By IAN MUNRO of The Age, Melbourne
Every time I’m walking down the street,
Some pretty mama starts breaking down with me,
Stop breakin’ down, yeah stop breakin’ down,
The stuff I got’ll bust your brains out baby,
yeah, it’ll make you lose your mind
You Saturday night women, you love to ape and clown,
You won’t do nothin but tear a good man’s reputation down.
IT IS a strange and distinctive lyric. Strange, too, that 63 years after it was first laid down in a Dallas recording studio by an itinerant black guitarist it should be the subject of a copyright legal battle in a Californian court.
There are seven songs that claim the title Stop Breakin’ Down, but only two of them have Saturday night women who ape and clown. Or the stuff to bust your brains out.
There’s the one Rolling Stones fans know from the 1972 double album Exile On Main Street, and there’s the one recorded by Robert Johnson in the heat of a northern summer back in June, 1937.
Maybe stranger yet, maintaining a watching brief on that court case – due sometime this year or next – is a lawyer in Melbourne’s outer eastern suburb of Park Orchards: home to expansive real estate on double blocks, private tennis courts and swimming pools. Its green hills and leafy rural aspects are strikingly at odds with the dusty brown Mississippi delta that spawned the music.
The folk revival of the 1950s and ’60s created a new audience for ageing blues singers who were coaxed out of retirement and on to stages at colleges and folk festivals. For some it offered a belated widespread recognition, even concert tours in Europe.
About the time the Stones were recording their album, Robert Eagle made his own musical odyssey to the United States to find his heroes, the little-known bluesmen he had been listening to since his late teens. He was 26, with a new law degree. By that time, long after the folk revivals, it seemed like a last chance to make direct contact with the makers of the music that moved him, although some had a good few years in them yet.
Eagle saw and heard Howling Wolf, Muddy Waters, the Kings – Albert and BB – even tracked down the widow of the second Sonny Boy Williamson. He tried to arrange gigs for musicians, interviewed them or their relatives and wrote articles for blues magazines.
“I went there to see as many of the people I was fanatical about as I could,” Eagle says. “I felt I had to see them live, they were people who fascinated me so much. I stayed about seven months, saw a lot of the pre-war and the post-war people.
“I got a three-month bus pass on Greyhound. You could travel anywhere you liked and that took me to about 44 states in search of musicians or their relatives.”
Robert Johnson and his life, however, remained a mystery. It was known Johnson had died, of unnatural causes, in 1938. How he died was less clear. There were stories about jealous rivals poisoning him and one account, Eagle says, suggests rabies infection. That had him curled up in his death throes on the floor of a house in Greenwood, Mississippi, racked with pain and barking like a dog.
WHAT remained was the music, an extraordinary legacy that, from 29 recorded songs, locates him as one of the most influential musicians of the past half-century. His songs were released on albums in 1961 and 1970 and since being re-released on CD in 1990 have sold more than two million discs. Apart from the Rolling Stones, his songs were covered by Cream, Jerry Garcia, the Steve Miller Band, Led Zeppelin, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and, more recently in solo guise, Eric Clapton, who reportedly said Johnson was “the most important influence I’ve had in my life and always will be”.
So where does Robert Eagle fit in all this?
During a stay in Chicago for the 1972 blues festival he met an American kid called Stephen La Vere, a fellow enthusiast. Like Eagle, he was travelling through the South tracing old singers and their families, trying to fit the pieces to old mysteries.
A couple of years later, La Vere found Robert Johnson’s half-sister, Carrie, then believed to be his only surviving relative. Only two photographs of Johnson are known to exist, both supplied by Carrie, although a third photograph of the singer is suspected to be in the hands of a collector.
Carrie also gave La Vere her authority to claim copyright on all her brother’s material in 1975. A competing claim held up its recognition until about 10 years ago.
La Vere’s claim on copyright was recognised in the US. In return, he and Carrie shared the royalty income. LaVere then asked Eagle to act as his agent in Australia, effectively becoming the sub-publisher of Johnson’s music.
“I started by securing the rights in Australia,” Eagle says. “The thing that happened at that stage, Clapton had his Unplugged album which recorded two of the songs, so while that was going on I was the sixth-biggest music publisher in Australia.
“I am the sub-publisher for Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, and more recently the licensee for the world outside the US and Canada, and that relies more on my knowledge of the music than my qualifications as a lawyer.
“Because Johnson died in 1938 there was an assumption, I guess, that the works were public domain, and in fact the first issues by Colombia specifically said they were public domain,” Eagle says.
“That’s partly why there were claims by a number of people in Europe to have either written the songs or to have adapted them as public domain works and the Rolling Stones are one example – they recorded two of the songs and claimed the arrangements.”
The first song recorded by the Stones, Love In Vain, is listed as written by someone called Payne. The name, if not the identity, is immediately recognisable to Eagle. “Woody Payne, whoever he may be, claimed all the Johnson songs,” he says. “In the US, Woody Payne magically became T.Colley. Even though (in music publishing records) they have different writer numbers, they are shown as writing the same songs.”
