Bob Dylan, Robert Johnson: the music not the myth
Photos: Robert Johnson, blues legend
Time tends to reduce great artistry to caricature.
Bob Dylan -- wasn’t he a protest singer? The voice of a generation? The guy who provided the soundtrack for world peace and civil rights by writing “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They are A-Changin’ ”?
And what about Robert Johnson? Didn’t he sell his soul to the devil? At some dark crossroads in Mississippi? And then he invented the modern blues?
But Dylan wrote only a handful of protest songs, quickly realizing they were an artistic dead-end, and Johnson never had any documented meetings with Beelzebub. With Johnson’s 100th anniversary arriving Sunday, and Dylan’s 70th birthday on May 24, it’s time to take a fresh look. Myths aren’t why the music of these two artists still has the ability to bowl over listeners who encounter it for the first time. There’s something else, but what exactly?
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