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''In the words, you know, of the immortal Robert Johnson,
'The stuff we got will bust your brains out.'''
-from BOB DYLAN's 1998 Grammy Acceptance Speech

NEWS & NOTES...
Updated September 2004

• IMPORTANT ANNOUNCMENT !!!! CAN'T YOU HEAR THE WIND HOWL?: New Distributor
  The DVD of Can't You Hear The Wind Howl? is now being distributed by Sony Music under the title
  THE LIFE & MUSIC OF ROBERT JOHNSON: Can't You Hear The Wind Howl? and can be
  purchased on-line on our WHERE TO BUY page.
  
  
• EXCLUSIVE NEWS!!!! ERIC CLAPTON RECORDS AT 508 PARK AVENUE
  On Saturday, June 5, 2004, while Eric Clapton was in Dallas for his CROSSROADS GUITAR FESTIVAL, featuring many guitar legends, he went down to 508 Park Avenue, the same building at which Robert Johnson recorded in 1937. Before the cameras of a Japanese film crew, Clapton sat on the third floor, acoustic guitar in hand, channeling Johnson, he sang Hellhound On My Trail and Terraplane Blues. Hellhound is an incredible vocal performance -- amazingly Clapton reaches the same tonality as Johnson. But, even as great as he is, he still found Johnson's guitar work difficult to copy. This very special performance is to be released in the fall as a 'special feature' on the upcoming ERIC CLAPTON & FRIENDS, Cotton Bowl Stadium Concert (6/6/04) DVD. Some of the greats that appeared with Clapton during the three day festival include: Robert Jr. Lockwood, Honeyboy Edwards, Bo Diddley, B.B. King, Sonny Curtis, James Burton, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Johnny Lang, J.J. Cale, Buddy Guy, Robert Cray, Jimmie Vaughn, Steve Vai, Jeff Beck, Carlos Santana, James Taylor, Vince Gill, Pat Metheny, Joe Walsh and ZZ Top.
  
  
• ME & MR. JOHNSON: Eric Clapton Honors Robert Johson on New CD
  Eric Clapton pays tribute to Robert Johnson on his new CD "Me And Mr. Johnson," on Duck/Reprise Records, released March 30th, 2004. "It is a remarkable thing to have been driven and influenced all of my life by the work of one man," Clapton says. "And even though I accept that it has always been the keystone of my musical foundation, I still would not regard it as an obsession; instead, I prefer to think of it as a landmark that I navigate by, whenever I feel myself going adrift. I am talking, of course, about the work of Robert Johnson.
  Now, after all these years, his music is like my oldest friend, always in the back of my head, and on the horizon. It is the finest music I have ever heard. I have always trusted its purity, and I always will."
  
  
  The fine cover illustration is by Peter Blake and includes both published photographs of Robert Johnson -- the Studio Portrait / Hooks Bros., Memphis c. 1935 and the Photo Booth self-portrait, early 1930s. The CD features Clapton's versions of 14 Johnson songs, including "When You Got A Good Friend," "Little Queen Of Spades," "They're Red Hot," "Me And The Devil Blues," "Traveling Riverside Blues," "Last Fair Deal Gone Down," "Stop Breakin' Down Blues," "Milkcow's Calf Blues," "Kindhearted Woman Blues," "Come On In My Kitchen," "If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day," "Love In Vain," "32-20 Blues" and "Hellhound On My Trail." With studio musicians Andy Fairweather Low (guitar), Doyle Bramhall II (guitar), Billy Preston (keyboards), Jerry Portnoy (harmonica), Nathan East (bass) and Steve Gadd (drums).
  
  
  
  
  
• JOHNSON ENTERS LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
  The 50 entries into the second annual Library of Congress' National Recording Registry have been selected and along with Johnny Cash's legendary concert album At Folsom Prison and the Beatles classic Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band are the complete recordings of Robert Johnson. The inductees are selected by Librarian of Congress James H. Billington for being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant," and must be at least ten-years old.
  
  
• ROBERT JOHNSON, MYTHMAKING & CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN CULTURE
  Patricia R. Schroeder's Robert Johnson, Mythmaking and Contemporary American Culture (due from University of Illinois Press in July, 2004), traces the persistence of Johnson's image in the culture at large, from postage stamps to novels, plays and film. Johnson's myth, it suggests, is truly larger than his life.
  "This just adds to the legend of Johnson," said David Evans, a veteran blues researcher. "Like Elvis and Hank Williams and certain other stars, he can be all things to all people."
  
