Blind Willie Johnson

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Blind Willie Johnson was an American gospel blues singer and guitarist, born on 25 January 1897 in Pendleton, Texas, and died on 18 September 1945. His father, a sharecropper, gave him his first instrument at the age of five, a guitar made from a cigar box. He was not born blind. According to most biographers he lost his sight at seven when his stepmother splashed him with lye water, a story told by his widow Angeline Johnson. He wanted to become a Baptist minister and played religious songs on street corners, with a tin cup attached to his guitar to collect money.

Music and breakthrough

He made his best-known recordings between 1927 and 1930, thirty songs in five sessions. These include Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground, a hymn without words in which his slide guitar plays the leading part. He also recorded Jesus Make Up My Dying Bed, It's Nobody's Fault but Mine and John the Revelator. His records sold well, but as a street musician and preacher he had little money. Little about his life was recorded, and historians such as Samuel Charters later worked out part of it.

Influence

In the 1960s there was renewed interest in him, through his inclusion in Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music and through Reverend Gary Davis. Both are regarded as the most important players of holy blues, religious lyrics in blues style. Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground was given a place on the golden records of the Voyager space probes that NASA launched in 1977. Johnson combined a heavy chest voice, slide guitar and inventions of his own, and influenced generations of musicians.

Listening

Discography

Studio albums

• 2021The Classic Years - 1927-1931

In School of Rock

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