Everyone and Mr. Johnson

It's a commonplace to say that art history is scattered with figures who received their due only posthumously. For a long time the performing arts were something of an exception -- one either made an impression "live" or was ushered into oblivion -- but with the advent of recording technology, musicians, too, were offered a second shot at fame. The British folk singer Nick Drake, to take a comparatively recent example, died virtually unheard in 1974 and remained the smug secret of the cognoscenti until a Volkswagen ad, of all things, elevated him to mega-cult status nearly three decades later. The early bluesmen hold a special place in this dubious pantheon, with singer upon singer dying in poverty and obscurity, only to have some rock guitarist make a killing long afterward off one of his songs. It's a cliche of the genre, and perhaps no one embodies it better -- sadly for him -- than Robert Johnson.

Since his canonization ca. 1990, Johnson has become a veritable industry. Web sites offer obscure bits of folklore and the chance to buy his two acknowledged portraits. Books and documentaries celebrate his mysterious life, while his 29-song output has been repackaged and re-repackaged to the vast profit of Sony Music (clever, those Japanese). There are Robert Johnson T-shirts and Robert Johnson guitar slides made of cast bronze with his name embossed (which must be hell on the strings), and just recently Gibson released the Robert Johnson L-1 guitar, faithfully reproducing the model he played at roughly 200 times the price. In addition, over the past five years there has emerged what almost qualifies as a mini-genre unto itself: the album of Robert Johnson covers.

The most recent and by far the most famous of these if Eric Clapton's new disk, Me and Mr. Johnson, which brings "the greatest living blues guitarist" together once more with the man he calls "the greatest folk-blues guitarist that ever lived." Clapton has never made any secret of his veneration for Johnson's music, and he certainly can't be accused of jumping late onto the bandwagon. His classic outing with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers in 1966 features, for his first recorded vocal, a cover of Johnson's "Ramblin' on My Mind." And two years before he blew out the Fillmore with Cream's supercharged version of "Cross Road Blues," he and Stevie Winwood recorded a quieter, funkier rendition. (Lest we forget, Cream had also covered Johnson's "From Four Till Late.") Clapton has paid other visits to the Johnson shrine along the way, notably with his memorable acoustic performances of "Walkin' Blues" and "Malted Milk" on Unplugged (1992). But on Me and Mr. Johnson, he finally gives full vent to his admiration, adding 14 more pieces of the canon to his repertoire.

The good news, though this is hardly news, is that the man can still play with the best of them. The riffs might sound a bit familiar, but they're still good riffs, and his timing is excellent. More than this, Clapton is distinguished by his tone. Whether raucous or understated (as in his exquisite fills to George Harrison's "I'd Have You Anytime"), you can nearly always recognize the full, rounded sound with which he imbues his notes. On the current disk, even with the backing of two consummate session guitarists (Andy Fairweather Low and Doyle Bramhall II), it is easy to tell when Slowhand takes the spotlight.

Me and Mr. Johnson begins with a ringing, electricity-soaked descent, leading into a version of "When You Got a Good Friend" that gives Johnson's slightly anemic original a healthy infusion of juice. It’s one of the strongest cuts on the album, a steady twelve-bar shuffle that harks back to the high-wattage instrumentals, like "Snake Drive" and "Tribute to Elmore," that Clapton recorded with Jimmy Page in his Yardbirds days. Other numbers, such as "Little Queen of Spades," with its moody organ washes by Billy Preston, and "Milkcow's Calf Blues," take advantage of their powerhouse backing to apply a heightened layer of atmosphere onto Johnson's spare canvases. And "32-20 Blues," though recast in jump mode, offers an interesting pilgrimage back to Skip James's piano-driven original ("22-20 Blues").

Oddly enough, where Me and Mr. Johnson shows its weaknesses is in Johnson's strongest compositions. Johnson's greatest accomplishment in performance was his ability to use his lone acoustic guitar to the fullest -- not only sounding at times as if there were three of him playing, but also chiming in just the right notes, combined with his well calibrated vocals, to wring the full emotional content out of his songs. Pieces like "Come On in My Kitchen," "Cross Road Blues," "Love in Vain," and "Kindhearted Woman Blues" are classics not only because of the songs themselves, but because Johnson's delivery of them seems to get to the heart of what those songs are. In the crowded field of Delta blues musicians -- and by the mid-1930s, when Johnson recorded, that field was crowded indeed -- he stands out like no other. Although by no means the most proficient blues guitarist or singer of his day, he put a quality into his performances -- a drive, a charisma, a seduction, call it what you will -- that defies comparison with virtually all of his peers. Perhaps the word for it is spirit, taken in its root sense of "animating vapor" or (to drag out an overused term) "soul." It is precisely this spirit that is lacking in Clapton's album, for all its manifest sincerity. And nowhere is this more evident than in the last cut (the placement already speaks volumes), "Hellhound on My Trail."