  
• MELLENCAMP SINGS JOHNSON
  On his latest CD, Trouble No More, John Mellencamp does a great version of Robert Johnson's Stones In My Passway. On his rawest album to date, Mellencamp also explores songs associated with Son House, Howlin' Wolf, and Woody Guthrie.
  
  
• PUFFY COMBS TO PLAY ROBERT JOHNSON IN HBO BIO-PIC??????
  According to an April 11, 2003 Hollywood Reporter, Sean "P.Diddy" Combs will star as blues musician Robert Johnson in the HBO Films feature "Love In Vain," which Tim Blake Nelson will helm. Production begins in September in Mississippi. This finally brings the Alan Greenberg script to the screen. Nelson will produce and direct. As far as we know, filming has yet. to begin.
  
  
• JOHNSON SONG VOTED ONE OF THE "SONGS OF THE CENTURY"
  On March 7, 2001, the "Songs of the Century," a list compiled by the Recording Industry of America and the National Endowment for the Arts, was released and Robert Johnson's CROSS ROAD BLUES came in at 342.
  
  
• ROBERT JOHNSON ON VIDEO
  "Six decades after his death, haunted blues legend Robert Johnson lives on in book, music, and video tributes that probe his dark, potent art." Read the complete article by Robert Gordon, pertaining to the various ROBERT JOHNSON VIDEOS available.
  
  
• ROBERT JOHNSON'S SON -- After a long legal battle with other relatives, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled on June 15th that Claud Johnson, a 68-year-old retired gravel truck driver, is the legal son and heir of Robert Johnson. He stands to inherit more than $1.2 million in royalities collected over the years. "All my life I have known that he was my father," said Claud, whose mother, the deceased Virgie Jane Smith Cain, had a one time encounter with Johnson on a country roadside in 1931, resulting in his birth. This event was witnessed by her childhood friend Eula Mae Williams.

photo ©Sweet Home Pictures
Robert Lockwood Jr. (1992)

• Eighty-seven-year old Grammy nominee Robert Lockwood, Jr. won the Acoustic Album of the Year award at the 22nd W.C. Handy Blues Awards. Lockwood is referred to by others and himself as Johnson's stepson even though there was only a few years difference in their ages. Lockwood's mother took up with Johnson for a short period of time. According to Johnny Shines, "Ya see, Robert Jr. was learning under Robert. He'd show Robert Jr., but he wouldn't show nobody else. He'd make Robert Jr. play, and Robert Jr.'s glad of it today!"
  
  

photo ©Sweet Home Pictures
Keb' Mo' at the crossroads

• Keb' Mo' on the filming the 'Crossroad' scene for Can't You hear the Wind Howl?: "The crossroad scene, meeting the devil, was very eerie. I felt like I had been to the crossroads already. Every single person, at some point in their life, has to go to the crossroads. Maybe not to meet the devil, but to stand up and acknowledge who they are. That scene reenacted the commitment I made to be a musician, through hell or high water, and accept whatever consequences came with it."
  
  
• Robert Johnson was a slight-built man with small hands and long fingers. He had a 'sleepy' eye caused by a childhood disease. His body size resembled that of Prince, who at one time considered playing Robert Johnson in Alan Greenburg's 1983 screenplay Love In Vain. Greenburg's screenplay, his personal vision of Johnson, has yet to be produced, but it has been published -- one of the few screenplays ever published without being produced.
  
