Robert Johnson: Lost and Found (Music in American Life)

Robert Johnson: Lost and Found (Music in American Life)
by Barry Lee Pearson, Bill McCulloch

Robert Johnson: Lost and Found (Music in American Life)
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Book Summary Information

Author: Barry Lee Pearson, Bill McCulloch
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-03-18
ISBN: 0252075285
Number of pages: 176
Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Book Reviews of Robert Johnson: Lost and Found (Music in American Life)

Book Review: Authors to debunk "Clapton is God" myth in next book
Summary: 4 Stars


It never occurred to me that there were people who actually believed that Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads. I had always thought the great bluesman's story to be a legend along the lines of Paul Bunyan and Babe Ruth's pointed shot. When I'd read Pete Welding, Samuel Charters, Greil Marcus, and Robert Palmer on Johnson, I assumed they were re-telling a fairy tale, or perhaps--at a stretch--writing metaphorically. For me, the legend was finally put to rest with the surfacing of the photographs of Johnson. (Oh, he's just a regular guy!) The rather kooky premise of this book by Pearson and McCulloch is that the writers/critics mentioned above (and others) were, in effect, part of a vast white-wing conspiracy to promote the devil myth. The smarmy viciousness of the author's attacks on these conspirators is completely unnecessary, sort of like beating a dead hellhound. That being said, this is about as good an overview of the Robert Johnson legend as you're ever gonna find.

Summary of Robert Johnson: Lost and Found (Music in American Life)

With just forty-one recordings to his credit, Robert Johnson (1911-38) is a giant in the history of blues music. Johnson's vast influence on twentieth-century American music, combined with his mysterious death at the age of twenty-seven, has allowed speculation and myths to obscure the facts of his life. The most famous of these legends depicts a young Johnson meeting the Devil at a dusty Mississippi crossroads at midnight and selling his soul in exchange for prodigious guitar skills.

In this volume, Barry Lee Pearson and Bill McCulloch examine the full range of writings about Johnson and sift fact from fiction. They compare conflicting accounts of Johnson's life, weighing them against interviews with blues musicians and others who knew the man. Through their extensive research Pearson and McCulloch uncover a life every bit as compelling as the fabrications and exaggerations that have sprung up around it. In examining Johnson's life and music, and the ways in which both have been reinvented and interpreted by other artists, critics, and fans, Robert Johnson: Lost and Found charts the broader cultural forces that have mediated the expression of African American artistic traditions.

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