One of Johnson's most celebrated works, "Hellhound" is the song that launched a thousand obsessions among the predominantly white blues fans of the '60s and '70s. It is arguably the bleakest, most desperate, yet most compelling blues ever recorded. Peter Guralnick, speaking for an entire generation, writes in Searching for Robert Johnson about the "stark terror" produced by the piece, noting that in this instance the lack of alternate version rings entirely appropriate: "It seems impossible to imagine a recording engineer saying, 'Could we have another take of that one, Bob?'" For a long time, this unspoken taboo seemed to extend to cover versions as well. A spectrum of acts, from Led Zeppelin to David Bromberg, covered songs like "Traveling Riverside Blues," "Stop Breaking Down," and "Sweet Home Chicago," but no one seemed to want to touch "Hellhound."

The fact that Clapton now takes it on is to his credit, but his rendition brings to the fore all the unfortunate mythology that has afflicted this work, and Johnson's oeuvre in general, almost since the time of his death. The power of Johnson's original comes from the constant interplay between hard-bent high notes and a dirge-like bass descent, themselves mirrored by the keening sob of the main lyric line and a lower, almost resigned reprise, like an aside to himself, that fully brings home the sense of hopelessness. This is a song about loneliness and panic and having no shelter from the storm -- and not, as some like to think, about some mystical demon-doggy chasing him down Highway 49. Johnson's refusal to keep his voice in the high register -- his constant swing between desperation and defeat -- suggests the full depth of emotions to which one can sink. But Clapton, like many others enthralled by "Hellhound," seems blinded by a superficial, devil-at-his-throat atmosphere, and his version, full of melodramatic vocals and wailing slide lines (the howling wind, you follow?), makes it sound vaguely cartoonish -- George Thorogood dubbing the soundtrack to a Christopher Lee movie.

Don't get me wrong: I'd wager that Clapton has been as genuinely touched by this song as anyone. But for all his sensitivity as a musician, he just doesn't seem to get it. And if I've spent so much time on this one piece, it's because it encapsulates my greatest disappointment with the album as a whole: that for all the talent and enthusiasm on display, something essential is lacking, a sense of depth and conviction. No doubt it's unfair to expect anyone to match Robert Johnson's depth of expression, but at the same time Clapton, by his reputation and his long-professed championship of the music, asks to be held to a higher standard. Me and Mr. Johnson is by no means a bad album. On the contrary, it's a very likable and listenable album. But at the end of the day, it still sounds like a bunch of middle-aged white guys playing someone else's blues.

Clapton wasn't the first to cover "Hellhound," nor, for that matter, to put out a disc of Johnson songs. In 1998, Peter Green (a founding member of Fleetwood Mac) issued The Robert Johnson Songbook with the Nigel Watson Splinter Group, followed in 2000 by Hot Foot Powder, the two together comprising all of Johnson's known work. A compatriot and contemporary of Clapton's, Green is himself a middle-aged white guy, but on Hot Foot he surrounds himself with authentic blues greats like Buddy Guy, Otis Rush, and Howlin' Wolf's longtime sideman Hubert Sumlin, giving the whole enterprise a certain street cred. In contrast to the high-visibility, high-energy versions on Me and Mr. Johnson, Green's comparatively low-key approach conveys an earthiness that seems more in tune with the songs as originally conceived. His singing, while not exactly strong, has a cracked, damaged quality that works well in the context: the man has not had an easy life, and you can hear it.

More to the point, Green does not overplay the material. Most of his versions are built around an acoustic rhythm section -- both Green and Watson play a mean slide -- making them sound as if they could have been taped in '40s or '50s just as easily as today. Even rockers like "Dead Shrimp Blues," which features a driving electric backing by Sumlin, highlights the rhythmic possibilities of Johnson's recording without overwhelming it. Nigel Watson's take on "Preachin' Blues," one of Johnson's most dazzling performances, adds a personal accent but stays true to the core. Their cover of "Hellhound" suffers from some of the same tendency to overdramatize as Clapton's does, yet still manages to keep a fair amount of the original feel. And while it sounds odd to hear Green repeat all of Johnson's spoken asides like Gospel, I have to remind myself that Johnson himself (judging from his alternate takes) had apparently worked many of these out in advance, rehearsing his own spontaneity for later use. Sometimes even Johnson covered Robert Johnson.

Mark Polizzotti

first published on blogcritics.org

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