Brother Robert - Annye C. Anderson with Preston Lauterbach

 As with most rock'n'rollers, I have been fascinated with Robert Johnson ever since first discovering him via the covers by rock giants the Rolling Stones and Cream, among hundreds (thousands?) of others. Once I heard his haunting original work and learned a little of his story - including, of course, him selling his soul to the devil in exchange for his guitar prowess - I became a lifelong fan. Naturally, there has never been much known about the man, other than what we have learned through those that he worked with, mostly, including other legends such as Son House, Willie Brown, Robert Lockwood Jr., along with a few more. So, once I heard about this book written by his half-sister, I naturally needed to own it!

Even the opening introduction by Elijah Wald is pretty compelling, as he was able to meet and talk with Anderson, then a spry 93 year old who talked of their engaging family along with her innumerable interests and the world that her tale will open up for us. Reminding us that we mostly know of Johnson due to his recordings that account for less than a couple of hours of his life, this book informs that his recordings are - logically - just the tip of the iceberg of the man.

Anderson worked with Preston Lauterbach (I just realized that I have read another of his books, which helped him get the job for this one), who interviewed her and wrote out the transcriptions for her approval. Preston talks of their first meeting where she pulled out family files and finally shows him the photo that appears on the cover. She is smart'n'savy enough to understand marketing and says "if you put this on the cover of your book, it will help sales tremendously"!

The story is fascinating'n'convoluted right from the start, in which Annye's father, who was married to Robert's mother, was chased out of town by a lynch mob, leaving behind his wife and kids, he got married again, spawning two more children, that wife died and he married Annye's mother. Robert's mother in the meantime got together with Robert's father (who we never learn anything about), so without the lynch mob, neither Robert nor Annye (and a number of other children) would ever have been born!

Of course, a good portion of the story takes place before any real fame for Robert and Annye emphasizes the fact that Robert's repertoire was extremely varied - something that he had in common with many "bluesmen" - it was really the record producers who picked the songs that they recorded. Apparently, Robert was a huge country fan and would also play modern pop tunes along with pretty much anything else that came his way.

Since Annye was only 12 years old when Johnson died, she never saw him actually working at his profession, but he did, naturally, play around their houses (many of the siblings lived close to each other) and family parties and she conjectures on the sources of some of his lyrical ideas. She more remembers "Brother Robert" as the tall, lanky, good-looking young man whose favorite food was fried pumpkin and who took her to see Gene Autry movies and help her run errands.

After he died, the family suffered other deaths and moved away from each other and family relics were lost along the way and even Robert's guitar, given to a relative he had played with, ended up being pawned and was never seen again - who knows who unknowingly owns that guitar today!

Of course, his death was far from the end of his story. No one in the family was aware of his growing fame until Annye saw a story in the Ladies Home Journal, of all places, about some British musician covering Robert's songs. Of course, plenty of folks came out of the woodwork to try to make money off of the surviving family members and there were innumerable scams by people pretending to be Robert's heirs or even Robert himself! A man claimed to be his illegitimate son and actually won a court ruling in his favor as Johnson's heir, superseding that of Robert's sister Carrie and Annye. Annye is not convinced of the veracity of his claim and is, understandably, disappointed that Robert's blood relatives who knew the man do not get any rewards from his work.

This is a highly enjoyable work which really humanizes this mythical figure. Well worth reading!