{"id":1986043,"date":"2023-07-30T05:09:05","date_gmt":"2023-07-30T09:09:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/delta-force\/"},"modified":"2023-07-30T05:17:14","modified_gmt":"2023-07-30T09:17:14","slug":"delta-force","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/delta-force\/","title":{"rendered":"Delta Force is an elite special operations unit."},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">16<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fdelta-force%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1986043&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div>\n<h2>Languages and Literature: From Elaboration to Simplification<\/h2>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Languages do not\u200d become simpler over time, but literature can. The more languages are used,\u200c the more elaborate their grammar and vocabulary become. The further a style develops, however, the greater the \u200bobviousness of \u200cits principles \u2064and effects becomes. The \u200cmore obvious they become, the greater the\u200d possibility of clarification, simplification, and ultimately abstraction.\u2063 Ezra Pound\u2019s injunction to &#8220;Make it new&#8221; becomes\u200b &#8220;Keep it\u2062 short and simple.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The\u2064 same can be said for music. The musical grammar and vocabulary of today\u2019s pop hits are \u2063inarguably\u2063 simpler than those of the mid-1960s, and the songs of \u200dLennon and McCartney or Bacharach and David are simpler than those the Gershwin\u200b brothers or\u2063 Jerome Kern and P.G. \u200dWodehouse wrote in the 1930s.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Keep it short and simple&#8221;\u200c is first attested in print on\u2063 December 2, 1938, in the \u200c <em>Minneapolis \u2062Star<\/em>. Robert Johnson died just\u200d over three\u200d months before that, after being poisoned while performing at a &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/a-yale-law-student-who-refused-to-apologize-over-email-explains-why-wont-indulge-this-culture-of-performative-denunciation\/\" title=\"A Yale Law Student Who Refused To Apologize Over Email Explains Why: Won\u2019t \u2018Indulge This Culture Of Performative Denunciation\u2019\">party house<\/a>&#8221; on the Star of the West \u200dplantation, across the Tallahatchie Bridge from Greenwood, \u2064Mississippi. He was 27 years old and had recorded 29 songs, with alternative takes on 13 of them.<\/p>\n<p>In 1961, Columbia Records reissued \u206416 of\u200b Johnson\u2019s\u200b tracks and posthumously crowned him the &#8220;King of the Delta Blues Singers.&#8221; The album appeared \u200bamong the \u2062<a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/delta-force\/\" title=\"Delta Force is an elite special operations unit.\">hip bric-a-brac<\/a> on \u2064the cover of Bob \u2064Dylan\u2019s <em>Bringing It\u2062 All Back Home<\/em> (1965) and strongly influenced\u2063 the British\u2064 blues players who further simplified\u2063 matters into rock music. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ryRDcE2sB2A\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v%3DryRDcE2sB2A&#038;source=gmail&#038;ust=1690466997802000&#038;usg=AOvVaw2Ivv-DTOPmERM1WfwAGl5L\">The Rolling Stones<\/a> recorded Johnson\u2019s &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=-BkPm8JIJJQ\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v%3D-BkPm8JIJJQ&#038;source=gmail&#038;ust=1690466997803000&#038;usg=AOvVaw3rtBbpTrbAH6ahtVLDx6-y\">Love\u2064 In Vain<\/a>&#8221; and &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=-wfgukbENbQ\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v%3D-wfgukbENbQ&#038;source=gmail&#038;ust=1690466997803000&#038;usg=AOvVaw1uLdmn7WVYF1bkY3bPQd1f\">Stop\u200b Breaking Down \u2062Blues<\/a>&#8220;\u200b on <em>Exile On Main Street<\/em> \u2062 (1972). Eric \u200bClapton adopted Johnson\u2019s &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=GtDlZdhHRCI\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v%3DGtDlZdhHRCI&#038;source=gmail&#038;ust=1690466997803000&#038;usg=AOvVaw0voq5nSJFMSCdqM516U8WH\">Cross Road Blues<\/a>&#8221; as a\u200b kind of musical signature. But we should not blame Johnson for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=jBZa3aV2Qu0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v%3DjBZa3aV2Qu0&#038;source=gmail&#038;ust=1690466997803000&#038;usg=AOvVaw0W1LPmpX39HNgkx7wuit-U\">Eric