Description
Music critic, author, and screenwriter Peter Guarlnick illuminates the life and legend of blues guitarist Robert Johnson in this extended essay.
He was probably the most influential of all bluesman. And yet Robert Johnson remained virtually unknown to a wider audience until the release of his complete recordings in 1990, fifty-two years after his death.
Unquestionably the main influence on Muddy Waters and an entire generation of rock 'n' roll and blues musicians including Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones, Johnson is known for the ferocity and originality of his work, and for the tormented sensibility that lay behind it. Poisoned by a jealous husband at the age of twenty-seven, widely believed to have sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his musical gifts, Robert Johnson has long enjoyed a myth that has at times overshadowed his music.
This brilliant ode to the “King of the Delta Blues” evokes the place and time that gave birth to the man and the myth and gracefully mirrors the world and artistry of Robert Johnson himself.
“I finished the book feeling that, if only for a brief moment, Robert Johnson had stepped out of the mists.”—New York Times Book Review
About the Author
Peter Guralnick is an American music critic, writer on music, and historian of US American popular music, who is also active as an author and screenwriter. He has been married for over 45 years to Alexandra. He has a son and daughter, Jacob and Nina.Guralnick's first two books,Almost Grown(1964) andMister Downchild(1967), were short story collections published by Larry Stark, whose small press in Cambridge, Larry Stark Press, was devoted to stories and poems. Mona Dickson, writing in MIT's The Tech (May 13, 1964) gaveAlmost Growna favorable review.After Guralnick graduated from Boston University in 1971 with a master's degree in creative writing, he began writing books chronicling the history of blues, country, rock and roll and soul.His two-volume biography of Elvis Presley,Last Train to Memphisin 1994, followed byCareless Lovein 1999, placed the story of Presley's career into a rise and fall arc. Encompassing more than 1,300 pages (including 1,150 pages of text), the work countered earlier biographies such as Albert Goldman's Elvis from 1981 with an in-depth, scholarly examination of Presley's life and music. Guralnick had previously written on Presley in theThe Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll, starting with the first edition in 1976, said article having been reprinted for each subsequent edition.Larry Stark Press published Peter Guralnick's second book in 1967. A first edition is currently valued at $200.In contrast to contemporaries such as Lester Bangs, Ian Penman and Nick Tosches, whose music writings are marked by idiosyncratic, self-referential and highly personal styles, Guralnick's writing is characterized by a colloquial approach that is clean and understated by comparison. In his best passages, he has an ability to simultaneously empathize and remain objective. Writing as a music fan, his enthusiasm powers his writing but doesn't overpower it.Guralnick wrote the script for A&E's documentary,Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock 'n' Roll, narrated by Billy Bob Thornton, and he also scriptedSam Cooke - Legend, narrated by Jeffrey Wright.
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