Blind Willie Johnson

His life was poorly documented, but over time, music historians such as Samuel Charters have uncovered more about him and his five recording sessions. A revival of interest in Johnson's music began in the 1960s following his inclusion on Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music and by the efforts of the blues guitarist Reverend Gary Davis. Along with Davis, he has since been considered the dominant player of holy blues music which conveys religious themes in a blues style, often with a blues style of guitar accompaniment. Johnson's work has become more accessible through compilation albums such as American Epic: The Best of Blind Willie Johnson and the Charters compilations. This song was included in the golden phonograph records aboard the Voyager interstellar probes launched in 1977 by NASA. Other recordings by Johnson include "Jesus Make Up My Dying Bed", "It's Nobody's Fault but Mine" and "John the Revelator".

• Name — Blind Willie Johnson • Alias — * Blind Willie • Blind Texas Marlin • The Blind Pilgrim • Born — 25 January 1897 • Birthplace — Pendleton, Texas, U.S. • Died — 18 September 1945 • Place of death — Beaumont, Texas, U.S. • Genre — * Gospel • gospel blues • Occupation — * Musician • preacher • Instrument — * Guitar • vocals • Years Active — 1920s–1945 • Label — Columbia • Spouse — Willie B. Harris (unregistered) Angelina (Anna) Broussard (registered)

Willie Johnson was born on January 25, 1897, in Pendleton, Texas, a small town near Temple, Texas, to sharecropper Dock Johnson and Mary King, who died when Johnson was 4. His family, which according to the blues historian Stephen Calt included at least one younger brother (named Carl), moved to the agriculturally rich community of Marlin, where Johnson spent most of his childhood. There, the Johnson family attended church, most likely the Marlin Missionary Baptist Church, every Sunday, a habit that had a lasting impact on Johnson and fueled his desire to be ordained as a Baptist minister. When Johnson was five years old, his father gave him his first instrument, a cigar box guitar. Johnson was not born blind, though he was visually impaired at an early age. It is uncertain how he lost his sight but it is generally agreed by most of his biographers that he was blinded by his stepmother when he was seven years old, a claim that was first made by Johnson's widow, Angeline Johnson. In her recollection, Willie's father had violently confronted Willie's stepmother about her infidelity and, during the argument, she splashed Willie with a caustic solution of lye water, permanently blinding him. Few other details are known about his childhood. At some point, he met another blind musician, Madkin Butler, who had a powerful singing and preaching style that influenced Johnson's own vocal delivery and repertoire. Adam Booker, a blind minister interviewed by the blues historian Samuel Charters in the 1950s, recalled that while visiting his father in Hearne, Johnson would perform religious songs on street corners and had a tin cup tied to the neck of his Stella guitar to collect money. Occasionally, Johnson would play on the same street as Blind Lemon Jefferson in Dallas' Deep Ellum district, but the extent of the two songsters' involvement with each other is unknown.

In 1926 or early 1927, Johnson began an unregistered marriage with Willie B. Harris who occasionally sang on the street with him and accompanied him on piano at benefits for the Marlin Church of God in Christ. They had a daughter, Sam Faye Johnson Kelly, in 1931. Angelina Broussard of Lafayette, Louisiana, (often erroneously listed as Angelina Robinson; and listed on Johnson's death certificate as Anna), claimed to have married Johnson in 1922, although September 15 1941 has been found to be correct.

Throughout the Great Depression and the 1940s, he performed in several cities and towns in Texas, including Beaumont. A city directory shows that in 1945, a Reverend W. J. Johnson, undoubtedly Blind Willie, operated the House of Prayer at 1440 Forrest Street there. In 1945, a fire destroyed their home and, with nowhere else to go, Johnson continued to live in its ruins where he was soaked and cold. Standing out in the winter winds the next day, singing to earn a little money, Johnson got sick and within a few days was dying of pneumonia. He contracted malarial fever and no hospital would admit him either because of his visual impairment or, as Angeline Johnson stated in an interview with Charters, because he was black. Over the course of the year, his condition steadily worsened until he died, on September 18, 1945. His death certificate reported syphilis and blindness as contributing factors. A 1947 Beaumont directory listed Anna Johnson as his widow. According to his death certificate, Johnson was buried in Blanchette Cemetery, in Beaumont, Texas. Over time, various African-American cemeteries from the segregated era became abandoned and neglected. As a result, some confusion arose as to where "Blanchette Cemetery" was located. In 2007, a pair of blues researchers set out to find Johnson's grave. They eventually collected evidence that Blanchette Cemetery is "situated between Hegele and Ollie Streets cornered by Inca Street and Southern Pacific Road in Beaumont, Texas". This area is part of a complex of four graveyards now known as Pear Orchard Cemetery. No headstone was found yielding Johnson's name, and the exact location of his grave remains unknown. In 2010, at the request of the two researchers, a cenotaph for Johnson was placed on the Blanchette Cemetery plot of land. In December 2010, a historical marker was placed in Johnson's honor near the Pilgrim Rest Missionary Baptist Church in Beaumont, Texas.

Johnson is considered one of the masters of blues singing and guitar playing particularly in the gospel blues style. Like his contemporary Blind Lemon Jefferson, he channeled the expressiveness of the blues into his religious messages which he took from hymnbooks. Samuel Charters, in the liner notes to the compilation album The Complete Blind Willie Johnson, wrote that, in fact, Johnson was not a bluesman in the traditional sense, "but here still is so much similarity between his relentless guitar rhythms and his harsh, insistent voice, and the same fierce intensities of the blues singers, that they become images of each other, seen in the mirror of the society that produced them". An important aspect of Johnson's recordings was his mastery of bottleneck, slide guitar technique which was influential on Robert Johnson and Howlin' Wolf. He punctuated his playing with tonal control and a sense of timing, often using the guitar to sing harmony and to fill in lines, as on "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground". By most accounts, including one by the reputable blues guitarist Blind Willie McTell, Johnson used a knife as a slide but other claims by Harris and the bluesman Thom Shaw say he used a thumb pick or brass ring on his recordings. The music historian Steve Calt said of Johnson's style, "opposed to other bottleneck artists he varies the speed of his vibrato drastically, often speeding up as he slides into a note. He is also one of the few bottleneck artists with the ability to consistently sound three or four discreet melody notes upon striking a string once, a skill that reflects uncanny left-handed strength, accuracy and agility". Johnson sang in a gravelly, falsetto bass voice that was powerful enough for passersby on the streets to hear. His vocal interplay with his guitar was described by the blues writer Mark Makin as "fierce" and "not unlike the 'Hell and Damnation' of a Baptist preacher such as a fired-up Reverend A. W. Nix". On some instances in his recordings, Johnson also sang in his natural tenor voice. The only known influence on Johnson's singing style is the blind musician Madkin Butler, who, like Johnson, sang his religious message on the streets of Texas cities.