Johnson died penniless, although his rich vein of creativity was mined by other musicians, black and white, for decades. Now he has become a small industry. There are numerous variations of the Robert Johnson T-shirt. There’s the Robert Johnson whiskey tumblers and drink coasters. There’s the Robert Johnson guitar slide. There are Robert Johnson pencils and fridge magnets. There has been, and likely will be again, a Robert Johnson guitar.
NONE of it would exist without the music and, despite having established copyright, enforcing that remains “one continuous battle with different fronts”, Eagle says.
“It’s more to do with convincing the society in the particular country that you do have the authority for copyright – and once you get to that position you are right – but it’s a battle fought a number of times a year.
“There are a whole lot of people who really don’t understand copyright law – as recording artists, producers, whatever – and they assume, simply because it’s been a long time, that the music is in public domain, and that’s not limited to Robert Johnson. Happy Birthday to You just passed out of copyright in the last couple of years and just think how many times copyright was breached.”
Johnson’s half-sister has died but after LaVere located her, Johnson’s illegitimate son Claude was also found. He has been confirmed as the beneficiary of the estate and has received about $US1.25million in royalty income.
Several books and at least one documentary have sought to tell the story of Johnson’s brief life. Eagle has been instrumental in bringing to Australia a new film documentary – or docu-drama since it uses re-enactments as well as traditional documentary techniques – Can’t You Hear The Wind Howl?. It will have its first screening in Australia tonight and tomorrow night, at Brunswick’s Paramount Club, the highlight of a blues film festival.
“It’s essentially relating Johnson’s life story through the people that knew him and through other evidence that is not available through living witnesses,” Eagle says. “It’s probably the best-researched and in a lot of ways the best-performed film about his life at this stage, and it’s really hard to see that anyone’s going to improve on it given it’s over 60 years since he died. At the same time, it is entertaining. It’s not dry-as-dust documentary.”
Carrie had not understood how extensively her brother had shaped music, Eagle says. “He was fondly remembered by the family because he was an entertainer, but, as far as his broad influence on music worldwide, I don’t think she had any idea.
“Probably in the 1970s it was not that obvious, certainly not as obvious as it is now. It wasn’t viewed as a music of respect in the same way it is now. It was just rock and roll.
“What’s happened is the original rock-and-rollers such as myself have matured, well, attained maturity anyway. The next generation coming on now revere the ’60s British rockers in particular as demigods, and anyone who is regarded in turn by them as a demigod is OK. So anyone who owns one blues record, owns Robert Johnson.
“The progress and development of blues is analogous to jazz. It’s about a generation behind jazz in terms of social acceptance. While jazz was not respectable in its early years, it’s now almost as respectable as classical music and I think blues will follow on simply because it’s music which conveys emotion, has universal standards and universal appeal.
“If you regard them as having some analogous context, then Robert Johnson is probably an analogy for Louis Armstrong.”
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INFAMOUS BLUES GUITARIST ROBERT JOHNSON
By TERRY REILLY for The Age, Melbourne
Did Robert Johnson become a larger-than-life character after death? “In terms of influence, he was greater in death than in life,” says Bob Eagle, who represents the Mississippi bluesman’s estate. “He had an immediacy of appeal to people. There are frequent tales by people like Johnny Shines of Robert Johnson performing and the place going quiet until he realised everyone was crying.”
Eagle, a lawyer and the licensee of the international copyright for Robert Johnson’s estate, will host the Red Hot & Blue Blues Film Festival at the Paramount Club in Brunswick West this weekend. Opening the program is Can’t You Hear the Wind Howl?, Peter Meyer’s acclaimed, 10 yearsinthemaking docudrama about Johnson’s short, haunted life. Screening for the first time in Australia, it debuted in the States when Johnson was admitted to the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame in 1998.
With narration by Danny Glover and Keb Mo’ (Kevin Moore) miming to the original recordings, the film is considered the best account of the musician’s life.
Considering he died in 1938, the compelling interest in Johnson extends beyond his influence on rock’n’roll (the Rolling Stones, Cream) and the Delta and Chicago blues (Muddy Waters, Elmore James). He has been the focus of detailed research, and the resurfacing of two photos when none were thought to be available was a revelation. Consider: Johnson died at 27, recorded just 29 tracks (for the Vocalion label) and only one guitar solo (Kind Hearted Woman Blues). He was an itinerant musician, a heartbreaking womaniser and a rogue. The CD box, titled The Complete Recordings, released in 1990, has notched up doubleplatinum status.
Before he was allegedly poisoned in 1938 – tales of how he died vary – Johnson, eventually based in Helena, Arkansas, would be aware of his popularity only in the Delta and slightly beyond. Yet his piercing guitar phrases and lyrical intensity would endure and spread far beyond the flatlands of his region.
“He could play so well,” says Eagle, “but he must have considered the lyrics were far more important.” The autobiographical lyrics were probably an accurate soundtrack for his meandering life. One might deduce that Johnson made a deal with the devil at the crossroads, was in perennial torment with the hellhound on his trail and kept on the move, and had a woman who didn’t mean much.
“Poor Bob”, as he called himself, lived too hard, but not all the stories illustrate his dark side. Says Eagle: “Johnson’s cousin was only 12 when Johnson died, but recalls him coming into Drew, Mississippi, playing harmonica, with children hearing him up to five kilometres away, like the Pied Piper, following him until he reached where his relatives were staying.”