Clapton<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h3>The Mystery of Robert Johnson<\/h3>\n<p>Calling Johnson\u200b the &#8220;king&#8221; \u200dimplies two kinds of primacy. No one has\u2063 been able to sort them out. There is <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/putins-war-against-the-west-is-just-beginning\/\" title=\"Putin\u2019s War Against the West Is Just Beginning\">primus inter pares<\/a><\/em>: Johnson \u200das top dog in the crowded 1930s \u200cfield of Delta singers. And there is <em>fons et origo<\/em>: Johnson as the first and future king, not just of the Delta blues but of all blues, and by \u2064extension the later styles which drew on it, especially\u2064 \u201960s rock. \u2064The latter is\u2062 the false chronology that led the Rock \u2018n\u2019 Roll Hall of Fame to induct Johnson in musical drag: &#8220;Steeped in \u200cmystery, killed mysteriously,\u2062 his legend\u200c eclipsed only by his\u200c skill, Robert Johnson may \u2063be the first ever rock star.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Johnson wasn\u2019t top dog in \u2062his time, either. \u200bHe \u200bwas one among \u2062many in his\u200c lifetime. If he had lived, it would probably \u2064have been different quite quickly. John Hammond, who\u2062 issued the <em>King of the Delta Blues \u2064Singers<\/em> album in 1961, had booked\u2064 Johnson to appear at the &#8220;From \u200bSpirituals to Swing&#8221; concert at Carnegie Hall in December 1938. Underwritten by <em>The New Masses<\/em>,\u2064 the journal of the American Communist Party,\u200b and \u200ca Popular\u2062 Front group \u200bcalled the Theater\u200b Arts \u200cCommittee,\u200b the\u2064 concert reframed the history \u2063of African-American music as what we would now call &#8220;intersectionality&#8221;: race and class, racial oppression, and class war.<\/p>\n<p>Really, \u200bit was &#8220;cultural appropriation&#8221; by a bunch of communists. This is the \u200bcrossover that produced the sanctimonious droolings of \u2063Pete \u2063Seeger, a Harvard man who wouldn\u2019t have known a\u200c shovel if it hit him on\u200c the nose.\u200d It is not \u200dhard\u2064 to imagine a silver-haired Johnson joining Leadbelly as\u2062 the toast of the fake New York folkies of the 1950s; \u2063or pretending\u2064 to be\u2063 less of a modernist than\u200b he was, like Muddy Waters, who had the first all-electric band in Chicago in the\u200d late 1940s but impersonated the acoustic Delta soloists of his childhood for student audiences in the 1960s. But Johnson was \u2062long dead, \u200bdue to his intersection with another man\u2019s girlfriend and a bottle of poisoned whiskey.<\/p>\n<p>Some people tell themselves that Shakespeare could have\u200b been the Earl of Oxford because we don\u2019t know enough about Shakespeare. They are deluding\u2062 themselves: We know\u200b more about Shakespeare\u2064 than we know about any Elizabethan \u200dcommoner. Many people seem to like the legend that we know nothing about Johnson\u200b apart from a Faustian\u200d bargain for guitar\u200c lessons and the death-by-whiskey bit. They are also deluding themselves.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;His \u200cplaying was to \u200cdie for\u2014or \u2062at the\u2064 very least, sell your soul to Satan\u2064 for,&#8221; the idiots at\u200c the Rock \u2018n\u2019 Roll Hall of Fame tell us. &#8220;Legend has it that Robert Johnson met the devil at\u200b a crossroads and gave \u2063him his \u2063soul in exchange for mastery of the guitar.&#8221;<\/p>\n<h3>Unraveling\u2063 the Legend: The Biography of a\u2064 Phantom<\/h3>\n<p>The truth is that, as with Shakespeare, we know more about Johnson than we know about his contemporaries. Johnson\u2063 was working in the Delta while first-generation blues\u200c anthropologists like Alan Lomax were making their first\u200b field recordings. When the white cognoscenti &#8220;discovered&#8221; the blues and the record companies contrived \u2063a genre called &#8220;Folk Blues,&#8221; a second\u2064 generation came down from the Northeast bearing notebooks and tape recorders. The \u200b&#8221;Blues mafia,&#8221; as they called themselves, also bore \u200cpreconceptions about \u200cauthenticity\u2062 and \u2063primitivism that, \u2062like the Faust myth, owe more to European \u2064Romanticism than African-American music.