Help: robert johnson biography

Subject: robert johnson biography
From: ta2
Date: 01 Jan 02 - 08:48 AM

what was the name of the hotel in san antonio where he made the recordings.........is it still there ? what was the name of the owner of the 3 forks juke joint in greenwood where he was poisoned ? is it still there ? where is the warehouse in dallas where he made the second recordings ?.is it still there ? anyone seen his gravestone ?........i feel a pilgrimage coming on..........any of the places where he played still open ? anyone still alive who actually saw him play ?

Subject: RE: Help: robert johnson biography
From: Rolfyboy6
Date: 01 Jan 02 - 10:38 AM

Gravestones: Three sites claimed and a big controversy. Google: Robert Johnson's grave The person alive who knew Robert Johnson: Robert Lockwood Jr. Robert Lockwood Jr. Lockwood is EXTREMELY tired of talking about it, especially to worshipful RJ fans who don't realize that Lockwood is a blues 'heavyweight' in his own right(original King Biscuit Boy, first electric guitar in the delta, idol of teen-aged B.B. King, leader of Cleveland Blues scene, etc., etc, etc.). A 'must read': Robert Palmer's "Deep Blues."

As for the pigrimage: Chesborogh's "Blues Traveling: the Holy Sites of Delta Blues" Chesborough 1 Chesborough 2

But first, you need to go to Junior'sJunior's Juke Joint Attitude:TBH: The Blues Comes To The BBC

Subject: RE: Help: robert johnson biography
From: GUEST,truckerdave
Date: 01 Jan 02 - 11:46 AM

I don't want to "bust your bubble", but i live in Mississippi. For the last 10 years or so i've asked every older black person i've had a chance to talk to if they ever saw Robert Johnson play. None had ever even heard of him. I did find a white guy who said his father played with Son House one time! He was mostly forgotten for 50 years here until the CD box set came out. As for the grave i saw an article in the paper last year that said some old lady remembered him being buried and showed his son where it was cause there was a big lawsuit over the royalties. It wasn't even in the same cemetery as they thought. None of the places he played are still there as far as i know.

Subject: RE: Help: robert johnson biography
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 01 Jan 02 - 11:56 AM

Rolfyboy, that "Junior's Juke joint" link is amazing. Thank you.

Rick

Subject: RE: Help: robert johnson biography
From: Rolfyboy6
Date: 01 Jan 02 - 01:06 PM

Woops, got that Robert Lockwood link wrong. Here's Robert Lockwood Jr

Here's Blue Flame's short bioBlue Flame Cafe: Robert Lockwood Jr.

Truckerdave is correct. The blues in Mississippi has moved on and RJ was never well known. He was a drifter and only "Terraplane" sold very well. He wasn't famous until the folkie revival and the release of the first RJ album. If you do go there's way more than RJ. Go leave an old mouth harp on Sonny Boy's gravestone. Hear the blues as they are today in the jukes. And there's the Hill Country too.

Subject: RE: Help: robert johnson biography
From: Windy City Slim
Date: 20 May 03 - 09:54 AM

Sorry to come in so late on this, but two hotels, the Gunter and the Blue Bonnet, have been identified as sites of RJ's initial sessions (see article "Robert Johnson: The San Antonio Legacy" in Juke Blues, Spring 1988). The Gunter Hotel is the most frequently mentioned site.

The "three forks juke" no longer exists. It was wiped out by a storm in the 1940s. When it was still a going concern, the place was known as Shaeffer's Store. You can find more information at Steve LaVere's little "blues museum" in Greenwood. (There used to be a second "Three Forks Store," twelve or thirteen miles south of Greenwood, identified on some European websites as the scene of RJ's last gig. That information is erroneous. And anyway, the place was torn down a couple of years ago.)

There are three RJ burial sites. The most likely one is a mile or two north of Greenwood. Again, see LaVere's museum.

More info is available in the text and footnotes of a new book, "Robert Johnson: Lost and Found."

