52 weeks of blues

Robert Leroy Johnson.
The greatest blues artist in history; the greatest influence on guitarists until Hendrix; the man who was better than anyone who came before and influenced everyone who came after. The man who introduced the crossroads, hellhounds and a host of other myths to the blues tradition. The man who sold his soul to the Devil.
Born in Hazelhurst, Mississippi, probably on May 8, 1911, Johnson’s life is the archetype of the early bluesman. The illegitimate eleventh child of a woman whose husband was chased out of town by a mob of white landowners, at age 2 Johnson was sent to live with the husband in Memphis, Tennessee, taking his surname ‘Spencer’. In 1919 he returned to his mother in the Mississippi Delta towns of Robinson and Tunica, though they moved almost constantly. The 1920 census shows they were living in Lucas, Arkansas. Johnson attended school between 1924 and 1927, and a school friend recalls he would be absent for long periods – presumably living with Spencer in Memphis.
After school he adopted his birth father’s name ‘Johnson’, and he married in 1929 at age 18 on a plantation near Robinson, Mississippi. He was playing music by this time – legendary bluesman Son House moved to the area soon after to and Johnson pestered him to teach him blues guitar. House recalls Johnson to be competent on the harmonica, but a terrible guitarist – “Such another racket you never heard! lt’d make people mad, you know. They’d come out and say ‘Why don’t y’all go in there and get that guitar from that boy!'”. When his 16 year old wife died the following year in childbirth, Johnson took to the road and headed to the Hazelhurst area, possibly searching for his natural father.
During this time, he met a fellow aspiring blues musician, Ike Zimmerman, at the crossroads in Martinsville, a few miles south of Hazelhurst. Zimmerman invited Johnson to stay with him in nearby Beauregard where the two practised the blues. The often jammed sitting on tombstones in the local cemetery at night, the only place they could play in the wee hours without disturbing anyone. Six to eight months later he returned to Robinson and Son House was astounded by how good Johnson was – in his later life he attributed this amazing change to a deal with the devil.
Johnson fathered a child while in the Martinsville area, and in 1931 married again and settled with is new wife in Clarksdale, Mississippi, in 1932. She too died in childbirth, and Johnson gave up the normal life and became a travelling musician. He had no fixed address and travelled the land, sometimes trips as far as New York and Chicago, but mainly around the Delta and surrounding states. He rambled constantly, and played on street corners and Juke joints for the rest of his life. He was a womaniser, he used different names in different towns, and had a woman to share a bed with in every place he visited.
In November 1936, in a make shift studio set up in a hotel room in San Antonio, Texas, Johnson recorded 16 tracks with 6 alternate versions. The following year, he had another session in Dallas where he recorded another 13 tracks, with 7 alternate versions. Those 29 songs, 42 versions, makes up the entire recording history of the greatest bluesman who ever lived.
In August, 1938, Johnson was playing at a country dance near Greenwood, Mississippi. Accounts vary, and the truth will never be known, but according to bluesman Sonny Boy Williamson who was also playing at the dance, a husband, jealous of Johnsons’s affair with his wife, murdered him by giving him a poisoned bottle of whiskey. Eyewitnesses claim it took Johnson three days to die, during which he was in terrible pain, “crawling on the floor barking like a dog” and speaking in tongues. Johnson died on August 18, 1938, and his final resting place is unknown, though it’s likely he was buried in an unmarked gave in Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church near Morgan City, Mississippi. He was 27.
Johnson’s music was unlike any other of the time – his lyrics dealt with things dark and evil. He sang often of supernatural elements such as the devil, crossroads and being tormented by demons. This unsettling lyricism, combined with a mastery of ‘microtonality’ – very subtle changes of pitch – in both his singing and guitar playing creates a brooding, slightly unsettling feel to his music. His guitar technique is as good as it gets – 42 songs recorded, all in one take, with barely a mistake. His thumb work is completely independent of his fingers, and the chord voicings he uses, whether using a slide or not, lend themselves to the ethereal quality of his music.
His has been cited as an influence by nearly every later blueman – Clapton: “the most important blues musician who ever lived”; Keith Richards: “Robert Johnson was like an orchestra all by himself”; Robert Plant: “we all owed our existence, in some way (to Johnson)”. His influence over music is probably greater than any other musician in history. Robert Johnson was not only inducted in to the Blues Hall of Fame in the inital group of inductees, he was also inducted as part of the initial group to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Kindhearted Woman Blues was the very first song recorded by Robert Johnson. It features the only guitar solo he ever recorded.
The song is an ode to a woman in his life, bemoaning the fact that his love is unrequited, and like nearly all of his songs it touches on dark places. “She’s a kindhearted woman, she studies evil all the time”. His singing on this track is a fantastic performance, using his voice as another melody instrument over the steady bass laid by the guitar.
It is likely based on “Mean Mistreater Mama” by Leroy Carr released in 1934, played on piano and guitar. The melody Johnson plays in switching from A7 to A diminshed 7 in the verses is similar to the piano lines, and the guitar parts played around the 9th fret are similar to the guitar parts played by Scrapper Blackwell on Carr’s recording. The falsetto vocals are based on Kokomo Arnold’s “Milk Cow Blues”, also from 1934.
It is a standard 12 bar blues in A, but the bar lengths vary – some have 6 beats, some 2, some 3. A 6 bar bridge of a different rhythm takes the place of the first 4 bars of verse 3.
The song is a slow blues, and timing is everything. The song features a string base line, and ethereal sounding chords that seem to float over the top. He creates intricate melodies based on the chord voicing in the verses, and you need to give them ‘space’ to work their magic. A simple 2 or 4 note riff executed perfectly makes this song what it is – it’s easy to play but incredibly difficult to get the right sound. Subtlety is the key to the melody lines.
The bass is constant, hitting the beat on every beat, and adding the ‘and’ beats to add drive to the rhythm. Play this song with even a slightly different bassline, and it loses something. The blending of the exact bassnotes he plays with the subtlety of the melody over the chord voicings is why this song is a work of genius. It contains more ideas on more levels of music making than most full albums.

