Biography of a Phantom - Robert McCormick

 

Of course, I've been a fan of Robert Johnson and his legend since I first learned about him in the 70's. Besides the fact that his songs were even then covered by innumerable rock stars that I admired, the "sold his soul to the devil" mythos was a great hook! I've read a few books about him over the years and this one was recommended online so I picked it up to see what it was about.

Editor John Trautman's preface explains who McCormick was - one of the early blues documentarians who went searching for information on the blues artists and even discovering unheard artists in the process. Lots of traveling and knocking on doors, in a similar manner to people like Alan Lomax, who did discover some of the original artists. Troutman details some of McCormick's processes and some of the issues that hindered his work - everything from his undiagnosed (apparent) bipolar problems to hinderances due to money and being unable to hold down a good job, to the fact that a white man knocking on doors of black families was viewed with suspicion and outright fear in many cases. Troutman also discusses some editorial changes to the manuscript (McCormick never finished the book himself) to avoid offending or even to avoid legal challenges that have arisen.

McCormick approaches the tale as a mystery to be solved and writes in first person, describing the places that he visits and the people that he meets along the way, as well as the bits'n'pieces of information, which is all word-of-mouth, of course, and difficult to verify, if even he believed what he was hearing. So, the story is actually McCormick's search for Johnson, not really a story about Johnson himself - he is just the impetus for McCormick's tale.

Naturally, it was quite a daunting task to search for someone with a name as common as Robert Johnson, given that paper records were nowhere near as complete in those days, particularly with African-Americans. So, there are lots'n'lots of contacting people who had nothing to do with Robert and, again, the people who claimed to have known him had stories that were difficult to verify.

McCormick eventually finds a number of people who knew a Robert Spencer, who they verify (as best as can be verified, from knowledge of songs, and the little personal information that McCromick knew) was indeed Johnson. From what we know now, this all seems legit - again, as best as recollections can be - and was a veritable treasure trove of facts'n'family'n'fellow musicians.

This was pretty much the extent of his search for facts about Johnson's life, and he then tried to discover more about his death, which was less well-known back then, of course. Researching a 30 year old death of a traveling African-American man in the South was another difficult task that was generally stymied by officials whose records, such as they were, didn't go back that far, and, of course, records on events related to the Black population were even less regulated.

In any case, McCormick did a lot of sleuthing and came up with quite a bit of invaluable information and the book is also filling with his photos of the area 30+ years later, naturally, but still quite interesting. 

So, not exactly anything definitive, but a good, informative read, regardless, and well-written in a way to keep you hooked'n'entertained along the way.