Interpreting Authenticity: Yodeling Brakemen and Deals with the Devil

Turgid, slow-moving rivers in African jungles is how John Lomax, a noted folklorist, described the music he was searching for in American prisons (Barker 15). More specifically, he was looking for primitive music: what he saw as authentic music. This oft-discussed concept of authenticity in modern popular music can be broken down into three clear categories: musical authenticity, where the music is exactly what it says it is (Barker x), cultural authenticity, which reflects a cultural tradition, and personal authenticity, where the music reflects the people who created it. Jimmie Rodgers and Robert Johnson were two early musicians who tangled with this concept of authenticity. Jimmie Rodgers music, despite being authentically old-timey by design, was actually fresh and innovative. Robert Johnson, on the other hand, was ignored in his lifetime, but is now considered the essential Delta blues musician by the authenticity-fetishizing rocknrollers of the 1960s. Both were highly skilled performers adept at generating personal authenticity, which both utilized to market their music.

Jimmie Rodgers: Nobody knows but me. In the mid-1920s, an enterprising talent scout named Ralph Peer set off for Bristol, a town on the border of Virginia and Tennessee, to locate and record talented hillbilly musicians. More specifically, he was looking for old songs that had not yet been copyrighted and newly written songs that sounded old fashioned to fill the recently discovered demand for old-time tunes (Peterson 33). Loosely employed by Victor Records, his job was to shape selections

to the preferences of the buying public (34), and the current hot items in popular music were artists who could fashion songs that seemed old fashioned (35). Jimmie Rodgers had, from his youth, strived to be an entertainer (43), and, by the time he auditioned for Peer, he was already a professional entertainer prepared to deliver what [was] required rather than that of a person expressing his own feelings in song (33). In fact, Rodgers was not interested in old timey stuff (44); he even had contempt for everything that was not up-to-date (48). Peer noticed his talent and skill, and Rodgers became a major star. Rodgers was even featured in a short film, The Singing Brakeman, where he dressed up as a railroad worker and played songs, like Waiting for a Train, in which he claims that he [hasnt] got a nickel, not a penny I can show, and that his heart is full of pain. This was a perfect example of how personal authenticity is entirely constructed: he had the ability to make his music seem an expression of his own personal feelings (48), regardless of how he actually felt. Rodgers himself would likely have preferred to play modern jazz instead of old-timey music. Luckily, thanks to the first generation of A&R men [who] did not try to impose their own aesthetic standards [Rodgers had] great artistic freedom (47). He took advantage of this by recording blues songs, songs with a Hawaiian sound, and songs with jazz backings (46). This is best exemplified by his song Blue Yodel No. 9, which features him singing a straight blues line as Louis Armstrong, the hottest musician around, plays jazzy trumpet licks over top. Rodgers, despite Peers desire for authenticity, was collaborating, appropriating, adapting, and, most importantly, innovating. It is ironic that, despite Rodgers seminal innovation in country music, major proponents of the genre would, within 30 years, become concerned about its purity whether a performer is

really country (Jensen 8). This concept of authentic country was often defined negatively, by saying country is not pop. It is not jazz (Jensen 7), when, in actuality, elements from all over the map converged as they did in Blue Yodel No. 9 to create the basis for the genre. Rodgers ended up creating music that was, in its time, popular, eclectic, and directly influential on a diverse group of artists, from Bob Wills and western swing, to Howling Wolf and the blues.

Robert Johnson: Didnt nobody seem to know me, babe, everybody pass me by. There was another, similar artist whose path went in a somewhat opposite direction: like Rodgers, he was an eclectic musician and a gifted performer, but his recordings only reveal a homogenous style of music, mostly ignored by his peers. However, this artists music would go on to influence many after his death, some of whom would forever preserve his music in the name of authenticity. This musician was Robert Johnson. Eric Clapton, one of the most important musicians of all time, described Johnsons recordings as the finest music Ive ever heard (Eric Clapton). To put it simply, Johnson was the ultimate blues legend who to many modern listeners is all of early blues (Wald 105). As a person, Johnson was, as described by Robert Lockwood, son of one of his steady girlfriends, a loner and a drifter (113). Musically, he was blessed with a beautiful high voice, a tragic voice (Marcus 26) and an uncanny facility on guitar (Wald 117). Johnny Shines, one of his traveling companions, also describes his built-in showmanship radar [how] he could just stop anywhere and draw a crowd of people, doing anything (117). These traits were common to all the Delta greats, but, while older Delta players like Patton and House were largely tied to a rural, regional repertoire, Johnson perform[ed] everything from hillbilly tunes to Hollywood cowboy songs and Bing

