BIOGRAPHY OF A PHANTOM

A dogged researcher illuminates the mysteries and majesty of Robert Johnson.

McCormick (1930-2015), an influential musicologist and folklorist, was known for the massive archive he had assembled on seminal blues artists as well as his refusal to share so much of it. He dubbed his archive “the Monster,” and he struggled to tame it into book form, which makes this long-awaited publication a significant event in music scholarship. Edited by Troutman, a curator of American music at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, this volume contains an early draft of the Johnson manuscript that the author had revised for decades and ultimately abandoned before his death, in addition to Troutman’s preface and afterword. It’s a highly readable account of his discoveries. When he began, McCormick had little useful information about his subject beyond the towns mentioned in Johnson’s recordings, which had been reissued to great acclaim. He proceeded through the Mississippi Delta area, knocking on doors and asking questions, a White outsider in predominantly Black communities. There were no photos of Johnson and almost no information on where he was born; nor was there agreement that his name was actually Robert Johnson. Still, McCormick pushed on, diligently recording his findings in text and photos. He describes how he shared the reissue of Johnson’s recordings with those who had heard the music in person, and he records eyewitness testimony from the night of his murder, likely poisoned by a man who had warned Johnson away from a woman. This edited version of the manuscript could stand on its own as a revelation, but the contextual material adds to the intrigue. Troutman interrogates some of McCormick’s methods while raising the larger issues of race and appropriation. “Rather than collaborate with living Black intellectuals to study Black music,” writes Troutman, many White collectors and writers “preferred to pursue…what they considered the authentic Black experience, the real, through their own, self-guided, personal quests of blues discovery.”

A worthwhile investigation into a true legend of the blues.