Okay Phobic. I went seriously bonkers about the blues back in the 1970s. By the early 80s I'd found all sort of places to buy blues LPs and I obsessively bought the stuff non stop for something like twenty plus years. I still love the blues, but as somebody once said to me the blues is a "gateway music". It is, and many blues nutters often embark on a journey... some end up with Sun Ra and Coltrane, some end up listening to pre-war gospel or African music, some end up... you get the idea.
My old mate Paul once said "Rock'nRoll is but a minor deviation in the greater story of black music". Obviously that's provocative, but in a way it's only half the story.
The problem is the rock industry which has become so smug and self congratulatory that it sees itself as the be all and end all of popular music. I won't point too many fingers but the 60s / 70s generation of rock stars are always referencing Robert Johnson and endlessly talking about the story of the Delta blues. That's fine, and the academic work that has be done by various blues scholars is vital stuff. But it's not the whole story and it's simplifying and sidelining the broader and infinitely more diverse story of Afro-American music. And then there's the even more fascinating story of millions of African people taken to the new World and Latin America - and everywhere they went their music blended with European music and indigenous music forms - creating an astonishing array of amazing music from Colombia to LA, from Trinidad to the Antilles, Brazil, Venezuela... where would we start, where would we finish? The blues is wonderful but it's only a part of that story.
I could bore on for hours, but here's a few anecdotal experiences that indicate how far adrift things have become. I'm being a bit ott here. -_-
1) I saw BB King at Cliff's Pavilion in Southend some years back. The local "blues" fans were disappointed because his band were really a jazz band and BB wore a $1000 suit. One said he preferred Seasick Steve...
2) Keith Richards talking about Toots Hibbert, that "reggae was like the Chicago blues, like Robert Johnson man". Er, no it isn't.....
3) A British TV doc with Tom Jones and Lulu referencing Robert Johnson. I'm still recovering from this.
4) Taj Mahal declaring that the blues was special because if you travelled round the Caribbean, they didn't have the blues. No, but they had 50 other amazing black music forms.
It seems to me that what's really going on with these rock celebrities is that - unconsciously - they are drawing attention to themselves. It's as much about them as it is about Robert Johnson. It's about deifying the 60s/70s rock thing. Effectively saying "Robert Johnson is so important because he created rock music... us". Maybe we should remove the rock music thing and think again?
I put this to a friend of mine and it really annoyed him, it took a few weeks before he spoke to me again. But another friend of mine - a folk music academic - agreed and said I should read Elijah Wald. Sure enough Elijah has written an excellent book where he puts Johnson back into the context of his time and within the broader spectrum of music that existed then. He's attempted to demystify the man, to downsize the "Johnson led to rock music" narrative and look again at the man and his contemporaries. Elijah has suggested that if we really want to talk about the most influential blues artist of that period - then it's probably Leroy Carr.
I really enjoyed the US made TV series "American Epic". Produced by Robert Redford and Jack White. Excellent.