Why does Blues singer Robert Johnson get so much respect?

Question

Ive always heard about Robert Johnson's influence on many rock legends like Led Zeppelin & Eric Lapton. I've recently listened to all 42 songs by Johnson and don't see why he is so great. The songs definitely have style and atmosphere but I don't understand what the big deal is. Please fill me in! Thanks

Answer 1

Robert Johnson is a tough thing for your average led zeppelin fan to try and comprehend.

I can't explain to you why i hold robert johnson in such high regard. Maybe its the way he could make one guitar sound like two. Maybe its his voice. Maybe its the way he picks and chooses when to follow the rules and when not to (i'm talking about throwing extra bars into the 12 bar blues like he did so often). When i first heard robert johnson, i felt a lot like you did. Didn't seem like a big deal.

But now i consider them to be some of the most powerful recordings i have ever heard. In his songs, i hear him playing bass and rhythm and lead all at once, and while singing. As a blues guitar player myself, trust me when i say, its much much harder to do than he makes it sound. There was no multi-tracking in 1936, you know? He was doing everything you hear on that recording, at one time, in real time. I find it to be increasingly impressive every time i listen.

Give him a few more chances. If you really like the blues, it will grow on you. He is absolutely one of my favorite artists of all time. I find myself listening to that 'king of the delta blues singers' album more and more. i can't just listen to one song, i have to hear more. it sets a mood like nothing else.

By the way, a couple of my personal favorites are 32-20 blues and last fair deal gone down. and there are a couple tracks of his that are much less impressive, but i see that you've listened to all of the tracks, so i don't think that is the reason for your dissapointment with robert johnson

Answer 2

heres something about him
Robert Johnson's most famous photograph, one of two in known existence.
Born May 8, 1911
Hazlehurst, Mississippi, USA
Died August 16, 1938 (age 27)
Greenwood, Mississippi, USA
Genre(s) Blues
Notable guitars Gibson L-1
Years active 1936 - 1938
Official site www.deltahaze.com/johnson
Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911 – August 16, 1938) is among the most famous Delta Blues musicians. He is an inductee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Considered by some to be the "Grandfather of Rock-and-Roll," his vocal phrasing, original songs, and guitar style influenced a range of musicians, including Led Zeppelin, The Allman Brothers Band, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, and Eric Clapton, who called Johnson "the most important blues musician who ever lived."[1]

Of all the great blues musicians, Johnson was probably the most obscure. All that is known of him for certain is that he recorded 29 songs; he died young; and he was considered one of the greatest bluesmen of the Mississippi Delta.

There are five significant dates in Johnson's life: Monday, Thursday and Friday, November 23, 26, and 27, 1936; he was in San Antonio, Texas, at a recording session. Seven months later, on Saturday and Sunday, June 19–20, 1937, he was in Dallas at another session. Everything else about his life is an attempt at reconstruction. Director Martin Scorsese says in his foreword to Alan Greenberg's filmscript Love In Vain: A Vision of Robert Johnson, "The thing about Robert Johnson was that he only existed on his records. He was pure legend

Answer 3

no longer arguing merely now about the commonplaces which pretend to music the blues from the beginning of mankind, characteristic them in spite of "roots", or about the confusion between a lyrical and musical variety and a ideas set, one element is for certain : Robert Johnson become hardly born even as the blues craze closed the ragtime era, a even as contained in the early 1910's. and that i do no longer advise attainable's jazz-like compos, or perhaps the distinct "blues queens" like Bessie Smith or Ma Rainey who began recording a fantastic decade earlier Johnson, yet besides rankings of commercially recorded, u . s .-born blues singers, guitarists, harmonica gamers, and bands whose names will be present day in any good historic previous of pre-warfare blues. If the verb "invent" become an allusion to the puzzling subtitle of Elijah Wald's Escaping the Delta, i visit assure you that this isn't something yet a provocative, and actually ironical connection with the "invention" of the blues no longer via Johnson, yet via modern-day Whites - "invention" contained in the unique sense of "discovery", and also the making of a miserabilist legend unrelated to the way blues and blues musicians were perceived via African-people on the time. I ensue to carry close Elijah, we regularly times change perspectives via mail and easily met in Paris 2 years in the past. P.S. and Miles is, of route, Miles Davis - yet his subjective attitude of the blues is merely as agnostic of the agricultural custom because the bulls*** bought via jazz critics for 0.5 a century ;)

Answer 4

His bass line and the hooks he played in the upper register were radical at the time. His records are played too fast, try playing them at a slower speed and they sound better and you'll appreciate them more.

Answer 5

I big part of it probably has to do with the story about him making a deal with the devil that gave him his musical gifts. Nothing like a good legend involving Lucifer to boost your cred.