A7
I got a kindhearted woman, do anything in this world for me
D7                                                                                      A
I got a kindhearted woman, do anything in this world for me
E7                                               D7
But these evil-hearted women, man, they will not let me be
 A                    E7(turnaround)

I love my baby, my baby don't love me
I love my baby, oh, my baby don't love me
But I really love that woman, can't stand to leave her be

Ain't but the one thing, makes Mister Johnson drink
I's worried about how you treat me, baby, I begin to think
Oh babe, my life don't feel the same
You breaks my heart, when you call Mister So-and-So's name

She's a kindhearted woman, she studies evil all the time
She's a kindhearted woman, she studies evil all the time
You well's to kill me, as to have it on your mind

The intro is one and a half bars of A then straight into the turnaround. It’s a slow blues, and reading the tab in the correct time is tricky, so I’ve included beats numbers to help. It’s a shuffle rhythm: one – and two – and etc. He uses triplets and his thumb in the turnaround to add some drive to the measure.

          3      &   4      &      1      &  2      &   3        &  4      &   |  1      &   2     &  3       &  4         &   |
 $3.9.$2.8.$1.9  9 $3.9.$2.8.$1.9  9 | $3.8.$2.7.$1.8  8 $3.8.$2.7.$1.8  $3.7.$2.6.$1.7 7 $2 6 $1 7 $2.6.$1.7  $3 2 | $5.0.$1.5  5 $4.5.$1.5  $4.5.$1.5 $4.4.$1.5 5 $4.4.$1.5 $4.3.$1.5 2h3p2 |
          1      &  2     &  3     &  4      &  |
 $4.2.$1.0  $6.0.$1.0 $6.0.$5.2  $6.0.$5.2.$2.3.$1.0 $6.0.$5.2  $6.0.$5.2 $6.0.$5.2  0 |

Johnson uses an A7 to A diminished 7 for the A section, a D7 with an F# bass and an E7 in open position. Here are the shapes:
Johnson improvised a lot during the standard progression. The plug I use to create the tabs doesn’t include the chord shapes I need, so look at the tab above to see how to finger the chords. Johnson varies bar lengths at will, but I’ll show the chords in a standard 12 bar pattern. Here’s verse 1:
Here’s the first 4 bars of verse 2, showing the A7 and A dim 7 based around the 9th fret.
For verse 3, he changes it up a bit, inserting a bridge with an extra 2 bars of A instead of going to D. Bend the notes on the G string in bars 5 & 6.

The solo is extremely difficult. The melody is straightforward, with some tricky double stops in bars 2 and 4, but the real trick is getting the thumb working. Listen to it and just concentrate on what the thumb is doing. It doesn’t miss a beat, and adds impetus to the melodic lines. Try to get it with just a one two three four from the thumb, then try to add the extra thumb notes.

The outro is a variant on the standard turnaround, go into it by hitting the open A string once or twice at the end of the last D section. Leave a one beat pause at the beginning of the measure.