By the time Vocalion got Speir’s test pressing of Robert they were using both a hotel in San Antonio and the company’s Dallas headquarters to make recordings and would continue to do so until World War II. Ernie Oertle, the Vocalion salesman Speir contacted, worked the Louisiana-Mississippi area from New Orleans, placing records in other outlets such as hardware, furniture, and drug stores in small towns. His territory included New Orleans to Columbus, Mississippi on Highway 82, then over to Greenville, and finally to Shreveport in northern Louisiana.
Ernie and Marie Oertle. Jane Templin
1936 Hooks Brothers studio photograph of Robert Johnson. © Delta Haze Corporation
Speir gave Oertle Robert’s name and his Memphis family’s address when Oertle made his monthly sales call, and before long news arrived at the Memphis home that Robert had been offered a chance to record in San Antonio. Robert could barely contain his pride and told all his friends he was going to San Antonio to record. He even bragged to Elizabeth Moore about it. “I’m leavin’. I don’t know when I’ll be back, ’cause I’m goin’ over there for a good while. But I’m goin’ over in Texas.” Elizabeth asked, “‘Yeah, boy you gonna get way over there?’ He say, ‘Yeah, but I’m gonna be makin’ music whilst I’se over there.’”3
At the 285 Georgia Street home of the Spencer family that also housed Carrie and her husband, Louis, there was great excitement. Their son Louis Jr., who had recently joined the navy, was home on leave dressed in his military apparel. Robert wanted to have a formal photo of him taken as a professional musician, just like the ones he had seen of Charley Patton, Blind Lemon Jefferson, or Blind Blake. Borrowing Louis Jr.’s slightly undersized hat and pinstripe suit he proudly walked into the Hooks Brothers studio on Beale Street to have his photo made.
Normally, photographers like the Hooks Brothers took several poses from different angles as backup pictures, but only one pose from that day has survived. That photo, originally in Carrie’s possession, shows Robert as a cheerful, optimistic young man, believing he was soon to achieve national success. His long fingers are prominently displayed holding a 1928 Gibson L-1 guitar while making a complex chord on the fretboard.
His family’s Georgia Street location also provided the background for his one true hit recording, “Terraplane Blues.” Little Sis Annye testified that Robert admired a 1936 green Hudson Terraplane that was frequently parked down the street from the Spencer home. “We had a neighbor that had a minister that visited the address at 277 Georgia Avenue. And he visited this family often. He had a 19—I don’t know whether it was a 1936—and he had a green Terraplane. The children that lived at 277 were around our ages, and my sister and the other two girls played together and we knew the family. And brother Robert would walk through on his way to Highway 61 and often I would walk with him. And he would walk by and admire this car. He would always take a good look at it. And of course we all looked at it because during that time cars were few. But most of them out there were the old T Model Fords and old cars. And this car was new.”4
While Robert was reveling in his new status as a recording artist, Oertle started to drive to Memphis with his wife, Marie, to find Speir’s new discovery. This was the first trip Marie had accompanied him on, but it would soon be Thanksgiving and she wanted to spend the holiday with her husband. By Saturday morning November 21, Ernie Oertle, Marie, and Robert Johnson were on the road to San Antonio. It was a trip Oertle had made many times before, but this time he had two passengers with him. The trip, more than seven hundred miles, took them three days, Marie recalled. It must have been a strange—and potentially dangerous—sight for 1936 Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas: a white couple driving with a young black man in their car. According to Marie’s recollections, the Oertles took a cue from the trick that John Lomax had developed while driving through the South with Lead Belly. Not wanting to be seen as a “nigger lover,” Lomax would sit in the backseat and have Lead Belly drive, pretending to be the white man’s chauffeur. The Oertles did the same. 5 Driving was not their only concern, however, for Robert would certainly not have been able to stay in the same accommodations as the Oertles. The two nights they needed lodging meant locating a colored hotel or boarding house for Robert and a whites-only room for the Oertles. But San Antonio was a hot recording location, so the three settled in for the long drive.
1936 Hudson Terraplane advertisement. Bruce Conforth
Speir explained why San Antonio was so important to the recording business: “They had two hundred thousand Mexicans living there, and they could record and sell their music in Mexico and South America. It was the best place in the country to find Mexican talent.” This Mexican context would feature prominently in Robert’s music, recordings, and myth.
