[ARSCLIST] about Robert Johnson

[Morris Martin <MMARTIN@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Paper: Dallas Morning News, The (TX)
Message: Hot on a bluesman's tracks - Letter confirms Dallas site of
Robert Johnson's recordings
Author: THOR CHRISTENSEN
Date: January 9, 2006
Section: NEWS
Page: 1A

Blues legend Robert Johnson's whole life is shrouded in mystery, from
his alleged pact with the devil to how he died to where his body is
buried.

But at least one riddle - the Dallas site of his landmark 1937
recordings - has finally been solved.

For years, historians guessed Mr. Johnson cut "Hellhound on My Trail"
and other blues classics at 508 Park Ave., a three-story art deco
building that still stands  two blocks east of Dallas City Hall.

Yet nobody knew for sure. The only person who recorded Robert Johnson,
producer Don Law, died 23 years ago without ever writing down the
location of the Dallas session - or so the experts thought.

But now, San Diego blues fanatic Tom Jacobson has tracked down a
long-lost 1961 letter that says 508 Park is indeed the spot where Mr.
Johnson recorded 13 songs that changed the course of the blues and
influenced the likes of Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin.

That one small address turns out to be one giant leap for music
historians.

"It's a big deal for us," says Dr. Michael Taft, head of folk culture
archives at the Library of Congress, which acquired the letter in
December.

"I'm not going to say the building should be a shrine," he said. "But
it's a very important site because we know so little about Robert
Johnson. To finally be able to say this is the building he recorded in,
that's a way of bringing Robert Johnson back to life."

Mr. Johnson was a young, unknown Mississippi singer-guitarist when he
came to Dallas on June 19, 1937. Mr. Law, an Englishman who moved to
Dallas to work at Brunswick Records, had first recorded him eight months
earlier at the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio.

And when "Terraplane Blues" became a minor hit, Mr. Law got Mr. Johnson
to come to Dallas to cut another batch of songs, including "Love in
Vain" (later recorded by the Stones), "Traveling Riverside Blues"
(redone by Led Zeppelin) and two tunes that fueled the legend that he
sold his soul to Satan in exchange for his talent: "Me and the Devil
Blues" and "Hellhound on My Trail."

But 18 months after the Dallas sessions, the singer was dead at age 27,
reportedly poisoned by the jealous husband of a woman he'd tried to
seduce at the Three Forks juke joint in rural Mississippi. To this day,
no one's sure where he's buried.

For decades, the 29 songs he recorded in Texas - the only ones he ever
made - drifted into obscurity. Finally, they re-emerged in 1961 when
Columbia Records issued them as King of the Delta Blues Singers, an LP
that became the Rosetta stone of the '60s blues revival.

"Johnson's words made my nerves quiver like piano wires," Mr. Dylan
wrote in his 2004 autobiography, Chronicles. "The stabbing sounds from
the guitar could almost break a window. The record...left me numb, like
I'd been hit by a tranquilizer bullet."

Eric Clapton called Mr. Johnson his single greatest influence - as well
as the most intimidating.

"I used to think, 'If Robert is looking down, what would he think of
this?'" he told The Dallas Morning News in 2004.

But while blues experts knew exactly where Mr. Johnson recorded in San
Antonio, the Dallas location was a long-running mystery.

Some theorized the site was 508 Park Ave., since that was where Don Law
and Brunswick Records were based in 1937. Legend has it that everyone
from Charlie Parker to Bob Wills recorded in the building, which was
originally a Warner Bros. film distribution center for the movie
theaters on Elm Street.

So, in 1998, Mr. Jacobson - a 57-year-old San Diego blues freak and
photography expert - traveled to Dallas to see the old building where
Mr. Johnson probably recorded. Later, he went to New York City to meet
Frank Driggs, who produced and wrote the liner notes for King of the
Delta Blues Singers.

There, in Mr. Driggs' basement, sat piles of rare recordings and
documents he'd taken from Columbia Records because he said his bosses
didn't care about blues history.

"Every time they changed management, the new management had that much
less interest. So I just took the stuff home with me and kept it in the
cellar," says Mr. Driggs, 75.

The two men spent three days digging through the cellar before
literally tripping over a stack of rare test pressings of the Robert
Johnson sessions. Mr. Jacobson bought the recordings from Mr. Driggs -
as well as the 1961 letter in which Mr. Driggs asks Mr. Law to describe
Robert Johnson, and Mr. Law scribbles his answers in the margins.

The old yellow document confirms some of the few stories that exist
about Robert Johnson - like the night in San Antonio he asked Mr. Law
for money to pay a prostitute ("She wants 50 cents and I lacks a
nickel") and how he was so secretive about his guitar technique that
when other musicians watched, he played facing the wall in a corner of
the room. The letter says the blues legend was paid all of $25 per
song.

But for Dallas music buffs, the key passage is when Mr. Driggs asks
"Where were the Dallas masters cut?" and Mr. Law replies "In a makeshift
studio in our own branch office" - the first and only confirmation that
508 Park Ave. is indeed the site.

"It finally seals it up," says Dallas Blues Society founder Chuck
Nevitt.

"It's just an incredible document," says Mr. Jacobson, who donated the
letter to the Library of Congress. "It's an important piece of Americana
about a musical genius."

It could also play an important role in the future of 508 Park, which
has sat vacant for years in a part of downtown that's yet to see urban
renewal. Glazer's, a Dallas beverage distribution firm, has owned 508
Park Ave. since the 1950s. The company has been trying to sell it for
years, to no avail, says R.L. Glazer, chairman of the board.

In 2004, Eric Clapton shot part of his Sessions for Robert J DVD
inside, but nobody seems quite sure what to do with the building:
There's not even a plaque marking it as a historic site.

The building's facade is protected as part of the Harwood Street
Historic District. But the rest of 508 Park - including the room where
Robert Johnson made his last pivotal recordings - could eventually be
turned into condos, or even demolished.

As Mr. Nevitt puts it, "The way they tear stuff down in this town, it's
remarkable the building's still there."

E-mail tchristensen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx 

Author: THOR CHRISTENSEN
Section: NEWS
Page: 1A

Copyright 2006  The Dallas Morning News

THIS IS SENT FROM MORRIS MARTIN, HEAD MUSIC LIBRARIAN, UNIVERSITY OF
NORTH TEXAS