Note: This entry is the second part of a series of posts inspired by an amazing article called “The Last Verse” by Burkhard Bilger from the April 28, 2008 edition of The New Yorker. It tells of two musicologists, Lance Ledbetter and Art Rosenbaum who are scouring the country for the last “old time” folk musicians, uninfluenced by recorded music that began spreading in the early 20th century.

When we listen to classic music we often assume this is the greatest music in history and has withstood the test of time. But often the reason that particular music survives is because it was available to the right people at the right time. In every age, works of equal genius to the “classics” have been lost to history.

Johann Sebastian Bach

This almost happened to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. After his death in 1750, Bach’s reputation declined. His work was hardly ever performed, and he was only known to a few devoted music historians. Granted those devotees were the “hip” crowd of the day, including Mozart and Beethoven, but his work was appreciated only by other musicians, and Bach remained unknown to the general public.

The one who brought Bach back into the public eye was the composer Felix Mendelssohn. His great aunt Sarah had studied under Bach’s son, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, so she had some old manuscripts. Mendelssohn took it upon himself to champion Bach’s work, and in 1829 he conducted the St. Matthew Passion in Berlin for the first time since Bach’s death. It must have been an incredible performance because it’s credited with restoring Bach’s reputation. We listen to Bach today because his old manuscripts turned up in the right place at the right time.

The Legend of Robert Johnson

Here’s a similar story about the great Mississippi bluesman Robert Johnson. When he died in 1938 he had only recorded 35 songs in two sessions in 1936 and 1937, and he sold maybe 5000 records. But one man who had heard of him was John Hammond. He was an impresario who had sought out Johnson in 1938 and eventually booked him for a show at Carnegie Hall in New York City. That might have been Johnson’s big break, but instead Johnson was poisoned in Clarksdale Mississippi by a lover’s jealous husband, and his great talent remained undiscovered.

But Hammond never forgot, and in 1961 he persuaded Columbia Records to issue an album cut from old 78s of Robert Johnson called “King of the Delta Blues Singers”. It didn’t sell very well at first, but a few hipsters caught on to the music early. Among those hipsters were Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, the Rolling Stones, and Led Zeppelin. Now Robert Johnson is considered the greatest bluesman of his day, even though he hardly made it out of juke joints in Memphis and the Mississippi Delta.

Inseperable from the story of Robert Johnson is the famous legend that Robert Johnson met with Satan at the crossroads and signed over his soul to play the blues and gain mastery of the guitar. Few people know that the same story used to be associated with another Mississippi bluesman named Tommy Johnson, who actually was considered the king of the Delta blues back when the two of them were alive. But once again, we listen to Robert Johnson today because his music turned up in the right place at the right time.

If you want to take a taste test, here are some samples of them both - Tommy Johnson here, Robert Johnson here. I’ll take Robert Johnson, but I’m alright with either of them. 

The Carter Family

Exhibit C: The Carter Family is regarded as the “First Family of Country Music”, popularizers of great songs in the bluegrass canon such as Can the Circle Be Unbroken , and their extended clan eventually grew to include the late great Johnny Cash. Their discovery came in 1927, when A.P., Sara, and Maybelle Carter drove from their home in Maces Spring Virginia to go to an open call for musicians in Bristol, Tennessee put out by record company talent scout / sound engineer / producer Ralph Peer. Here’s what Burkhard Bilger has to say:

In Bristol, Tennessee, in 1927, Ralph Peer persuaded a local newspaper editor to run a column on his search for musicians. Within days, they were lined up around the block–flushed like quail from the surrounding hills. Peer recorded Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family in a single week.

Some call these particular sessions the “Big Bang of Country Music“. No doubt the Carter Family was as talented and original as any musicians of the day, but they turned up in the right place at the right time. Their luck was that Maces Spring is only 26 miles from Bristol.

Again, quoting from Bilger:

Fame in folk music can be less a matter of talent than of opportunity, he said. People talk about the Delta blues because Charley Patton and Robert Johnson were from Mississippi. But if H. C. Speir hadn’t opened his music store in Jackson we might talk about the Georgia blues instead. “There were guys playing all around southern Georgia and Alabama,” (music historian and archaeologist Art) Rosenbaum said. “But the record companies never came through. A lot of artists had to go somewhere else to record. When you read about the Carter Family driving to Bristol–how many flat tires did they have to change?”

Suppose there was an equally talented family from Arkansas or Alabama that never saw a newspaper ad? They’re lost to history. And when I say lost, I mean really lost. The advent of recorded music and radio homogenized popular culture, so that musical traditions that had developed in isolation over generations were replaced by those that became popular.

Before 1945, … you could tell which side of a ridge a banjo player was from; after 1945, most just played like Earl Scruggs.

 Will The Circle Be Unbroken

But folk music by its definition is the music that people play. Bilger’s piece ends masterfully. Ledbetter and Rosenbaum record Mary Lomax, an 81 year old, performing music dating back to 1817. But after she’s finished, her great grandson wants to play a little bit and picks up the guitar. The song he then plays is a classic song, influenced by the King of the Delta Blues, Robert Johnson, dating back to 1971: Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven. This will become the folk music of the next generation. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.