The Okeh label had recorded in San Antonio as early as 1928, when Speir worked a session with Polk Brockman, the Atlanta-based director for their southern recordings. Satherly, who since 1934 had been working closely with Law, said they recorded in San Antonio for the emerging jukebox business, just as Speir had predicted. “We saw a real opportunity to sell more records to the jukebox market in the South and Southwest, so we started recording in Texas.”6 Recording in southern locations also saved the companies the added expense of bringing talent to either New York or Chicago. These savings could be used to pass on reduced costs to jukebox companies and increase total sales numbers. Satherly said Vocalion gave such companies new releases for nineteen cents each, instead of the normal thirty-five-cent retail price. Such savings were a natural inducement to buy more product. Vocalion had other methods of disseminating its artists’ music, however, in the form of releases in dime and department store markets. These records were not issued under the Vocalion name but rather were transferred to labels such as Perfect, Oriole, and Romeo, each selling for only twenty-five cents. While we have no actual numbers detailing how many records Vocalion pressed (save for the notion that Robert’s only hit, “Terraplane Blues,” sold in the thousands), we have exact numbers for the dime store pressings.7
Perfect Records (whose motto was “Better Records Can’t Be Made”) sold quite well, while Oriole Records (associated with the Sears & Roebuck stores) and Romeo Records (associated with S. H. Kress & Co) were far less successful, and for that reason accounted for fewer pressings. “Kind Hearted Woman Blues”/ “Terraplane Blues,” Robert’s first Vocalion release and his only hit, was, not surprisingly, the first release for the dime store market. The cheap versions came out on January 4, 1937. Perfect Records pressed nine hundred copies of the recordings, and Oriole ordered seventy-five. On February 10, 1937, Perfect Records led again with a pressing of nine hundred copies of Robert’s “32-20 Blues”/ “Last Fair Deal Gone Down.” Oriole again ordered a pressing of seventy-five copies. The companies must have seen promise in “Dead Shrimp Blues”/ “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom” for on March 10, 1937, Perfect pressed eight hundred copies of the songs, with Romeo pressing one hundred. “Cross Road Blues”/ “Ramblin’ on My Mind” was released on April 20, 1937, with eight hundred Perfect Records and seventy-five Romeo Records. “They’re Red Hot”/ “Come on in My Kitchen,” released on June 1, 1937, only interested Perfect Records enough to have them press five hundred copies, with Romeo pressing one hundred. After a brief hiatus Perfect was back on August 1, 1937, with a more modest four hundred, and Romeo with again seventy-five copies of “From Four Until Late”/ “Hell Hound on My Trail.” “Milkcow’s Calf Blues”/ “Malted Milk,” songs that the companies must have thought would have only minor appeal, was released by Perfect and Romeo on September 15, 1937, with Perfect pressing four hundred copies of the record and Romeo only fifty. Apparently, only Perfect Records had any interest in “Stones in My Passway”/ “I’m a Steady Rollin’ Man,” for on November 15, 1937, they became the only budget record company to release it, and then only in a short run of three hundred copies.
Whether these declining numbers are indicative of a deepening economic depression or a shift away from Robert’s style
of blues to the more urban Chicago sound is unknown, but in this secondary market Robert’s sixteen songs (eight records) accounted for five thousand total pressings by Perfect Records, four hundred pressings by Romeo Records, and only one hundred fifty by Oriole Records. But Robert was not getting paid by the number of records pressed or sold; he received a flat rate for each song he recorded. He probably had little knowledge of the number of sales his records would generate. His main interest was the personal pride he felt in becoming a recording artist and with his records issued and heard. With that in mind he prepared to fulfill his dreams.
By the time of the 1936 recording session, Satherly, who had to travel from New York to record in Texas, began shifting responsibilities to Don Law so that he could remain in the Big Apple to work primarily with other groups. After Law solved some technical problems for Vocalion in 1934, Satherly turned over most Texas sessions to him. Since Oertle had wired Law that he was bringing Robert to record, they met as soon as the three travelers arrived in town.
On Sunday, November 22, Robert and Ernie met Law at the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio, but since the hotel was whites only, Law found Robert a room in a boarding house on East Commerce Street in the city’s black section. Law paid for the room (about two dollars per week) and told him to be ready to record on Monday morning (November 23, 1936) in room 414 of the Gunter Hotel.
Previously, Johnson researchers have claimed the recording sessions were made in radio station KTSA, which had its offices on the mezzanine of the Gunter and its studios on the third floor. But Don Law was adamant that he rented and recorded in two rooms on the fourth floor: the company’s recording equipment was placed in one room and the musicians performed before a microphone in the second.
Downtown San Antonio. Bruce Conforth
San Antonio was particularly active that week celebrating the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday and the end of the Texas Centennial Year celebration. It was a jumping town, just as Robert liked it. Newspapers were filled with articles about celebrations in both the black and white communities. Aware of the city’s upbeat party mentality, the performer in Robert drove him to look for a place to play and sing. He wasn’t aware that only a week earlier the city’s mayor, C. K. Quin, had declared “war” on street crime, especially vagrancy, because of the influx of people for the holidays.
Robert, buoyed by his imminent recording session and used to playing before crowds of strangers, tried to take advantage of the holiday throngs by playing his music on the street as he had in dozens of other towns. He tried performing by the Southern Pacific railroad depot and the Harlem Grille, but police chief Owen Kilday had his officers out in force and Robert was quickly accosted and roughed up. The beating was severe enough to be noticeable several days later.
Gunter Hotel ca. 1930s. University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries Digital Collections
Robert protested that he wasn’t a vagrant but was in San Antonio to record for Vocalion, but to the police he was just another intinerant musician with no visible means of support. On his very first night in San Antonio, therefore, Robert was arrested, had his guitar broken beyond repair, and was thrown into jail on false vagrancy charges. False, of course, because Robert was right: he wasn’t a vagrant, was legitimately in San Antonio on business, and had a room in which to stay. After being booked into the San Antonio jail, Robert was given his one phone call, and he made it to Don Law at the Gunter Hotel.