<\/p>\n<p><em>Biography of a Phantom<\/em> was\u200c drafted\u200b by one of these L\u00e9vi-Strausses in \u200cLevi Strauss, Robert \u2064&#8221;Mack&#8221; McCormick. The son \u2064of two lab technicians, McCormick was a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-ruling-classs-response-to-inflation-tells-you-its-only-going-to-get-worse\/\" title=\"The Ruling Class\u2019s Response To Inflation Tells You It\u2019s Only Going To Get Worse\">high-school dropout<\/a> and erstwhile forger who became a\u200b self-made blues archivist. He was the Luddite who pulled the plug on Bob Dylan when he was \u2063rehearsing\u200c his electric set for the 1965 Newport Folk Festival;\u200b McCormick\u2019s other contribution to the festival was to present\u2063 a \u200cgang of ex-convicts who had\u2063 never \u2063performed together.<\/p>\n<p>Between 1969\u200b and 1975, McCormick \u200dresearched Johnson\u2019s life by driving around the \u2064Delta and asking \u2062questions. He located Johnson\u2019s two sisters and his son Claud. He identified where Johnson \u2062grew up, \u2064on the Abbay and Leatherman \u200dplantation, near Tunica and \u200dRobinsonville, Mississippi. He discovered Johnson\u2019s &#8220;rosebud,&#8221; the source \u2062of his fatal\u2063 taste for romancing with married women, in his \u2063falling-out with his stepfather. He \u200dinterviewed every musician who knew Johnson and two eyewitnesses to Johnson\u2019s death.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1771791\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1771791\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1771791\">By\u200b the\u2064 spring of \u20621970, when this photograph\u200d was\u2062 taken, McCormick had begun working on \u2064the book. (Courtesy\u2063 of Susannah Nix\u200b from the Robert &#8220;Mack&#8221; \u2064McCormick\u2062 Collection, Archives \u200bCenter, \u200cNational Museum of American History.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>McCormick agonized over his manuscript, feuded with rival researchers, \u200csuffered paranoid torments, acted like he owned Johnson\u2019s story and music, never finished his book, and died in\u2064 2015. John W. Troutman of\u2062 the\u200c Smithsonian\u2019s National Museum of American History has cleaned\u200b it up and published\u2062 it. McCormick\u2019s findings have already been incorporated into books by Peter Guralnick (<em>Searching For Robert Johnson<\/em>, 1998) and Bruce \u200bConforth \u200cand \u200cGayle Dean Wardlow (<em>Up Jumped The Devil<\/em>, \u20632019).\u2062 Still, <em>Biography \u200dof a Phantom<\/em> is \u2062worth reading. It tells how McCormick \u2063set\u2062 out to replace \u200ca legend\u2064 with the quotidian facts\u200d of biography, but it also shows how\u2063 these facts instead \u2063came to\u200d refurbish the legend.\u200c McCormick mythologizes his zigzagging\u200d around\u200c the Delta\u200d in\u2064 the quasi-hardboiled style of Truman Capote\u2019s <em>In Cold Blood<\/em> (1965):<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I found a motel and locked\u200b myself in a cramped little room with a curious metal door.\u200c The television set swung \u200dout from the wall on some kind of hinged arm. The picture on the screen\u200d was full\u2064 of fringe-area snow and \u200ddistortion. I took a short nap,\u200d woke up around mid-evening, and resumed considering my situation.&#8221;<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1771788\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1771788\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1771788\">McCormick\u2019s\u2064 route from Houston \u2063to the 1968 Smithsonian Folklife Festival and back, with\u2064 fieldwork forays\u2062 in between. (Courtesy of \u2063Susannah Nix\u200d from the Robert \u200b&#8221;Mack&#8221; McCormick Collection, Archives Center,\u200b National Museum of\u200b American History.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>McCormick \u2062got\u200c the story but missed the big picture. Johnson played in \u2063the Delta idiom, but you can hear that he had broader horizons. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=xn50JSI0W-E\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v%3Dxn50JSI0W-E&#038;source=gmail&#038;ust=1690466997803000&#038;usg=AOvVaw2F1Oriw7QiUEvc2iqUW80Q\">Leadbelly<\/a> was a strummer. