by Steve Brennan

Created on: March 22, 2009   Last Updated: March 23, 2009

An intriguing news article in a British paper a few years ago reported the claims of a "blues historian" who was about to publish a book concerning the development of early blues music in 1920's America. In it, he opined that many of the figures generally regarded as the mythic giants of the blues world such as Charley Patton, Son House, Blind Willie McTell and Robert Johnson were in fact minor figures in the bigger picture, and were essentially the pop stars of the blues scene, playing what was fashionable to the paying crowds in order to make a bit of money for their next bottle of whiskey. Needless to say, upon hearing this the avid blues fan would find eyeball and socket parting company.

To be fair, there has always been an inordinate amount of sinister mythology surrounding these musicians - tales of bar brawls, murder, poisonings and dark deeds, which fed deeply into what came to be called "The Devil's Music", and would lay the groundwork for the hip-swivelling abandon of 1950's rock n' roll, and thus, popular music as we know it today. Such colourful stories are hard to disprove, given that they occurred in the early part of the last century, and that the music is packed full of incidents involving devils, hell hounds, the perils of the demon drink etc, and add to the romanticised picture we pampered 21st century people with our Moby CDs have of these bluesmen as "the real deal".

However, there's also little doubt that, despite the myriad myths and half-truths, that's pretty much who most of these people were, and it's a rather dubious claim to refer to them as pop stars. Listening now to the scratchy, tormented songs of Leadbelly, Charley Patton and Robert Johnson, there remains in the music a raw, passionate honesty and gallows humour; qualities that, it could be argued, have faded from much of today's contemporary music. Son House and Leadbelly both served lengthy sentences for murder, and Robert Johnson himself was a renowned hell-raiser. During his short life he purportedly sold his sold to the devil at a country crossroads in exchange for his musical skills, recorded only 29 songs, and spent much of the rest of his time boozing, brawling, and playing around with other men's wives, before finally meeting his untimely end, in classic blues fashion, by being inconveniently poisoned by a jealous husband.

This rather put a crimp on an otherwise promising career, but on the plus side, he became arguably the most famous and influential blues musician ever,

• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next Page >>