The Search for Robert Johnson

Blues musician and "keeper of the flame"{{cite magazine

|title=The Search for Robert Johnson |first=Dave |last=Van Ronk |magazine=Entertainment Weekly

| date=7 August 1992 |url=http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,311387,00.html

|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080904212359/http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,311387,00.html

|url-status=dead

|archive-date=4 September 2008

|access-date=11 August 2010 }} John Hammond described his journey into the American South as "the quest of a lifetime".The Search for Robert Johnson, 1992, 4:48{{cite magazine |title=Portrait of a Phantom – Searching for Robert Johnson |author=DiGiacomo, Frank |date=November 2008 |magazine=Vanity Fair |url=http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2008/11/johnson200811?currentPage=all|access-date=16 August 2010 |quote=Hammond fils discovered Robert Johnson independently of his father, in the late 1950s, when he heard one of the bluesman’s songs on a Folkways album compilation. 'He was my inspiration to want to play,' Hammond says of Johnson.}}

His father, record producer and jazz impresario John H. Hammond, had planned and advertised for Robert Johnson to perform at Carnegie Hall, but Johnson died prior to the concert.{{cite book |title=Rock and roll is here to stay: an anthology|url=https://archive.org/details/rockrollishereto00will|url-access=registration|first=William |last=McKeen |publisher= W. W. Norton and Company, Inc. |page=[https://archive.org/details/rockrollishereto00will/page/85 85] |year=2000| isbn=978-0-393-04700-4 }}{{cite web |title=From Spiritual to Swing |work=Vanguard Records VAN70169 |url=http://www.jazzbymail.com/ViewAlbum.aspx?iPID=4237&iAID=1231&sPC=1231_4237&sLCD=VAN70169&sAN=Various%20Artists }}

The film is loosely organised around field work by Johnson researcher Robert "Mack" McCormick.{{cite book| last1=Pearson |first1=Barry Lee |last2=McCulloch |first2=Bill |year=2003| title=Robert Johnson: Lost and Found |publisher=University of Illinois Press |page=[https://archive.org/details/robertjohnsonlos00pear/page/n81 56] |isbn=978-0-252-02835-9 |url=https://archive.org/details/robertjohnsonlos00pear| url-access=registration }} Throughout the film, Hammond travels to locations where Johnson lived, performed, recorded, and purportedly where he died, and interviews two of Johnson's girlfriends and blues musicians who knew him, as well as two noted blues researchers. Locations include the "Delta, the floodplain of northwestern Mississippi, on into Arkansas and Texas, and into southern Mississippi, where he was born and died."The Search for Robert Johnson, 1992, 04:35

The film has been noted for its presentation of new evidence, at the time, about Johnson's life.

