Ry Cooder was born in 1947 which was, as noted above, the year that Blind Willie Johnson died. Their lives overlapped by a couple of months which probably rules out any possibility of reincarnation.

In 1977 when NASA was launching Voyager to the outer planets of the solar system and beyond it included music recordings. Among those recordings was Johnson's "Dark Was The Night", recorded in'27, fifty years previously. This is the starting point of Wim Wender's film "The Soul of a Man". (Wender also made "The Buena Vista Social Club" mentioned earlier.) This film contains some startling fake archive footage of Blind Willie Johnson singing and playing. I use the word "fake", although it sounds derogatory and pejorative, because I can't think of a better one. The film is a great piece of work.

Is this what this thread is about?