandfather used to have one of those," he says. "Good car." "It's not about a car," Huston says mordantly. So they banter back and forth, tossing lines from the song at each other like Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall running their horse race double entendres in The Big Sleep. It's as if familiarity with ...