Blind Willie Johnson Can't Keep From Crying...Sometimes

The number of blind blues players can pretty easily be figured for a few reasons. Black folks at or around the turn of the century had little choice in vocation. But even those few slim positions were cut down when one also had the additional burden of blindness, thus making music a good way to turn a dollar. But beyond that, songs, traditional or otherwise, were able to carry a message. And considering the strong bond in black communities between the church and its people, singing songs of praise became a respectable way by which to earn a living. Although most street preachers struggled with the dichotomy of religiosity and daily life, this inner tumult didn’t really slow anyone down.

Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Arvella Grey and countless others worked the streets of various towns plying secular and religious songs. But arguably the most influential of these players is Blind Willie Johnson. Almost as mysterious a character as Robert Johnson, Blind Willie was born sighted. But after his mother passed on, his father remarried and supposedly after catching his second wife cavorting with another man Blind Willie’s father got into a fight with his wife. To save herself, the woman grabbed a handful of lye and threw it at her attacker. She missed, though, hitting a young Willie Johnson in the face, basically changing his life. It’s odd to think that without this occurrence, it’s possible that he wouldn’t have turned to music as his life’s work.

But considering the fact that there weren’t too many options for a blind, black child, Willie’s father quickly set him to work on the streets, occasionally just leaving him on a corner and returning at the end of the day. Once this resulted in Blind Willie being incarcerated as a policeman believed the lyrics to “If I Had My Way, I'd Tear the Building Down” was inciting a crowd to riot.

After his brush with the law, as Blind Willie continued playing and incorporating more and more spiritual music into his repertoire, he was tapped to record in 1927 and 1930 by Columbia Records. On a few of these recordings, the singer and guitarist was joined by a female accompanist. It’s been debated as to whether this unnamed performer was Blind Willie’s first or second wife. The answer to that probably won’t ever be clear, but what resulted in those sessions was some of the more terrifying blues recordings ever set down.

The alternate utilization of his normal voice and what can only be described as something akin to what would result if one screamed for several hours, Blind Willie traversed the religious landscape with great aplomb – even if he never reconciled his wilder tendencies with his beliefs. Regardless, though, Blind Willie continued playing street corners for some time after his last recorded date and eventually took over a congregation in his native Texas. A fire in his abode would ostensibly result in his homelessness and eventually contraction of pneumonia from which he died in 1945.