  
• Though we know Robert Johnson through his 29 original songs, he probably didn't play much of his original material in public, except for Terraplane Blues. According to Johnny Shines, they mostly played pop songs, like Bing Crosby's, or even Irish songs. These "walking jukeboxes" played anything the public wanted -- and paid -- to hear.

photo ©Sweet Home Pictures
Icon drawn by famed-cartoonist Robert Crumb, and placed on the
Mt. Zion Memorial marker. It was soon stolen by some zealous fan.
To find some wonderful Robert Crumb prints and originals check out
Love of Music Art at www.artlovemusic.com

• WHERE IS ROBERT JOHNSON BURIED?
  According to Robert Johnson's death certificate, he died on August 16 and was buried on August 17, 1938. Over the years, there's been a lot of speculation and dispute about where Robert Johnson was actually buried.
  

photo ©Sweet Home Pictures

• GRAVE SITE #1 -- The first is north of Morgan City, at Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church off Highway 7. According to Johnson's death certificate, he's buried in "Zion Church" and speculation was that this was the Mt. Zion graveyard. A Robert Johnson Memorial marker was funded primarily by Sony Music shortly after the unexpected success of the 1990 CD box set reissue. This marker is inscribed with the titles of all his songs. The various Johnson picture icons on the memorial, one by cartoonist Robert Crumb, were often stolen by tourists, until an engraving of Johnson's photo booth self-portrait was permanently set into stone.
  

photo ©Sweet Home Pictures

• GRAVE SITE #2 -- The second is at Payne Chapel Missionary Baptist Church in Quito, Mississippi, about 2 miles north of gravesite #1 and about 5 miles south of Itta Bena, off of Highway 7. In 1991 a highly questionable account appeared by a local woman named Queen Elizabeth. Believing her story to be true, an Atlanta rock band named "The Tombstones" placed a stone marker there.
  
  The questions continued until recently when new, more substantial evidence was brought to light.
  
  
• GRAVE SITE #3 -- Noted historian and record producer Stephen C. LaVere, who has spent over 30 years researching Johnson's life, indicates that Johnson's actual burial site is at the Little Zion Missionary Baptist Church two miles north of Greenwood, Mississippi. Little Zion was also suggested by Greenwood locals as the correct site for an indigent burial in 1938 and this was confirmed by 86-year-old Rosie Eskridge, whose husband, Tom Eskridge reportedly dug Johnson's grave. Mrs. Eskridge recalls that a famous bluesman in very poor physical condition was brought to the place [The Star of the West plantation owned by Luther Wade] late one Saturday night and that he didn't live a week. When the hands told Wade that a man was dead, Wade ordered him buried and asked Tom Eskridge to dig the grave. Tom told Rosie to bring him some water up to the graveyard around noon. When she got there a deep grave was dug and she saw the famous man buried. Mrs. Eskridge indicated about where she remembered the grave was.
  

photo © 2002 Richard A. Oakes. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission

• In January 2002 LaVere placed a memorial marker upon this site.
  
  (Many thanks to Steve LaVere for the above information. We look forward to his forthcoming book on Johnson's life.)
  

• WHERE ARE THE CROSSROADS?
  In all blues folklore, surely The Crossroads is the number one mythical site sought out by fans -- as if it really exists -- a place to sell one's soul to the devil. Where are the Crossroads? Many say it is the intersection of Highway 49 and Highway 61 in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Others say it is in Tunica. The crossroads in the 1986 feature film Crossroads was filmed in Beulah, Mississippi, south of Rosedale. But in truth it could be anywhere, in anytown. According to some accounts, Robert Johnson wrote his Cross Road Blues on the steps of the courthouse in downtown Fort Worth, Texas, before heading out to San Antonio to record it.
  
  
• Over a period of 30 years, the first and second volumes of the Columbia LP album King of the Delta Blues Singers sold a mere 15,000.
  
  
• Columbia's 1990 CD Box Set reissue of Robert Johnson's complete recordings reached number 80 on the Billboard Pop charts, won a Grammy, and has since gone platinum, selling nearly 2 million copies worldwide.
  
  
• There are only two photos of Robert Johnson known to exist, the so-called Dimes Store photo and Studio Portrait.

© Delta Haze Corporation. Used with permission.

• The small Photo Booth photo is no larger than a commemorative postage stamp. Young Johnson carefully posed for his own portrait, placing his cigarette artfully dangling from his lips. When it was asked of Johnny Shines what chord Johnson was making, he replied it isn't really a chord, as far as he could tell, but just Robert showing off.
  
  (NOTE: We have been informed by a fan that "the chord he's playing is the equivalent of 'A' but he's capoed up to f so it would be 'B.' Johnson would play the baseline with his thumb and forefinger while playing intricate lead lines with other fingers and with his left hand's pinky." Thanks for the info.)

© Delta Haze Corporation. Used with permission.

