ECLECTIC PLAYLIST #5 CROSSROAD BLUES

The legend goes like this: a young Robert Johnson, living on a plantation in Mississippi, had a burning desire to become a blues musician. One day he wandered out with his guitar to a crossroads, where he was met by the devil, who tuned his guitar for him. In a sort of Faustian pact, the young man sold the devil his soul in return for a prodigious talent at playing the blues.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtDlZdhHRCI

When you're so good at something that people have to make up a backstory about how you got there, that's when you know you're really good at it.

And this guy is a master. Eric Clapton called him 'the most important blues singer that ever lived' and a lot of people seem to believe he influenced the entire direction of the blues in the Twentieth Century, even perhaps sowing the seeds for music's natural evolution through gospel, into rock and out into heavy metal.

That might be why Tim sent this to me this week. I'm fascinated by the way music evolved and how technology made it happen. Just like looking back at baby photos, you can see the shadows of the future emerging in the faces of the past.

So, this track. This is an example of Delta Blues, born out of the plantations and slavery of the Mississipi Delta in the 1920s. It was characterised by the sound of the bottleneck slide guitar, the harmonica and the wailing vocals.

It's certainly the vocal that I like about Robert Johnson. There's just enough heartbreak in it as it wobbles over the guitar. And what guitar-playing! I really love the way it complements his voice - just like the Martin Simpson track, the guitar acts like another voice singing next to him, providing its own melody alongside Johnson.

I'd love to be able to play like that. Mind you, I learned how to tune a guitar from a vinyl record rather than Beelzebub. That's another story.

Robert Johnson died aged 27, which didn't help stifle the legend around his ability. I don't think the devil taught him how to play the blues in return for his soul - true, he lived quite a poor and tragic life and was only really recognised as truly great, long after his death, but to attribute that greatness to myth seems like a disservice to a really awesome musician.