{"id":255,"date":"2012-02-21T10:00:50","date_gmt":"2012-02-21T10:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.heavenlysight.org\/?p=255"},"modified":"2012-02-19T20:01:45","modified_gmt":"2012-02-19T20:01:45","slug":"two-blind-men-who-helped-transform-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.heavenlysight.org\/?p=255","title":{"rendered":"Two blind men who helped transform music"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cIt makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck.\u00a0 He did not articulate a single word.\u00a0 He hummed it and sang it and played it with a bottle-neck that sounded like it was really a razor blade.\u00a0 He was experiencing it and he communicated it extraordinarily, but it was his experience that made it so powerful.\u201d That\u2019s how singer-guitarist David Bromberg describes Blind Willie Johnson\u2019s \u201cDark Was the Night Cold Was the Ground.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/BNj2BXW852g\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Blind Willie is probably the best known of all blind Gospel performers. He was born in Texas in 1897.\u00a0 His stepmother blinded him, throwing lye in his face, when he was six, after she was beaten by Willie&#8217;s father for cheating on him.<\/p>\n<p>Nobody really knows where he learned to play guitar, but by the 1920s his career was flourishing.\u00a0 He was primarily a street singer &#8212; usually with his wife standing by his side.<\/p>\n<p>Despite the success, life was typically hard for blind Gospel musicians: \u201cWhen the crops were being picked in the fall and late summer, there was some money around.\u00a0 When there wasn&#8217;t money around then you had to go to the juke joints.\u00a0 In that part of the country they were called Sookie Jumps, where gambling was going on, drinking was going on &#8212; and on a Friday or Saturday night a Sookie Jump in East Texas where they were working could get a little bit dangerous,\u201d says folklorist <a href=\"http:\/\/www.allmusic.com\/artist\/kip-lornell-p223484\">Kip Lornell<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Blind Willie Johnson died penniless, alone in the ruins of his burnt home, enveloped by darkness.\u00a0 His influence on music however is staggering, \u201cDark was the Night, Cold was the Ground\u201d is one of a handful of recordings included in the Voyager probes, which are the only man made object to leave our solar system.\u00a0 His album was also used as inspiration and title for a <a href=\"http:\/\/pitchfork.com\/reviews\/albums\/12717-dark-was-the-night\/\">2009 indie collaborative album<\/a> that featured the works of The National, Grizzy Bear, Bon Iver, Arcade Fire, Yo La Tengo, and many others.<\/p>\n<p>The Reverend Gary Davis, was a younger disciple of Blind Willie Johnson\u2019s music.\u00a0 He had developed his own ways to avoid being swindled.\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.davidbromberg.net\/\">David Bromberg<\/a>, his student and \u201clead boy\u201d shared this story:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe would get around Harlem\u2026 doing the street singing, however his guitars were constantly being stolen from him, so he always had a pistol and if you walked into the house and he was asleep in the chair he&#8217;d pull it on you.\u00a0 As soon as he woke up, the first thing he did was draw a pistol.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/3_Hbuf6FEoY\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>David Bromberg also points out that, \u201cYou listen to the phrasing and tone, the phrasing is preaching and that&#8217;s the huge difference between black Blues guitar players and white Blues guitar players.\u00a0 White Blues guitar players don&#8217;t take a breath and preachers make their notes more important by rest, playing rests. It&#8217;s interesting that at his funeral no one even mentioned that he played guitar.\u00a0 They spoke about what a great preacher he was and that was what was important to the congregation which gave him his last rites.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u00a0The Rev. Gary Davis was a remarkable performer: an original and virtuosic guitarist, and a dramatic and often rawly beautiful singer. It was this inflection and timing that influenced the work of Roy Coder, Bob Dylan and countless others after them.\u00a0 But, the basis for all this influence was the reverend\u2019s evangelical mission.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cIt makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck.\u00a0 He did not articulate a single word.\u00a0 He hummed it and sang it and played it with a bottle-neck that sounded like it was really a razor blade.\u00a0 He was experiencing it and he communicated it extraordinarily, but it was his experience that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[18,20,16,19,21],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.heavenlysight.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.heavenlysight.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.heavenlysight.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.heavenlysight.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.heavenlysight.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=255"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.heavenlysight.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258,"href":"http:\/\/blog.heavenlysight.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions\/258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.heavenlysight.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.heavenlysight.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.heavenlysight.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}