• The Studio Portrait, taken in Memphis by the Hooks Bothers and kept by Johnson's half-sister Carrie Spencer in her Bible. The dark three-piece suit Johnson wears really belonged to his nephew Louis, Carrie's son. Louis was about to go into the Navy and was having his picture taken in his uniform. He asked his favorite uncle Robert to pose with him. According to Carrie, "Louis loved his Uncle Robert and Robert loved Louis's suit." There is a third photo known to exist. It was taken at the same time as the Studio Portrait -- it shows Johnson posing in his new suit along with his nephew Louis in his Navy uniform..
  
  
• These two photos were discovered by researcher and music historian Stephen C. LaVere in 1973 in the possession of Johnson's half-sister Carrie.
  
  
• It wasn't until February 1986 that the world finally saw what Robert Johnson looked like when the "photo booth" photo was first published in Rolling Stone Magazine's article announcing his induction into the newly formed Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame.

United States Postage Stamp issued September 17, 1994

• WHERE'S THE CIGARETTE?
  In September of 1994 when the United States Postal Department issued its commemorative stamp of Johnson, in a bold move of censorship, they removed the cigarette from his mouth. Dr. Charles Snyder, CEO of Central Virginia Educational Telecommunications Corp., remarked, "This is the stuff of great political farce -- at once tragic and ludicrous. By altering the photo, the Postal Service has placed itself in the distinguished company of Stalin and Mao."
  
  
• Robert Johnson's traveling companion, blues legend Johnny Shines claimed there was a photo taken of himself and Johnson by a woman named Johnnie Mae Crowder in Hughes, Arkansas, in 1937 and later published in a local newspaper. However, the photo has never surfaced.
  
  
• Don Law, an Englishman working for the American Record Corporation, later Columbia Records, was the first and only person to record Robert Johnson. It seems understandable that Johnson's music also caught the ear of contemporary Brits such as Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin. In the early 1960's, Law lured Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins to Columbia from Sun Records.

photo ©Sweet Home Pictures
The long-vacant 508 Park Avenue as it looked in the early 1990's.

• The only known recordings of Robert Johnson were cut in Dallas, and San Antonio, Texas. The downtown Dallas building is located on 508 Park Avenue, across from a 'soup kitchen.' This recording session took place in the hot Texas summer. It was so hot that some of the musicians and technicians recorded in their underwear. Local Dallas blues fans are hoping to erect a marker on this historical music landmark.
  
  
• The 508 Park Avenue building was first used as a Warner Bros. nitrate film storage facility. Since nitrate-based film was combustible and could explode, the building was built of solid marble, which helped with the acoustics when it was later owned by Brunswick records.
  
  
• The American Record Corporation probably paid Robert Johnson $10 -$15 each for the 29 songs and alternates that he recorded, so he probably made about $300 off his sessions with no royalties.
  
  
• Recently a collector paid over $9,000 dollars for an original Vocalion 78 recording of "Hellhound On My Trail."
  
  
• The reason for recording alternate takes, which were note-for-note similar to the first take, was the common practice of making a safety recording in case something happened to the master. It started when wax masters were used, because when they were shipped north for manufacture, one master would oftentimes melt on the way.
  
  
• Nineteen of Robert Johnson's original Vocalion recordings are used in the soundtrack of Can't You Hear The Wind Howl?
  
  
• Though Terraplane Blues was Robert Johnson's biggest hit when he was alive, selling 5,000 copies in the South, he never owned or drove an automobile, but somehow he was able to travel the around the country fluidly from the Delta, up the Mississipi to Chicago, and to Canada and New York City and back many times.

• TERRAPLANING BLUES
  The six-cylinder Terraplane was a product of Hudson Motor Car Co. It had a reputation for being sturdy, lightweight and fast. So that no one missed the "plane" connection, the first model built was given to aviation pioneer Orville Wright. Its advertising jingle became: "In the air it's aeroplaning, on the sea it's aquaplaning, but on the land it's Terraplaning." The Terraplane, one of the fastest American cars of the 30's, was gone after only seven years. It established many speed records, and like the Ford V-8, had been a favourite with bank robbers.
  
