Exhibit B: The First Song Was About the Devil Knocking
EXHIBIT B. FILED AS: COMMENDATION. FILED ON: HALLOWEEN, BECAUSE WHEN ELSE. RESPONDENT: A TWO-AND-A-HALF-MINUTE RECORD FROM 1937 THAT STILL WON'T LEAVE THE ROOM.
Let the record show that the first song I ever learned on guitar was not a campfire song. It was not "Wonderwall." It was not the three-chord thing everybody's cousin teaches them at Thanksgiving.
It was Robert Johnson's "Me and the Devil Blues." A song in which a man wakes up, hears a knock at the door, and the devil is standing there telling him it's time to go.
Happy Halloween. That was lesson one.
The facts, for the record
Since this court deals in evidence:
- Johnson cut it on June 19, 1937, in a Dallas warehouse that served as a makeshift studio. It was his final recording session.
- It came out on Vocalion in 1938, produced by Don Law. Two takes survive, about 2:37 and 2:29.
- Johnson's whole recorded output is 29 songs, from two sessions: San Antonio in 1936 and Dallas in 1937.
- He died on August 16, 1938, near Greenwood, Mississippi, at 27. The cause is still unknown.
- Columbia's 1961 compilation King of the Delta Blues Singers put him back in front of a whole new generation of listeners, more than twenty years after he died. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted him in 1986, in its first class, as an early influence.
Twenty-nine songs. Two sessions. Still being taught.
About the crossroads
You know the legend: young Robert goes down to the crossroads at midnight, the devil tunes his guitar, and he walks away able to play like nobody else. It's a great story. It's also, according to the historical record, a story that was first told about a different bluesman, Tommy Johnson, who was no relation. Several towns claim to be the crossroads, which tells you it probably isn't any of them.
This court's position: the devil didn't tune that guitar. Practice did, which is less romantic and much harder.
Why it's a good first song
Because it's honest about what the blues is. It's not a progression you memorize so you can say you know a song. The changes aren't the hard part. The hard part is the space: the way Johnson plays a line, lets it hang, answers himself on the guitar, and comes back in late on purpose. It's two and a half minutes of one man being his own band.
You learn very fast that you can play every note right and still not have the song. Same lesson as every other filing on this blog: the feel is the whole thing. Play it too neat and it turns into a museum piece. Johnson didn't sound neat. He sounded like someone who knew the knock was coming.
And it keeps finding new listeners. Gil Scott-Heron rebuilt it for his 2010 album I'm New Here. Soap&Skin covered it on a 2013 EP, and that version has had its own second life on TV and online (details here). A song from a warehouse in 1937, still knocking.
From the defense table
Every song TheRatsAsses plays goes back, somewhere, to that first lesson: leave room, mean it, don't play it clean. Our single "And I need ur Love" is out on Spotify and the other stores. It's one minute and forty seconds, which, as the evidence shows, is plenty of time to say something if you leave enough space.
Put on the 1937 record tonight. Turn the lights down. Listen for the knock.
"Me and the Devil Blues," Robert Johnson. Recorded June 19, 1937, Dallas, Texas; released 1938, Vocalion; produced by Don Law.