Johnson's musical career was unusual in many respects. He only recorded a grand total of 29 different songs in two recording sessions, one in 1937 and the other in 1938. Later in 1938, he died of unknown causes, when he was only 27 years old. He was a minor blues artist at the time without much in the way of sales or influence. But after his death, his musical stature grew and grew, particularly after most of his songs were released on an album for the first time in 1961. Eric Clapton has called him "the most important blues musician who ever lived." Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin has said it is Johnson "to whom we [as rock musicians] all owe our existence in some way." Many other famous musical acts have cited him as a major influence, including Bob Dylan, Fleetwood Mac, and the Rolling Stones.
If you want to read more about him, here's the link to his Wikipedia page:
Normally with these "Covered" albums, I usually just pick versions of the hits and other songs I especially like. But since Johnson only recorded 29 different songs, and he's had such a massive influence on music, I've included versions of every single one of those 29 songs. (That includes a few that were covers, or at least were partially inspired by other songs.) Many are famous songs, like "Crossroads" and "Sweet Home Chicago." But others are rather obscure, where I've had to scratch and scrape to find any decent cover versions. However, I'm ultimately happy that I've found good versions for every song.
As you'll see here, even though Johnson died in 1938, the first cover doesn't come from 1951, and the vast majority are from the 1960s or later. That's a reflection of what I mentioned above, that he didn't have much influence until decades after his death. I tried hard to include a range of different artists. But this has three songs sung by Eric Clapton, one when he was part of John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, one when he was part of Cream, and one when he was a solo artist. Furthermore, there's another Cream song ("Four Until Late") that's not sung by him. I felt obliged to include these versions because I consider them the definitive ones.
Note that if you don't like blues music, you're probably not going to like this. This is blues through and through, without poppy crossover versions. That said, there is a lot of variety here within the blues genre, due to the wide range of different artists, plus a mix of acoustic and full band performances.
01 Dust My Broom (Elmore James)
02 Sweet Home Chicago (Junior Parker)
03 Four until Late (Cream)
04 Ramblin' on My Mind (Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton)
05 Crossroads (Cream)
06 Love in Vain (Rolling Stones)
07 Travelling Riverside Blues (Led Zeppelin)
08 When You Got a Good Friend (Johnny Winter)
09 Walking Blues (Bonnie Raitt)
10 Come on in My Kitchen (Delaney & Bonnie)
11 Steady Rollin' Man (Eric Clapton)
12 Terraplane Blues (Foghat)
13 Malted Milk Blues (Lucinda Williams)
14 Preaching the Blues (Gun Club)
https://www.imagenetz.de/fH5rP
Robert Johnson was such an obscure figure in his lifetime that there literally are only three known photos of him (and one of those only came to light in 2020). So, needless to say, my options for cover art photos were limited! All three photos are black and white, so I colorized this one. The original was also rather grainy and low-res, but I did some tinkering in Photoshop to hopefully improve the picture quality.
Thank you, Paul!
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