Crosby numbers (118). Shines agreed, noting that [he] and I would travel anywhere to play and make some money (115), clearly unconcerned with the concept of authenticity. While drifting through Jackson, Mississippi around 1936, Johnson met with H.C. Speir, a talent scout with a particular interest in the regional blues. Speir was impressed by Johnsons playing, and Johnson ended up recording sixteen sides over the next couple of years, before his death in 1938. Out of these recordings, there was but one moderately good seller, Terraplane Blues [which] did not set the blues world on fire (121). The song itself is anxious, with real intensity to it, emphasized by the jerking slide guitar. While the lyrics arent easily understood, Johnsons singing style showcases his range and his power: the recording even distorts midway through when he sings a little more emphatically than the engineers were expecting. Despite their relative lack of success back home, these records would end up being what Robert Crumb, a known blues collector, described as the Dead Sea Scrolls of Record Collecting. Blues aficionados fetishize his records, driving prices to extraordinary levels. When one was found at a local record store, it made the newspapers. His modern popularity begin with King of the Delta Blues Singers, a widely available LP first pressed in 1961. This record provided easy access to his music and influenced countless rock musicians of the 1960s and onward. The music itself is inspirational: Greil Marcus, a music critic, describes his guitar playing as rocknroll fun (27), stating that he sounds like a complete rocknroll band (21). He then contends that Johnsons presence can be felt behind many of the best modern guitar players (21). John Hammond, a blues artist of the 1960s, supports that claim in a film, The Search for Robert Johnson, where he performed nearly indistinguishable versions of Johnsons songs. Although Johnsons music deeply inspired artists such as Hammond, the worship of authenticity has a cost. This particular strain, where artists try to be exactly like the original,

runs deep in the blues, and ended up doing tremendous damage to [it] by codifying certain traditions and limiting innovation (Barker xi). This is the crux of the problem of authenticity: it is directly opposed to musical innovation. Listeners also found another compelling component about Johnson: the allure of the underworld and the unknown. In Johnsons music, Marcus hears old echoes of sin and damnation, and demons in his songs (22). He hears a man who went farther into the blues than anyone else (23) and had a vision of a world without salvation, redemption or rest (21). These descriptions all originate from a mysterious tale about how Johnson sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his guitar playing abilities. Its most clear in his song Hellhound on My Trail, recorded shortly before his premature death. Its an utterly terrifying recording, evoking images of Johnson frightened, running down his road, but glancing over his shoulder with a smile (35). While the tune falls into David Wondrichs senegambian mode, it does so with a scary, dissonant twist. Its lyrics emphasize the atmosphere, describing blues falling down like hail, and how the wind is risin Is this story of devils and hellhounds a truly authentic component of Johnsons life? Marcus asserts that few men could brag like Robert Johnson (23), and Hammond notes that Johnson himself would encourage the tales of his dealing with the devil: he was, after all, a terrible big chatterbox (Wald 111) and a showman. Mysterious legends surrounding ones playing abilities are certain to translate to more interest, bookings, and money. In a manner similar to Rodgers old-timey persona, the deal with the devil seems more a marketing gimmick than an authentic tale, and a very successful one at that.

Both Jimmie Rodgers and Robert Johnson were gifted performers with a penchant for showmanship. This allowed them to create carefully crafted images of personal authenticity, which clearly resonated with their fans, regardless of whether those fans were from the 1920s or the 1960s. So, can an artist ever be truly authentic, or completely sincere in all their music? As shown by Rodgers and Johnson, probably not; authenticity is a goal that can never be fully attained (Barker x), an aspect of a performance or a recording that must be consciously chosen and rehearsed, often done for commercial reasons. However, although something cannot be truly authentic, this doesnt mean we should ignore authenticity entirely: Rodgers and Johnson are but two examples of artists who, in pursuing the goal of authenticity, ended up inspiring whole generations of musicians with their fantastic, innovative music.

Sources Consulted Barker, Hugh, and Yuval Taylor. Faking It: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music. New York: W. W. Norton, 2007. X-27. Print. "Eric Clapton: Talkin' about His Inspiration." Interview. Eric Clapton: Talkin' about His Inspiration. NBC Today, 23 Mar. 2004. Web. 08 Mar. 2013. <http://www.nbcnews.com/id/4584867/site/todayshow/ns/today/t/eric-clapton-talkinabout-his-inspiration/>. Jensen, Joli. "Authenticity, Genre, and Crossover." The Nashville Sound: Authenticity, Commercialization, and Country Music. Nashville: Vanderbilt UP, 1998. 7-8. Print. Marcus, Greil. "Robert Johnson: 1938." Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1975. 19-35. Print. Peterson, Richard A. "The Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers." Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1997. 33-51. Print. "Robert Johnson." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 03 July 2013. Web. 08 Mar. 2013. The Search for Robert Johnson. Dir. Chris Hunt. Perf. John Hammond Jr. Iambic Productions, 1992. The Singing Brakeman. Dir. Basil Smith. Perf. Jimmie Rodgers. Columbia Pictures Corporation, 1930. Wald, Elijah. "A Live Remembered." Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues. New York: Amistad, 2004. 105-25. Print. Wondrich, David. Stomp and Swerve: American Music Gets Hot, 1843-1924. Chicago, IL: Chicago Review, 2003.