• Hammond describes Johnny Shines arriving in Helena, Arkansas, hearing there was a guitar player who thought highly of himself, and going to meet him. Shines re-enacts, with Hammond standing in for Johnson, the performance battle he had with Johnson on opposing street corners in Helena, where the two played and sang to pull away the other man's crowd of listeners. In the re-enactment scene, Shines gradually draws onlookers away from Hammond, "cutting heads," as described by Barbara Schroeder.{{Harvnb|Schroeder|2004|p=62}} Note: on pp. 63–64, the description of audience movement is reversed, at least compared to the Bravo broadcast and 2006 DCDMedia DVD release.The Search for Robert Johnson, 1992, 24:20
• Interviewing Willie Mae Powell, once Johnson's girlfriend, Hammond plays for her Johnson's recording of "Love in Vain" which she had not heard before. When Johnson calls out Willie Mae's name in the song, she is visibly surprised.{{Harvnb|Schroeder|2004|p=62}}The Search for Robert Johnson, 1992, 10:00–12:30
• In the first documented interview with Claude Johnson, son Gregory and grandson Richard,The Search for Robert Johnson, 1992, 26:51 Claude's birth certificate is shown, as he describes that "Robert Lee Johnson" is his father.Bustard, Clarke (20 September 1992). [https://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/timesdispatch/access/614791811.html?dids=614791811:614791811&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Sep+20%2C+1992&author=CLARKE+BUSTARD&pub=Richmond+Times+-+Dispatch&desc=JOHNSON%27S+SHORT+LIFE%2C+BIG+TALENT+REVISITED "Johnson's Short Life, Big Talent Revisited"]{{dead link|date=July 2024|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}. Richmond Times-Dispatch, VA. p. J-3. Pqarchiver. Retrieved 17 August 2010. Claude was legally declared to be Robert Johnson's son in 1998.{{cite web| url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-jun-02-na-claud2-story.html |title=Bluesman's Son Gets His Due| first=Ellen |last=Barry|work=Los Angeles Times |location=Los Angeles |date=2 June 2004|access-date=11 August 2010}}
• David Honeyboy Edwards, riding with Hammond through Greenwood, Mississippi, points out a yellow shotgun house where he says Johnson died.The Search for Robert Johnson, 1992, 40:08 This location was mapped in the National Park Service photographic documentary project "Trail of the Hellhound".Styles, Sean (2001). [http://www.nps.gov/history/delta/blues/people/robert_johnson.htm Trail of the Hellhound: Robert Johnson], U.S. National Park Service. Retrieved 4 April 2006.
• The film presents the first record of direct testimony by Johnson researcher Robert "Mack" McCormick. McCormick had not published previous research under his own name.
• In the film, McCormick discloses that Johnson's association with "satanic legends" started not merely as myth concocted by others, but had its roots in the death of Johnson's first wife during childbirth while he was away. Her family blamed Johnson, mainly for being an itinerant musician singing "the devil's music". McCormick asserts that Johnson was condemned so severely for her death that he gradually "became that person", associating himself with the devil in his music.The Search for Robert Johnson, 1992, 19:20
• Robert Johnson's death certificate is shown in the documentary, "answering some questions, but prompting even more." It had been located by blues researcher Gayle Dean Wardlow in 1968, and independently by McCormick, who also tracked down witnesses to events surrounding Johnson's poisoning and death.{{cite book| first1=Steve|last1= Jones|first2=Joli|last2=Jensen|year=2005 |title=Afterlife as afterimage: understanding posthumous fame |publisher=Peter Lang Publishing|page=217 |isbn=978-0-8204-6365-0 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CF7qxfN7A8kC&q=Robert+Johnson%27s+death+certificate,+located+by+blues+researcher+Gayle+Dean+Wardlow&pg=PA217}}The Search for Robert Johnson, 1992, 46:20

Guitarists Keith Richards and

Eric Clapton,

blues researchers Gayle Dean Wardlow

and Robert "Mack" McCormick, childhood acquaintance Wink Clark,

Nat Richardson, a "juke house" owner's son,

Delta blues musicians David Honeyboy Edwards and

Johnny Shines,

girlfriends Willie Mae Powell and

'Queen' Elizabeth,

discovered son Claud Johnson, his son Gregory and grandson Richard,

Greenwood Councillor David Jordan, and

cemetery attendant Miller Carter were all interviewed for the film.[http://www.classicaltv.com/v875/the-search-for-robert-johnson The Search for Robert Johnson – Program Notes] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110514001934/http://www.classicaltv.com/v875/the-search-for-robert-johnson |date=14 May 2011 }} ClassicalTV.comThe Search for Robert Johnson, 1992.

The film received positive reviews, especially from musicians and music critics. Upon its broadcast in 1992, UK producer and blues critic Neil Slaven, quoted later by Schroeder, wrote that the film "encompasses a detective story overlaid with folk memory, its interviews succinctly to the point, containing humor, superstition, and contextural information in equal parts."{{cite journal |last=Slaven |first=Neil |date=June 1992 |title=From Channel 4 Till Late: (Or Where Do We Go from LaVere?) |journal=Blues & Rhythm, the Gospel Truth |issue= 70|page=22}}

Folk singer Dave Van Ronk, reviewing the released video for Entertainment Weekly, wrote of its "lucid narration," and gave the film an "A," satisfied that it stayed focused on the music.

Chicago Tribune reviewer Bill Dahl's four-star review termed the film "fascinating"{{cite web | title=The Search for Robert Johnson | date=26 November 1992 |first=Bill |last=Dahl |work=Chicago Tribune |url=http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1992-11-26/features/9204180213_1_robert-johnson-david-honeyboy-hammond |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120523182506/http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1992-11-26/features/9204180213_1_robert-johnson-david-honeyboy-hammond |url-status=dead |archive-date=23 May 2012 |access-date=11 August 2010}} and summarised, "Questions remain about this blues legend who claimed he sold his soul to achieve musical immortality, but this exceptional video answers a great many of them."

