Robert Johnson Challenge: End of Challenge Reflection
Some thoughts on learning all of Robert's songs
As I complete the "Robert Johnson Challenge", having learned and recorded all 29 songs, I thought I'd make a few comments in case it helps anyone else taking on these songs. The first thing I want to note is that it was a tremendous challenge to undertake, and I would suggest it to anyone who wants to become familiar with his music (or a similar challenge with anyone's music.) Forcing myself to learn one per week was the only way I was going to be able to get through them without procrastinating. But it was not as hard as I thought it might be.
For one, I knew the lyrics of all of the songs (or enough to be able to fill in the blanks). I've been singing along with the records since the Complete Recordings came out in the early 90's. However, it's a different skill to be able to sit and play alone without the record playing along. I had to to learn the lyrics better, and on some songs, use a cheat sheet to cue me on the first few words of each verse. Also, the words that I thought I knew turned out to be wrong in some cases, so I had to learn the correct words.
Also, I knew some of the songs already -- music and lyrics together. It was helpful in that I could start working on the following week song while playing through the songs I already knew once or twice a day to get the song down better. One song in particular -- “Preachin' Blues (Up Jumped the Devil)” was so hard that I started working on it from the very beginning and played it through a couple times a week until I could get through it in week 15 without being too embarrassed.
Another helpful thing was the fact that Robert Johnson had several “tunes” that he used over and over, like the tune behind “Kind Hearted Woman”, which was also used (with some variations) on “Phonograph Blues”, “32-20 Blues”, “Dead Shrimp Blues”, “Steady Rollin Man”, “Little Queen of Spades”, “Me and the Devil Blues”, “Honeymoon Blues”, and “Love in Vain”. Some of his “Spanish tuning” songs also had the same or similar chords/licks, on “Terraplane Blues”, “Crossroad Blues”, “Walkin Blues”, “Stones In My Passway”, “Travelin Riverside Blues”, and “Milkcow's Calf Blues”. This made it easy during the week to learn the variations on the tune (licks, etc) and focus on the lyrics.
One thing that did help was me finding an “AI” software (https://vocalremover.org/) to separate the music and vocals into separate tracks. I didn't find this until halfway through the songs, but it helped on the remaining songs.
There were also some things that made the process hard. Mostly, Robert's technical prowess and subtlety on guitar was hard to duplicate. He is doing things on “Preachin' Blues (Up Jumped the Devil)” that seemed impossible. I think I made a few compromises that allowed me to get through it completely, but I also want to keep working on it in the future to make it sound closer to what he is doing. Another song, “From Four Until Late”, had some of the most subtle guitar playing I've ever heard. At some points the guitar is so quiet that it's hard to decipher what he is even doing. It sounds like he is brushing the strings with the pad of his forefinger just to make them sound slightly, but the vocal carries the song through the quiet parts, and the lack of underlying music makes the guitar part even more difficult to copy. It's masterful. Using the AI software for this made it easier to hear what he was doing.
The biggest part of the challenge was the vocals. I'm not a great singer, and as I said at the top of the challenge, my voice is changing as I get older and I'm losing the top of my range. Additionally, where my falsetto breaks naturally is in a different place now than it was a few years ago. I used to be able to match Johnson's pitch on everything. It was exactly in my comfort zone. I can't anymore, so I had to make compromises. At 61 I can no longer match the 26-year-old Johnson in pitch.
One thing that people get wrong about Johnson is that he "sang high", which is one reason these people like to slow down the music to bring the pitches down. In truth, most of the times he is singing at a fairly low pitch, as a tenor. There are frequently some high notes in a song, but the overall song is sung low. Those "high notes" are what I had trouble with, but for the most part I was able to get through it with some compromises. Some people on the Internet believe in the Robert Johnson "speed hoax" -- that the recordings were sped up, and should be played slower. One of the things they cite is that the songs "sound better" in a lower register -- more like Son House or Muddy Waters. We can compare one of his songs to similar songs by Son House and Muddy Waters. Robert played Walking Blues in B. Son House played it in A in his 1930 recording (a little lower):
However, he played it in B in his 1941 recording:
Same key, same pitch. Son House hits the same notes as Robert. His voice has a deeper tone, but the pitch is the same.
Muddy Waters in F# (Country Blues) in his first recording (very low), but switched to A when he recorded Walkin' Blues (a little lower, one step):
Johnny Shines in Bb (Ramblin'), a half step lower than Robert, not very far off:
As far as "sounding better", nobody sounds as good as Robert Johnson at the correct pitch (the released recording pitch), in my opinion. Slowing it down makes it sound bizarre. He sings mostly low, so the high parts come down, but so do the low parts. The slowed down recordings make him sound like Bowser from Sha Na Na.
