| January 10th, 2006 03:04 PM |
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
Jan. 9, 2006, 9:18AM
Lost letter reveals tales of legendary bluesman Robert Johnson
Associated Press
DALLAS — The discovery of a long-lost letter offers rare insight into Robert Johnson's life and confirms that the bluesman recorded at a downtown Dallas building, music historians said.
Blues fans have long thought Johnson recorded 13 songs in 1937 in a building two blocks east of Dallas City Hall. The building was home to Brunswick Records at the time, but there was no known documentation to confirm where the recordings took place.
That was until San Diego blues enthusiast Tom Jacobson tracked down a 1961 letter unlocking the mystery.
In the letter, the producer of the recordings, Don Law, wrote that the session took place in a makeshift studio at the Brunswick Records office — a three-story building now owned by a drink distribution company.
Johnson died 18 months after the recordings at age 27, but his music lived on and was hugely influential on 1960s musicians like Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin.
"It's just an incredible document," Jacobson told the Dallas Morning News for its Monday editions. "It's an important piece of Americana about a musical genius."
Law was the only producer to record Johnson, including another session in San Antonio eight months before the Dallas recordings. Law died 23 years ago.
Jacobson donated the letter to the Library of Congress in December. It also includes information about other Johnson tales, like the night in San Antonio that he asked Law for money to pay a prostitute, and how he was so secretive about his guitar technique that he would face the wall while playing when other musicians were present.
Jacobson found the letter in the New York City basement of Frank Driggs, a former Columbia Records employee who wrote the liner notes for the 1961 release of Johnson's music, King of the Delta Blues.
Michael Taft, the head of folk culture archives at the Library of Congress, said the letter and recording site are important because so little is known about Johnson's life.
"It's a big deal for us," he said. "To finally be able to say this is the building he recorded in, that's a way of bringing Robert Johnson back to life."
The building's future is uncertain. Glazer's, a Dallas beverage distribution company, has owned the building since the 1950s and has been trying to sell it for years with no success, a company official said.
Another similar news story but a bit more detailed.
http://www.wfaa.com/sharedcontent/dws/ent/stories/010906dnglrobertjohnson.7e5a9b6.html
[Edited by Ten Thousand Motels] |
| January 10th, 2006 03:27 PM |
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| Saint Sway |
Keef has the original copy of Robert Johnsons Death Certificate.
he has it in a two-sided glass picture frame. He's joked about dangling it from the ceiling of his library, so that you could see both sides
on the back, it says he died of syphillus |
| January 10th, 2006 03:38 PM |
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
quote:
Saint Sway wrote:
Keef has the original copy of Robert Johnsons Death Certificate.
Do you know where he got it? |
| January 10th, 2006 03:45 PM |
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| Saint Sway |
he bought it on ebay
ha! J/K
according to Keef - and keep in mind that this is one of those typical Keef tales - he got if from some guys down south - that he cant name or bad thugs will come after him - and he had to go meet them in some special location and it cost him a Kings ranson and... blah blah blah... more Keef exagerations.... blah blah blah.
but whatever, he's got it. |
| January 10th, 2006 03:48 PM |
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| voodoopug |
quote:
Saint Sway wrote:
he bought it on ebay
ha! J/K
according to Keef - and keep in mind that this is one of those typical Keef tales - he got if from some guys down south - that he cant name or bad thugs will come after him - and he had to go meet them in some special location and it cost him a Kings ranson and... blah blah blah... more Keef exagerations.... blah blah blah.
but whatever, he's got it.
I would love to hear the real story behind it...i am sure that keith went to great lenghts to get it! |
| January 10th, 2006 03:57 PM |
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| Saint Sway |
the real story is that Keith is an extremely wealthy man who can afford to buy eccentric and impossible to find crap like that. (See Michael Jackson's Elephant Man's bones collection)
Keith just feels the need to perpetuate this outlaw image he has, so he spins every story into these epic pirate tales about dealing with dangerous thugs etc
like his heroin stories. Its always... 'ahh many times I had to crawl thru the streets to score. Lemme tell ya I've had many a gun pulled on me..."
meanwhile, what really happened was that Keith payed one of his errand boys to go get him drugs and bring them back to his four star hotel suite so he could fix up before he boarded the Stones private jet.
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| January 11th, 2006 06:56 AM |
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| corgi37 |
Well, Spanish Tony made a career out of it! Didnt the FBI supply dope for the 72 tour? Or, was that the Mafia? |
| January 11th, 2006 11:04 PM |
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| gypsymofo60 |
What would The Stones be without Keef's pirate/gypsy outlaw image? Be it real or imagined. It's the mesh that holds the groups myth together and breathing |
| January 11th, 2006 11:26 PM |
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| voodoopug |
quote:
gypsymofo60 wrote:
What would The Stones be without Keef's pirate/gypsy outlaw image? Be it real or imagined. It's the mesh that holds the groups myth together and breathing
it still gives them an edge and a look into their dangerous characters of times past. |
| January 11th, 2006 11:43 PM |
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| gypsymofo60 |
Mick's always been my favourite Stone, but if I could've been anyone I wanted to be for a week it would've been Byron. For a month it would've been Morrisson. If I could've been someone for a tear it would be Keef. |
| January 12th, 2006 11:47 AM |
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| The Wick |
quote:
Saint Sway wrote:
the real story is that Keith is an extremely wealthy man who can afford to buy eccentric and impossible to find crap like that. (See Michael Jackson's Elephant Man's bones collection)
Keith just feels the need to perpetuate this outlaw image he has, so he spins every story into these epic pirate tales about dealing with dangerous thugs etc
like his heroin stories. Its always... 'ahh many times I had to crawl thru the streets to score. Lemme tell ya I've had many a gun pulled on me..."
meanwhile, what really happened was that Keith payed one of his errand boys to go get him drugs and bring them back to his four star hotel suite so he could fix up before he boarded the Stones private jet.
So true Sainty. What's even more annoying is watching and listening to Stones' fans who spin their even more boring stories like going to the grocery store to buy some milk into some epic drug score where they had to shoot out the lights, shag a girl in a closet, and punched out the cashier for "turning blue" on them, and all while trying to sound like Keith when saying it. It's sometimes bad enough listening to Keith sound fake and try and sound like his caricature, but to hear someone else do it, is just agony- See Ryan Adams or Johnny Depp.
For the person who asked where he got it? From the prostitute, where else? |
| January 13th, 2006 08:58 AM |
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| gypsymofo60 |
quote:
The Wick wrote:
So true Sainty. What's even more annoying is watching and listening to Stones' fans who spin their even more boring stories like going to the grocery store to buy some milk into some epic drug score where they had to shoot out the lights, shag a girl in a closet, and punched out the cashier for "turning blue" on them, and all while trying to sound like Keith when saying it. It's sometimes bad enough listening to Keith sound fake and try and sound like his caricature, but to hear someone else do it, is just agony- See Ryan Adams or Johnny Depp.
For the person who asked where he got it? From the prostitute, where else?
....Jesus Georgie! What a party pooper! One things for sure though, Georgie was the real sporting equivalent of KEEF. |
| January 13th, 2006 10:05 AM |
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| The Wick |
Come on mate, the great thing about Bestie and Keith is their originality. They are originals, even though they both went and go into "character" in recent years for the sake of their reputation. Someone else doing their act is agonizing and sad. Nothing original, nothing interesting, and terribly annoying. Nothing beats listening to some guy from the midwest talk about the boys in blue, refer to grown men as "cats," and women as birds. |
