Blind Willie Johnson

Johnson may be singing about God, but from the graveyard croak of his voice to the beautiful moans he punctuates lines with, it doesn't really sound like there's a whole lot of salvation going on. In fact, God sounds like a pretty bad dude. There is little blues as spare and haunting as that which Johnson recorded way back in the 1930s, and much of it is collected here. "Dark Was the Night (Cold Was the Ground)" is really one of the most mournful pieces of music that exists in American history. Everything else on here is more of the same. Be careful.

If Robert Johnson's career lends credence to the legend that the blues belong to the devil,
Blind Willie Johnson stands as proof to the contrary. One of the greatest of the guitar
evangelists, Blind Willie wrote songs that spoke of divine deeds, scriptures and salvation,
not drunken debauchery, sex and sin. You'd never hear him utter a line like "Hello, Satan, I
believe it's time to go." Yet the heavenly focus of Blind Willie's lyrics never took... More >