GUITARE ACOUSTIC a consacré un numéro spécial à Robert Johnson l'année dernière je crois.
Il ya une analyse musicologique de son style et plusieurs partitions y sont disponibles.
Je crois que c'est la meilleure chose que j'ai vu sur lui en français dans le texte.
On y apprend que Robert jouait avec plusieurs open tuning (5 ou six au bas mot...), et que certains accordages sont encore en discussion/litiges entre expert lors des transcriptions à l'oreille.
Le mieux est d'appeller le service client pour voir si cet ancien numéro est toujours disponible.
Pour se distraire enfin avec la légende :
Johnson colporte son lot de legendes, le fameux pacte avec le diable au carrefour highway 61-49 , l'apprentissage éclair de la guitare, les femmes et la route.
Clarksdale, Mississippi
Blues legend has it that Robert Johnson met the Devil at a crossroads, and that's where he got his guitar talent. A leading contender for the crossroads where this took place is the intersection of Highways 61 and 49, the two main highways through the Delta. Problem is, the meeting never happened: It actually was Tommy Johnson (no relation), who claimed he "had gone down to the crossroads to meet Legba, a devious African god, who returned his guitar and taught him how to play afresh." (Fodor's Rock & Roll Traveler USA, p. 116).
The roads have moved, and they don't meet where they did then. But we were in Clarksdale, in the middle of a furious thunderstorm, and the lights had just gone out in the pool room where Alex was cleaning Ken and Doug off the table, and it was 11:30 p.m. The temptation was too easy--we drove up to the crossroads.
![]()
Midnight at the Crossroads (Highways 61 and 49)
Further amplification on the crossroads myth, from Folk Beliefs of the Southern Negro, by Newbell Niles Puckett (Patterson Smith, 1968, as quoted in Lonely Planet's Deep South, p. 327):
If you want to make a contract with the devil . . . Take a black cat bone and a guitar and go to a lonely fork in the roads at midnight. Sit down there and play your best piece, thinking of and wishing for the devil all the while. By and by you will hear music, dim at first but growing louder and louder as the music approaches nearer . . . After a time you feel something tugging at your instrument . . . Let the devil take it and keep thumping along with your fingers as if you still had a guitar in your hands. Then the devil will hand you his instrument to play and will accompany you on yours. After doing this for a time he will seize your fingers and trim the nails until they bleed, finally taking his guitar back and returning your own. Keep on playing; do not look around. His music will become fainter and fainter as he moves away . . . You will be able to play any piece you desire on the guitar and you can do anything you want to in the world, but you have sold your eternal soul to the devil and are his in the world to come.
The movie Crossroads made much of this myth, including a jam session where Bach's music finally beats the Devil's rock-'n'-roll.
Although there's nothing to the myth, the haunting music Robert Johnson left behind fits it well, with songs like "Hellhounds on My Trail," "Me and the Devil Blues" and "Crossroads Blues," which Eric Clapton made famous when he was in Cream.
The story of his death fills out the legend: Allegedly poisoned by the owner of a jook joint he was playing in (because he'd been flirting with the owner's wife), he was said to be "on all fours, 'baying like a hell hound' moments before he died" (Deep South). What's more, nobody really knows where he's buried. (See the Greenwood page for further notes and pictures.)
Robert Johnson was born in 1911 in Hazelhurst, MS, which we drove through very late at night on our way to New Orleans (we didn't stop).
Since he died in 1938, a lot has been written about him; a lot of what he played has filtered into modern music, in both homages and indirect influences (along with Eric Clapton, little bands like Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones, among others, both acknowledged their debt to him, including many of his songs in their repertoire). For more about him, you could start with the boxed set "Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings," issued by Columbia in 1990, with a booklet that includes all kinds of biographical detail, full lyrics, a copy of the death certificate, and musings by Eric Clapton and Keith Richards.
The Delta Blues Museum