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=xzdJtsv1bqo\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v%3DxzdJtsv1bqo&#038;source=gmail&#038;ust=1690466997803000&#038;usg=AOvVaw16l7bwDspn8bZWBocg4TT_\">Blind Lemon Jefferson<\/a> \u2064 was a &#8220;country blues&#8221; picker. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=OrWhlmYJvVM\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v%3DOrWhlmYJvVM&#038;source=gmail&#038;ust=1690466997803000&#038;usg=AOvVaw2tbkK2YQ7XagHUFK6vp8h6\">Son House<\/a> used jerky chords, topped with blue notes\u2063 to support\u200b his vocals. Johnson clarified, simplified, and abstracted Son House\u2019s\u2064 style. He emphasized the pulse on \u200dthe\u200b lower two strings, especially with the \u2062&#8221;boogie shuffle&#8221; that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=YaT5JplqDbk\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v%3DYaT5JplqDbk&#038;source=gmail&#038;ust=1690466997804000&#038;usg=AOvVaw2-d8JjDzwMLxlhsMre8kTH\">Chuck \u200dBerry<\/a> made world-famous in the 1950s. He broke the pulse to play \u2063the call-and-response to\u200b his vocal lines on the upper strings. His voice fitted in between.<\/p>\n<p>McCormick\u2064 learned that Johnson never wrote down his songs. He \u2063worked them up until he was happy. Paul McCartney has said that he and John Lennon did this: \u200dIf it was good enough, they\u2062 remembered it. When Johnson sang, he dropped his head and sang into the\u2063 guitar\u2019s soundbox. It was\u200b a\u2062 form of amplification, but it also compressed the vocal sound.\u2063 This intensified the effect of his voice, and also\u200d the effect of his lyrics. These, unlike the typical Delta lyric of the day, are developed\u200d sequences rather than strings\u200c of formulae. They are not narratives in the folk style: They are blue moods. &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=lu1lusKcMy8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v%3Dlu1lusKcMy8&#038;source=gmail&#038;ust=1690466997804000&#038;usg=AOvVaw3g1IQCb5EwcptRaYgqO-8U\">Stones In My Passway<\/a>&#8221; is about\u2062 obstruction, despair, and impotence:<\/p>\n<p><em>I\u2019ve got stones in my passway, and my\u2063 road seems dark\u200d as night<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>I have pains in my heart, they\u2019ve taken my\u200c appetite\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>My enemies \u2062have betrayed me, have overtaken poor Bob at last\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n<p>These lines are 14-syllable heptameters (seven-beat lines). Heptameters go back to medieval English; Romantic revivalists like Byron and Edgar Allen Poe used \u200dthem too. Again, Johnson seems \u2063oddly closer to \u2063the introspection and\u2063 inwardness of \u200cRomanticism\u2014as if he was \u2064not the isolated, spontaneous hick but aware of\u200c the mass production\u200c of Romantic imagery through the music \u2062industry and the radio, and incorporating \u200dit with a regional style.<\/p>\n<p>McCormick thought it &#8220;ironic&#8221; \u200cthat the sawmill town of Helena, Arkansas, one of Johnson\u2019s regular haunts, was a\u2063 town of blues pianists, not guitarists. The same, he \u200bwrites, went\u200c for sawmill towns &#8220;everywhere\u200b in the South,&#8221; probably because \u200b&#8221;the mill towns were noisy and needed louder instruments to dominate the tavern crowds.&#8221; \u2063There is \u200dno irony\u2062 here, other \u200dthan that the detective\u200b has missed a major \u2064clue.<\/p>\n<h3>Rethinking \u2064the Origins of the Blues<\/h3>\n<p>The authorized version \u2062of the history of the blues\u2014the history that was written between the \u2064American left discovering it in the \u200d1930s and English rockers annexing it\u2064 in the 1960s\u2014is that that Delta blues is the purest, original, and most authentic blues because it is a short and \u2063simple \u2064blues. The theory holds\u200b that the language of jazz developed in New Orleans\u2062 from\u200d the blues of the Delta plantations. This\u2062 makes the Delta blues <em>fons et origo<\/em>, the \u2064wellspring of\u200b American music. And that makes Johnson its king, because he was crowned by \u200bJohn Hammond and \u200cEric\u200d Clapton\u2062 in the \u20641960s.