Years later, Law’s son provided a detailed story of that Sunday night: “[My father] told the famous story of how once Robert came to San Antonio he took responsibility for putting him up in a boarding house and he cautioned Robert, he said that he’d be recording that next morning at ten o’clock and to get a good night’s sleep, maybe suspecting that that wasn’t likely. My father then went with my mother to the Gunter Hotel to have dinner with some friends, and as they just started dinner there was a phone at the hotel for my father and it was the local police. My father went to the phone. ‘Mr. Law, we have a young man here says his name is Robert Johnson and that he’s here to work for you. Is this correct?’ And my father says yes. ‘Well, we’ve arrested him and he’s in jail.’ [My father] went down to the police station and found that Robert had been roughed up, he’d been arrested for vagrancy. And my father, with some effort, extracted Robert from the police and brought him back to the boarding house. He said, ‘Robert, please, we’re going to try to record early, here’s breakfast money’—which in those days was forty-five cents—‘we’ll see you in the morning.’”8
Law made arrangements for Robert to play a borrowed guitar on Monday morning and returned to complete his dinner.9 Robert, without a guitar, at least wanted some company. Law’s son explained what happened next:“My father then went back to the hotel, sat back down with my mother, and hadn’t gotten very far into the meal when he was again summoned to the phone, and on the other end of the phone was Robert. ‘Mr. Law, I’m lonesome.’ And my father said ‘Bob, what do you mean you’re lonesome?’ And he said, ‘Well it seems that there’s this young lady here and she wants fifty cents and I lacks a nickel.’”10
The next morning Robert reported to the Gunter to begin his first recording session, but as a black man he was not allowed to enter through the front doors, and this irked him greatly. When he came to record he was forced to enter from the rear of the building, the colored only entrance. This was not the way he expected to start a career as a recording star. Rising above the racist slight, Robert began his first sessions around 10:00 am. He was the only artist in the studio for his entire session. Other artists that day recorded as late as 10:00 pm. Vocalion demanded a lot from its artists for the little money they paid them, and recording fifteen to eighteen different songs—with at least two takes of each—was considered an excellent day of work. It’s extremely important to remember that on that first Monday Robert Johnson was the only musician to record: he was alone in the studio. The only other people present were Don Law and Vincent Liebler, the recording engineer. This helps destroy a long-held myth about his recording technique.
Law and Liebler had the two rooms set up exactly as they wanted to ensure the best recording quality. H. C. Speir noted the physical setup of such a recording session: “We always put a person twelve to fifteen inches back from the mike. That way, you got the best recording of the voice.” Robert walked into room 414 and, receiving instructions from Law and Liebler, sat down in front of a microphone that had been placed in the middle of the room. In front of Robert, to the right of the mike, were two lights. One indicated the start time, and when the second light flashed on it signaled that the artist should end the song. Blind musicians would be accompanied by the recording director, who would stand next to them and used a friendly tap on the shoulder for the signal. Speir recalled: “We’d tap him on the shoulder when to start, and we’d tap him again at the end of the three minutes.” Most recordings ran from two and a half to three minutes, although some did exceed that time slightly. Songs were always timed before the actual recording began.
Cover design for the 1961 Columbia release Robert Johnson: King of the Delta Blues Singers. Courtesy of Sony Music Entertainment
Robert took his position in a chair in front of the mike, as depicted in the cover artwork on the 1961 Columbia reissue. Looking at the first Columbia album cover artwork, Elizabeth Moore said that was the way he always played. “He’d sit in a straight back chair and sway from side to side as he sung, pattin’ his feet to keep time with that old guitar of his.”11
The 1970 release of Robert Johnson: King of the Delta Blues Singers Vol. 2, however, showed Robert sitting before a microphone now located in a corner. That image of him represented both the speculation and myth that developed about how Robert recorded. It was simply wrong. This new artwork, based on an erroneous interpretation of actual events and how they were described, caused a number of blues historians to believe that Robert recorded facing the wall. He did not.
Lawrence Cohn, producer and record
executive who was involved in the 1961 release and who won a Grammy for the production of the 1991 boxed set, said that he spoke to Don Law, Don Law Jr., and Frank Driggs, a jazz historian, about that session. Driggs was also Columbia Records’ producer for both Robert Johnson albums and wrote the original liner notes for the 1961 release. In contrast to the idea that Robert recorded his songs facing the corner, Cohn recalled Law saying that Robert only turned his back several days later when asked to play for some Mexican musicians.12 Driggs confirmed this in his 1961 liner notes: “He [Law] asked [Johnson] to play guitar for a group of Mexican musicians gathered in a hotel room where the recording equipment had been set up. Embarrassed and suffering from a bad case of stage fright, Johnson turned his face to the wall, his back to the Mexican musicians.”13
Up Jumped the Devil Page 12