I used different guitars throughout the challenge. I tried to use some period correct guitars, but I also used some modern guitars and resonators. The guitars that Robert Johnson used on the recordings are unknown to this day. My article on Robert Johnson's guitars has the information that we know. He used a borrowed guitar on the 16 songs at the San Antonio sessions. It could be virtually anything. For the 13 songs at the Dallas sessions, he likely brought a guitar, but even that is unknown. He was known to carry around a Kalamazoo arch top around that period, so I used a couple of different Kalamazoo arch tops for many of the “Dallas session” songs, but he may have used a Stella or other flattop. We'll probably never know. The Kalamazoo KG-14 seen in two of the three known photos of him was purchased after the recordings were made. I used the KG-21 (smaller body) on the standard tuned songs, and the KG-31 (large body) on the slide songs. If I had to guess, I’d say that Robert probably had the KG-21, because it was smaller and easier to carry, similar in size to the KG-14 or Gibson L-1.
I tried to choose guitars that sounded good for particular songs, but I had other criteria as well. My 1933/4 Kalamazoo KG-11 sounded great on all the songs, but I didn't want to use the same guitar for everything. I also didn't want to risk damage to it on some of the faster songs where I used a metal thumb pick. Paul Fox put out a "Kalamazoo KG-11 tribute" guitar in the middle of the challenge, so I bought one and used it on a few songs. It was especially welcome on “Preachin' Blues (Up Jumped the Devil)”, because the picking action required a heavier string guage, and I was able to do that with a new guitar without worrying about it, and also not worry about the guitar finish with the frenetic picking action. I regret that I was unable to obtain a Kalamazoo KG-14 for any of the songs, but I sold the two that I had and haven't been able to find a good one at a reasonable price. He didn't use it on the recordings, but it's a great sounding guitar -- especially for old blues.
The Sound
Getting Robert Johnson songs to sound "right" is not just a question of playing the notes. There are several things that I hear that I think make them sound more accurate. The biggest thing, in my opinion, is the "Robert Johnson chug" -- the muting of the low notes on the rhythm. Most players mute at the bridge to create this sound, however I believe that Robert muted closer to the neck, causing the note to die a little quicker, and also allow the rhythm to be more subtle. I picked this up watching Johnny Shines play Robert Johnson songs. He mutes pretty close to the neck, and he gets that sound. I think he comes closest to anyone in sounding like Robert. My problem was remembering to do this while I was recording the video, because I have other habits. I had too much going through my head remembering lyrics and guitar parts that I sometimes forgot to do this. Also, I didn't have quite the best picking technique for this to sound properly.
The other part of the sound is letting the high strings ring out. So: thumping the low strings while letting the high strings ring. Secondarily, I had to decide whether to use thumb and fingerpick. Johnson is seen with a thumb pick in the studio portrait, but who knows if he used picks for the recordings? I think he probably did, at least on many of the songs. The finger pick on the forefinger is another story. It sounds to me like he used one on many of the songs, because the notes are so clear, but he also had such a light touch that I couldn't duplicate with a finger pick. I used my forefinger for most of the songs. For the slide songs, many people hold the slide to the strings too long. I believe Robert attacked the strings with the slide, then lifted, creating a slightly different sound. This is another thing I tried to remember while I was playing, but frequently fell into old habits. I believe that Robert played with the thumb and forefinger (no additional fingers on the right hand) like many of the other blues players of the time.
Robert Johnson's tunings have been a bit of a controversy in some circles. Among most dedicated Robert Johnson guitar nerds, however, it's pretty well accepted that he used the normal tunings -- standard, Spanish, Vestapol, and drop D. I did not try to fool around with "Aadd9" or other bizarre tunings, because there is no evidence of any kind that Johnson used weird tunings. To the guys who utilize strange tunings to play the songs, I have no problem with that. However you can play the songs is OK by me. What I do object to is some people out there who claim that Johnson definitely used some bizarre tuning on a specific song. Present the evidence, if you can. I'm not buying it. Nobody knows for sure what he did.
The Process
Covering Robert Johnson is not an easy task, but I set out to do the best I could. I tested the pitch of every song with a piano to get the correct key, then used a metronome to pin down an "average" beats-per-minute for each song. Johnson notoriously sped up midway through the song, which I did on a few of them as well, but tried to maintain from the beginning speed. Learning any song is a process, and the first step is to hear the song so many times that every note is memorized in the mind. That part was already done, for me, because I've heard the Robert Johnson recordings more than any other recording by any musician -- thousands of times. So my first step on Monday of the week was to learn and play through the song one time. This worked for most of the songs, but some songs (like "From Four Until Late" and "They're Red Hot") took a few days to learn. One song in particular, "Malted Milk", took several weeks, and in the final week I didn't get through it even once until the day I had to record it. It's not necessarily hard to play, but it was out of my wheelhouse as far as learning the notes and chords. I did consult transcriptions for some parts of songs, but for the most part I knew what was played by listening to it.