<\/p>\n<p>This theory still enjoys near-universal acceptance. It fits with the primitivist myths that inspired much modernist art in the decades of Johnson\u2019s brief life, and which defined the critical reaction, in\u2063 the United States as in Europe, to the blues in\u200c the 1960s. It fits with\u2062 the literary-political modernist view of African-American\u2063 music as vital and \u2064energetic\u2064 because\u200b it is primitive; \u200bqualities that the New York left of the 1930s sought to \u200dmobilize just as Herbert Marcuse\u200b did when he wrote in 1969 that \u200d&#8221;liberation&#8221; was a &#8220;vital, biological need&#8221; for the &#8220;ghetto population.&#8221;\u200b It fits\u2063 the racist politics,\u2062 notably European \u200dfascism, which\u2063 were \u2063afoot when \u2063Johnson was alive.\u200b It is probably wrong.<\/p>\n<p>In\u2063 2021, the New\u200d Orleans musician and Grammy-winner <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=laWj4OOGo7c\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v%3DlaWj4OOGo7c&#038;source=gmail&#038;ust=1690466997804000&#038;usg=AOvVaw1Ax1TtZzUkYZ_o10o_DQ5V\">Chris Thomas \u2063King<\/a> \u200cpublished <em>The Blues: An Authentic\u2063 Narrative of\u200b My Music\u2063 and Culture<\/em>. This might \u200cbe\u2064 the \u2062most important book written\u200d in\u2063 American music\u200d studies\u2063 in \u2064decades. King,\u2064 the son of a\u200b blues musician who grew up in his \u2064father\u2019s juke joint, is \u2063one of the last\u2064 musicians to have the dubious honor of being &#8220;discovered&#8221;\u2062 by anthropologists from the north and fitted into their theories. He won a \u200bGrammy for playing a singer who has sold \u2062his soul to the Devil, Johnson-style, in <em>O Brother, Where\u2062 Art Thou?<\/em> He knows of what he speaks\u2014what is real in music,\u2064 and what is a phantom.<\/p>\n<p>Music writers listen with their \u200beyes. Musicians hear things before\u2063 they\u2064 see them. \u200dKing shows that the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Cy_tXHpiDd0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v%3DCy_tXHpiDd0&#038;source=gmail&#038;ust=1690466997804000&#038;usg=AOvVaw3Dp_8z-rafrUrtKLLIINLM\">evidence<\/a> for early piano and\u200b ensemble blues in New Orleans predates the evidence for early acoustic blues in \u2064the \u200dDelta. He \u200dshows that blues \u2064were being played in New Orleans when much of the \u2064Delta was still an &#8220;unpopulated sportsman\u2019s\u200b paradise.&#8221; Only New Orleans, King points out, \u2064permitted the racial mixing \u200dthat \u200cwas the predicate for the\u2062 musical mixing of\u200b styles.<\/p>\n<p>Mack McCormick\u200c solved the lesser mystery of who Johnson was. Chris Thomas King\u2019s theory solves the real mystery: What was \u2062he playing, and where did he get it from?<\/p>\n<p>If the Delta style has a supreme originator, it was not Robert Johnson. It was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=n8fyb9vpIc0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v%3Dn8fyb9vpIc0&#038;source=gmail&#038;ust=1690466997804000&#038;usg=AOvVaw0RPbALBDgvGgBttfa5Q-sF\">Lonnie Johnson<\/a> (no relation) who created the Delta template by transposing Jelly Roll Morton\u2019s piano jazz onto the acoustic guitar.\u200d (I discussed\u2062 this with King on a 2018 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.spectator.co.uk\/article\/the-green-room-spectator-usa-s-life-arts-podcast-talking-blues-with-chris-thomas-king\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">podcast<\/a>). The primitivist legend,\u200b King argues, \u200bputs the Delta cart before New \u200dOrleans jazz. The blues flowed upriver, like investment and technology, not downriver, like the current. \u2062It is as if, as\u2064 in <em>Huckleberry Finn<\/em>, the \u200bMississippi as metaphor\u2062 carries away the subject.<\/p>\n<p>Robert Johnson\u2019s music supports\u2064 this argument. New Orleans music was \u2064piano music. Jazz pianists invented the bass boogie. \u200bJazz pianists pitched \u200dthe vocal between their left-hand boogie and their right-hand ornaments. When Johnson split the low-string pulse from the high-string ornament, he was adapting the piano to the guitar, like Lonnie Johnson had done before him. Both Johnsons\u2062 &#8220;made it new&#8221; by making \u200ba complex, two-handed style simple.