  
• The poison that did in Robert Johnson was probably a distillation of moth balls into a clear, odorless liquid that can cause extreme pain, but is not fatal if purged from the body within 24 hours. At that time, it was a common practice of bartenders to use it to rid themselves of rowdy troublemakers, unwanted customers or pesky musicians. It causes an extremely painful death by eating its way through the stomach lining. But as Honeyboy Edwards remarks, "there is no blood to stand for then"-- a bloodless and hard-to-trace crime.
  
  
• SEE YOU AT THE CROSSROADS
  Robert Johnson died on August 16th -- on the same day Elvis Presley died. He was 27-years-old -- the same age as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain and Jim Morrison when they died.
  
  
• In 1986 Robert Johnson was honored in the first group of five "Forefathers" inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame along with "The Singing Brakeman" Jimmie Rodgers, Sun Record producer Sam Phillips, boogie-woogie pianist Jimmy Yancey and Cleveland DJ Alan Freed.
  

photo ©Sweet Home Pictures
Willie Mae (Holmes) Powell (September 1990)

• During the filming of Can't You Hear The Wind Howl? the crew traveled many miles throughout the Delta region interviewing Johnson's closest friends and associates, some of them, like Willie Mae Powell (for whom Robert wrote Love In Vain) for the first very first time. During her October 1990 interview, Willie Mae Powell recited the lyrics to Johnson's Stones In My Passway accurately though she hadn't heard the song since Robert played it on her back porch over 50 years before.

photos ©Sweet Home Pictures
BLUES LEGENDS: The late Johnny Shines (left) David 'Honeyboy' Edwards (right)

• The Johnny Shines, Honeyboy Edwards, Willie Mae Powell, John Hammond and Willie Mason interviews in Can't You Hear The Wind Howl? were filmed in and around Helena, Arkansas in October 1990 - before the interviews in the Sony documentary Searching For Robert Johnson were conducted.
  
  
• 3 NAILS & 3 STRANDS OF WIRE
  "He started playin' (guitar) when he about 8 or 9 years old. He had 3 nails and 3 strands of wire nailed up on the east side of his house and put him a bottle in there to keep the strings from layin' flat, to tighten 'em like for tunin', and that's what he started with. And that's just how he started playin' music on that bottle and 3 strands of wire," recalled Wink Clark, boyhood friend of Robert Johnson, in Can't You Hear The Wind Howl?
  
• WHAT GUITAR DID HE PLAY?
  Robert Johnson played more than one guitar during his short life. According to Johnny Shines, he primarily favored the Kalamazoo, a budget line Gibson, and the Stella which sold for about $12. Considering these inexpensive instruments, the sound Johnson created is even more amazing.
  
  In the "Dime Store" photo, Johnson is holding a 14-fret flattop Kalamazoo with a capo across the second fret. It was this guitar he probably used during his recording sessions. In the "Studio Portrait," Johnson holds a Gibson L-1.
  
  
• JOHNNY SHINES REMEMBERS
  "We were in St. Louis, and we had drink and barrelhoused and boogie woogied around until early in the morning, and Robert was playin' his song Come On In My Kitchen. And when he quit I thought everybody had gone to sleep on us, ya know, and I looked around to see who all was asleep and I found wet faces, nothing but wet faces, people sittin' there crying. It was the first time I'd had ever heard the song."
  

• During the week of September 20-27, 1998, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame honored Robert Johnson in their Third Annual American Masters series. It was attended by scholars, historians, and fans from all over the country. Can't You Hear the Wind Howl? was shown in a special presentation at this event.
  
  
• JOHNSON ON FILM -- MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
  Also shown at the Hall Of Fame was rare16mm film footage supposedly of Robert Johnson found by a man called Tater Red of Memphis. This footage has gotten a lot of notoriety over the past years and was up for sale at a high price. However it was shot in front of a movie theater that was showing the motion picture Blues In The Night and all anyone had to do was consult Leonard Maltin's Movie & Video Guide to find out the film wasn't released until 1941 - three years after Johnson's death. Nice footage, but definitely not Robert Johnson.

• OK TRY THIS
  Cover one side of Robert Johnson's face with your hand -- then the other and you will discover two different faces. The left side appears to be of an older, road weary man, while the right is of a younger, cocky one.
  
  
  
  Photos of Robert Johnson © Delta Haze Corporation. Used with permission. All other photos ©Sweet Home Pictures