After learning the notes and playing through it, the rest of the week was spent listening intently and making notes where applicable ("chromatic run here", "fast lick here", etc). I wasn't concerned with getting it note-perfect, but I wanted to get close to the recording, at least in spirit. I listened to each song a few hundred times during the week to get it ingrained in my mind. On most of my recordings I was within a few seconds of the Johnson recorded version, so I think I got the timing pretty close. On the Sunday I was set to record, I sat down and filmed every take until I got it as close to "mistake free" as possible. Usually I just stopped when I made a mistake, but most songs had multiple takes that I had to weed through at the end. I would go through them at the end and rate them with notes, like "wrong lyrics verse 2", "botched rhythm", etc. I picked the least offensive take to post. Then I posted the video with a short description on Facebook and Youtube.
My initial plan was to put them on Youtube only and link on Facebook, but I quickly found that Facebook buried the videos posted from Youtube, and nobody was seeing them. So I just did both. I'm averaging about 500 views each on Facebook (Crossroad Blues had over 3000 views) and 20-40 views on Youtube (!).
As I mentioned, I tried to get close to what Robert is doing in my versions. Some people asked "why don't you do your own version?" Some people do that, and it's fine for them. Many of those versions sound damn good. But I wanted to learn what HE did. I think it's pretty easy to do your own version of a song. Everyone has their own style, so all you have to do is learn the lyrics and play your style behind it. For me that was not going to cut it. The argument is "anyone who wants to hear the same thing as Robert can just listen to Robert." That doesn't hold water for me, because the audience I usually play for (or the online audience) might not have any desire to listen to a scratchy old blues record from the 30's. I'm not going to be able to play a song better than him, so why not just try to play it how he played it -- the best way? It's similar to how classical musicians read a piece that was written 300 years ago and play it as written, without improvising or doing their own version.
Alternate Takes
There are many surviving alternate takes of songs that Robert recorded. In most cases, the alternate take is similar to the released take. One case has the song in a different tuning and different key -- "Phonograph Blues" . I did both versions as part of the challenge. In most of the other cases I either picked one of the takes or merged the two, taking parts of each. Two of the songs had quite different takes -- "Cross Road Blues" and "Come On In My Kitchen". In both cases, I chose the one that I preferred.
The 30th Song?
The myth of the "30th song" was made popular by the movie Crossroads, but in all likelihood Robert had other original songs -- probably many. During the course of the challenge I also did two songs that were both attributed to Robert Johnson: "Going to Algiers" and "Mr. Downchild". Johnny Shines used to do "Going to Algiers" and introduce it as one of the songs that Robert Johnson wrote but never recorded. I tried to convert it to acoustic in a style that Robert might have used. "Mr. Downchild" was done by both Robert Junior Lockwood (Robert's stepson) and Rice Miller (Sonny Boy II), who was one of Robert's contemporaries and claimed to have been with Robert on the night he was poisoned. Robert Junior used to introduce it as a song that Johnson did but never recorded.
What's Next?
After going through every Robert Johnson song, the obvious question is who to do next? I decided not to focus on one artist at this point in time, although doing Charlie Patton, Son House, or some of the other blues greats would be fun. I'll start by trying to do a recording each week, but vary the artist.
The Performances
Kind Hearted Woman, Robert Johnson cover by Tom Muck
I Believe I'll Dust My Broom, Robert Johnson cover by Tom Muck
Sweet Home Chicago, week 3 of my Robert Johnson challenge
Ramblin' On My Mind, played by Tom Muck
When You Got a Good Friend, Robert Johnson cover by Tom Muck
Come On In My Kitchen, Robert Johnson song played by Tom Muck
Terraplane Blues, Robert Johnson cover by Tom Muck
Phonograph Blues (take 1), Robert Johnson cover by Tom Muck
Phonograph Blues (take 2), Robert Johnson cover played by Tom Muck
32-20 Blues, Robert Johnson cover played by Tom Muck
They're Red Hot, Robert Johnson cover by Tom Muck
Dead Shrimp Blues, Robert Johnson cover by Tom Muck
Cross Road Blues, Robert Johnson cover by Tom Muck
Walking Blues, Robert Johnson cover by Tom Muck
Last Fair Deal Gone Down, Robert Johnson cover by Tom Muck
Preaching Blues (Up Jumped the Devil), Robert Johnson cover by Tom Muck
If I Had Possession Over Judgement Day, Robert Johnson cover by Tom Muck
Stones In My Passway, Robert Johnson cover by Tom Muck
Steady Rollin Man, Robert Johnson cover by Tom Muck
From Four Till Late, Robert Johnson cover by Tom Muck
Hellhound On My Trail, Robert Johnson cover by Tom Muck
Little Queen Of Spades, Robert Johnson cover by Tom Muck
Me and the Devil Blues, Robert Johnson cover by Tom Muck
Malted Milk, Robert Johnson cover by Tom Muck
Drunken Hearted Man, Robert Johnson cover by Tom Muck
Stop Breakin' Down Blues, Robert Johnson cover by Tom Muck
Honeymoon Blues, Robert Johnson cover by Tom Muck
Love In Vain Blues, Robert Johnson cover by Tom Muck
Milkcow's Calf Blues, Robert Johnson cover by Tom Muck
Going to Algiers, Robert Johnson/Johnny Shines cover by Tom Muck
Mr. Downchild, cover by Tom Muck, song attributed to Robert Johnson