No figure has had a more profound effect on blues music than Robert Johnson. A grand(iose) statement, to be sure, but given the rarity of film footage and photographs of the man, plus the comparatively few recordings he made, his influence is all more astonishing. Forty-one tracks are collected on The Complete Recordings, released in 1990, by Columbia Records, containing every selection Johnson is known to have made (with the exception of an alternate take of “Traveling Riverside Blues” which eventually appeared on the 1998 compilation King of the Delta Blues Singers). To hear the combination of glee and dread emanating from the less-than- -three-minute performance of that song goes a long way in explaining the length of the shadow Johnson has cast over subsequent generations of like-minded musicians.
