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Article: Robert Johnson: the Complete Recordings.
- Article from:
- The Nation
- Article date:
- October 8, 1990
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1990 The Nation Company L.P. 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
When Robert Johnson recorded "Phonograph Blues" in November 1936, it was one of the first blues references to the technology. Recording hadn't yet transformed the blues from a hodge-podge of widely variant regional styles into a more homogeneous approach that, by the 1960s, had become virtually generic. Although an essential part of his myth (and life) was rambling, Johnson's own blues were shaped by more than just his actual travels, during which he picked up different regional styles--the minor-key broodings of Skip James, the slashing Texas call-and-response vocals-plus-guitar, the ragtimey Piedmont jaunts and the hard-core "deep" delta blues ...