Robert Johnson, the Thomas Jefferson of the Blues

During the workshop with Rory Block at FloydFest5 we were asked by moderator, John Lohman of the Virginia Folklife Foundation, to comment on the importance of Robert Johnson. I responded with a statement I've made for years, "Robert Johnson is the Thomas Jefferson of the blues." Such a statement begs further explanation, which of course I'm always ready to offer!

RJ and TJ were both what I respectfully refer to as "great assimilators." By this I mean that they were both men of their times and did what all great artists/authors do -- steal from the best, take their ideas apart, and put them back together to make a statement that is personal yet has universal appeal.

TJ "stole" from European Enlightenment thinkers (John Locke's "Second treatiseon Government" most directly), and American contemporaries like Thomas Paine. Natural law, natural rights, self-determination, common sense and many other ideas and concepts espoused in the Declaration of Independence all have antecedents in the earlier writing of other authors. Yet, Jefferson synthesized them in a way that was pertinent and relevant to his time and place.

RJ also "stole" from the best of his era. Some were players from his region like Son House, others were probably no more than voices from records like Peetie Wheatstraw, Skip James, Blind Blake, Scrapper Blackwell and others. RJ, more than any other blues man of his era, was self-consciously an artist. While his early demise certainly added to his myth, his ability to take licks and lyrics from others, yet completely "own" them certainly is part of the reason he is so influential and imitated today.

Like TJ, RJ was a man of and for his time. Both men are testaments to the scholarly adage (most often attributed to Wilson Mizner -- but he probably stole it from someone else), "If you steal from one author, it's plagiarism; if you steal from many, it's research." Perhaps even more pertinently, to quote the dark poet Nick Tosches, "To steal consciously is the way of art and craft. To steal through breath is the way of wisdom and of art that transcends."