Up Jumped the Devil: the Real Life of Robert Johnson, by Bruce Conforth & Gayle Dean Wardlow

Description

Up Jumped the Devil: the Real Life of Robert Johnson, by Bruce Conforth & Gayle Dean Wardlow (Chicago Review Press, hardcover)

I was first rather inclined to pass on this, yet another book about Robert Johnson – who I felt had been overpraised, over exploited and over mystified etc. for far too long!

But looking at some of the reviews, I was taken by the almost uniform sentiment that this is THE book to read. Although I am a very slow reader I found myself enjoying every page. It is easy reading, a la Sam Charters and his first book on Blues: The Country Blues. It is printed with real black ink , decent size type, and nice leading between lines!

The book seems to be incredibly well researched from all angles: from what relatives, friends, other musicians and people who dealt with him said about him, how impressed Robert was by blues singers and their records which by the mid 1930s were on juke boxes in most black communities, to noting how many copies the ARC Co. pressed of his titles on their various chain store labels!

The story really flows – how his slightly better childhood education made Robert stand out from the other Delta blues musicians, how Lonnie Johnson impressed him for his incredible technical ability to play not only blues (which is how as a black musician he was catagorized in record catalogs), but jazz, and also how he shared the hope of becoming a great artist. I was also taken by how Robert from the start played a lot of popular songs when making public appearances, obviously appealing to a wider audience than the limited Delta tradition of Son House and Charlie Patton would. The book describes how growing up black in the rural South after the failure of Reconstruction was no piece of cake. I only wish a bit more about this painful era in US history had been exposed since most white Americans have no knowledge about it nor do they realize that all ethnic groups were very much restricted to their own communities, as is still the case today. I was trying to make this short and so I stop here! Enjoy this journey! (Chris Strachwitz)