Prior to its showing on American network Bravo, a 1994 New York Times review described the film as "outstanding" and "a riveting combination of biography and American history."{{cite web

|title=Television Review; A British Perspective on Two Blues Legends|first=John J. |last=O'Connor | date=18 July 1994 |work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1994/07/18/arts/television-review-a-british-perspective-on-two-blues-legends.html|access-date=11 August 2010}}

Upon the Sony DVD's release in 2000, Ian Morris of MichaelDVD.com rated the film itself at 4.5/5 stars, calling it "like manna from heaven for a music aficionado like myself," and "an almost essential purchase about one of the true legends of music," while faulting the DVD's video quality and lack of closed captions, for an aggregate score of 4/5 stars.{{cite web |last=Morris |first=Ian |title=The Search for Robert Johnson |url=http://www.michaeldvd.com.au/Reviews/SearchForRobertJohnson.html |publisher=Michael Demtschyna |work=MichaelDVD.com| date=1 April 1991 |access-date=11 August 2010}} Review.

In 2004, author Patricia R. Schroeder analysed the film in depth in Robert Johnson, Mythmaking, and Contemporary American Culture, writing that the film is "a well researched attempt to recover what is knowable about the historical Robert Johnson. It was well received by critics, as Emmy-winner Chris Hunt's documentaries on musical figures usually are."

But Schroeder found that the film's documentary goals of objectivity and authenticity were partly undercut, first by the lavish praise heaped upon Johnson early in the film and Hammond's self-acknowledged "quest", and second because Hammond was featured prominently in the film playing long passages of several Johnson songs, and seeming to stand in for Johnson in sessions and in the re-enactment of headcutting.{{Harvnb|Schroeder|2004|pp=62–64}}

:TV: UK Channel 4, 1992.

:VHS: Sony Music Video 49113. 1992.{{cite book |title=Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues |last=Wald|first= Elijah |year=2004 |publisher=Amistad/HarperCollins |isbn=0-06-052423-5 |page= 301 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=c37R7u3tvsoC&pg=PA301 |access-date=11 August 2010}} 72 minutes.

:DVD: Sony Music. 72 minutes. 31 October 2000 ASIN: B000050IKX UPC: 007464491139

:DVD: Digital Classics. 8 May 2006. ASIN: B000EU1LOA[http://www.digitalclassicsdvd.co.uk/product/58 Rock and pop dvds > The Search For Robert Johnson] product page. Digital Classics DVD, DCD Media. (UK). Retrieved 11 August 2010.

{{reflist}}

{{refbegin}}

• {{cite video |title=The Search for Robert Johnson |people=John Hammond Jr. (Host), David Hunt (Prod., Dir.) |date=1991 |publisher=Channel 4 hosted at ClassicalTV.com |work=Iambic Productions |medium=Television production |format=Flash video, 54:01 |url=http://www.classicaltv.com/v875/the-search-for-robert-johnson |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110514001934/http://www.classicaltv.com/v875/the-search-for-robert-johnson |archive-date=14 May 2011}}
• {{cite book| title=Robert Johnson, mythmaking, and contemporary American culture|first=Patricia R.|last=Schroeder|publisher=University of Illinois Press|year=2004|isbn=978-0-252-02915-8|page=64|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dvag7r4d5K4C&pg=PA64 |access-date=11 August 2010}}

{{refend}}

• {{IMDb title|id=0272834|title=The Search for Robert Johnson}}
• {{cite magazine |title=The Search for Robert Johnson |format=Preview |author= Steve Garbarino|date=15 August 1992 |magazine=Billboard |page=62 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HhIEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA62 |volume= 104 |issue= 33|issn=0006-2510}}

{{Robert Johnson}}

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Category:British documentary television films

Category:1991 films

Category:1991 documentary films

Category:Documentary films about blues music and musicians

Category:Robert Johnson

Category:1991 television films

Category:1990s British films

Category:British musical documentary films