Subject: RE: Help: robert johnson biography
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 20 May 03 - 01:08 PM

Full reference to the book mentioned by Windy City Slim is given in thread 59829, Folklore, Robert Johnson: Johnson

Brief information and interpretation of "his anguished, tormented spirit" appear in "Screening the Blues, 1968, Paul Oliver, reprinted in paperback by Da Capo.

Subject: RE: Help: robert johnson biography
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 20 May 03 - 01:21 PM

A historical marker was installed in the Sheraton-Gunter Hotel in San Antonio by the San Antonio Blues Society. Website: San Antonio Blues

Subject: RE: Help: robert johnson biography
From: r2d2
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 09:24 AM

DID Robert Johnson go electric in his latter years? Anecdotal claims have been made to this effect, but what's really the case? Repondez s'il vous plait.

Subject: RE: Help: robert johnson biography
From: Folk Form # 1
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 09:28 AM

Am I the only one who thinks that Johnson is a tad over-rated? Mind you, I neither like acoustic slide guitar nor his high pitch voice he use to affect.

Subject: RE: Help: robert johnson biography
From: Roger in Baltimore
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 09:56 AM

Mr. Egg,

No body has to like Robert Johnson. However, his work was important. In many ways, Johnson was a synthesizer of the various blues genre of his time and was the forerunner of modern blues styles. He is not the only blues player in the Delta, but certainly created a new style by combining older styles.

Roger in Baltimore

Subject: RE: Help: robert johnson biography
From: GUEST,Hootenanny
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 10:39 AM

In answer to your question very, very highly unlikely. Where are you obtaining your anecdotal evidence?

Hoot

Subject: RE: Help: robert johnson biography
From: PoppaGator
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 11:33 AM

Robert Johnson may not even have known that such a thing as an electric guitar existed.

I know that jazz great Charley Christian was the earliest exponent of the electric instrument, but I'm not sure of the date he first recorded with it. His work may have become public before Robert Johnson's death.

In any event, if electric guitars were available at all in Johnson's (brief) lifetime, they were certainly still very rare, and I doubt that any were sold to poor folks in the rural south.

Subject: RE: Help: robert johnson biography
From: Leadbelly
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 12:05 PM

Just found this article, PoppaGator. It's from www.thedeltablues.wordpress.com

"Yes. There are blues researchers and history buffs that are making the claim that Robert Johnson was playing an electric guitar through an amplifier prior to his death. Since Robert Johnson fell ill and died in 1938, is is fairly easy to pin down the type of equipment he was most likely to play.

According to new evidence, Johnson most likely played a Gibson ES-150 (released 1936). These electric guitars were becoming popular and readily available in the delta, as it was a guitar designed for big band play which was popular music in New Orleans at the time. If Johnson did not have an ES-150, he most certainly played a Rickenbacker Electro Spanish (released 1935). The type of amp he used is still under speculation.

Also, just to be clear, there are no recordings of Johnson playing an electric. Even if there were, it is highly unlikely you would have heard any kind of face melting solo - the guitar solo wasn't even invented until Charlie Christian cooked one up in 1939 while playing with Benny Goodman's band. In the days of Robert Johnson, amplified instruments and electric guitars were used to achieve higher volumes for crowded juke joints, parties, and the like, and not for solos, or distortion effects.

According to some "living legends" of the Delta, Johnson was indeed playing an electric guitar about 6 months before his death. Some of these legends insist he played a couple of gigs using the electric, while others claim he only practiced with the electric (learning its limitations, and expanding his musical prowess) but still performed with the acoustic. Either way, it is very likely Robert Johnson was playing the electric guitar.

So where is the proof? No one will ever know for sure. But as blues researchers continue to dig deeper, it is likely more evidence will come forth supporting or disproving this claim.   Knowing that Johnson's songs so easily translated to the electric guitar by later artists (just think Crossroads by Clapton), it is possible to imagine he would have been fond of experimenting with an electric.

Of course, we will never know for sure."