<\/p>\n<p>Johnson\u2019s &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=82yNxiF-T4A\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v%3D82yNxiF-T4A&#038;source=gmail&#038;ust=1690466997804000&#038;usg=AOvVaw08liXfZcpQbdnMTFxmNSSb\">Kind Hearted \u200bWoman Blues<\/a>&#8221; echoes W.C. Handy\u2019s \u200darchetypal and synthetic &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=D2TUlUwa3_o\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v%3DD2TUlUwa3_o&#038;source=gmail&#038;ust=1690466997804000&#038;usg=AOvVaw2u-feXAxELLxTpAsx0XtDa\">St. Louis Blues<\/a>&#8220;: the first nationwide \u2063blues hit. On &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=MEsQikthT3Q\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v%3DMEsQikthT3Q&#038;source=gmail&#038;ust=1690466997804000&#038;usg=AOvVaw3Xcvgd3kKNeBaeGCuz57Bd\">Walking Blues<\/a>,&#8221; \u200cJohnson uses hammered-on ornaments like a two-fingered pianist. The key is B; at 1:45, he pulls against \u2062the pulse by striking the dominant F# like\u2063 Count Basie was then doing with his left pinky. And something\u2064 else that only comes \u2064from New Orleans piano \u2063structures the rhythm of Johnson\u2019s playing. Listen to his \u2064fills \u200band you hear the left-hand &#8220;rumba&#8221; pulse of the pianist spread across the guitar.<\/p>\n<p>This explains the \u200cparadoxes at the heart of the Johnson legend. He is \u200bsaid to have invented it all, but everything he played had already \u2064been invented in \u200dNew\u2063 Orleans, and then developed in Memphis and Chicago. He is said to be <em>fons\u2062 et origo<\/em>, yet even his biographers admit that the history\u200c of the blues would not be greatly altered if \u200dhe had never lived. The blues \u2064migrated to Chicago in \u200bthe 1920s, when \u2062Johnson was a boy. Look at it \u200cthis way and \u200bDelta blues\u2064 wasn\u2019t \u2064the first at all. It was one\u200c of \u2064several regional\u200c responses as jazz spread out of New Orleans.<\/p>\n<p>If Johnson sounds like a sophisticated modernist, it is because he actually was one. The 20th century, the modernist century, was the age of simplification, in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/white-house-lawyers-tell-meena-harris-to-stop-using-aunt-kamala-to-build-brand-report\/\" title=\"White House Lawyers Tell Meena Harris To Stop Using Aunt Kamala To Build Brand: Report\">political slogans<\/a> of totalitarianism as in the mass media and art that preceded it. He was what the \u2063French \u2063call \u200ba &#8220;grand simplifier,&#8221; doing\u200b to New Orleans music what Pound\u200d and Eliot were doing to \u2064poetry. The fragments of Marlowe and other revenge tragedians are \u2064as artfully stark in &#8220;The Waste Land&#8221; as the fragments of New Orleans musicality in Johnson\u2019s\u2062 mournful Delta \u200dspaces.\u2062 This short and simple truth has been buried for decades by the mythology \u200cand mediocrity of rock music.<\/p>\n<p>Johnson\u2062 did \u2062not bring the sound of the Delta to America. He was <em>primus inter pares<\/em> at bringing the cosmopolitan sound of \u200burban \u200cAmerica to\u2062 the Delta. Unlike any \u200dother Delta songwriter, Johnson worked out \u2062arrangements within the three-minute\u2064 78-rpm\u200d format. He was keeping it short and simple like a \u200dcommercial songwriter. He made \u2063a living busking \u2064and playing on porches and at dances, but he was \u2064writing for radio. &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=4ehtcjrH7cs\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v%3D4ehtcjrH7cs&#038;source=gmail&#038;ust=1690466997804000&#038;usg=AOvVaw3wte2hhtLzDnbDxangaPrD\">They\u2019re\u200c Red Hot<\/a>&#8221; is a \u2064rag \u2062that owes little to the\u200c Delta and everything to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=LKe6yH3ZwGo\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v%3DLKe6yH3ZwGo&#038;source=gmail&#038;ust=1690466997804000&#038;usg=AOvVaw0GklnvWngJ0FLZfkXfoTm3\">Fats Waller<\/a> and Andy Razaf\u2019s\u200d New York novelties. Johnson even put on a special, Waller-like voice when\u200d he recorded it. \u200dJohn Hammond left the track of <em>King of the\u200b Delta Blues Singers<\/em>. Print the legend.<\/p>\n<h3>Conclusion<\/h3>\n<p><em>Biography of a Phantom: A Robert Johnson Blues\u200b Odyssey<\/em> by Robert &#8220;Mack&#8221; McCormick, edited by \u200cJohn W. Troutman<br \/> Smithsonian Books, \u2064264 pp., $29.95<\/p>\n<p><em>Dominic Green is a<\/em> Wall\u2064 Street Journal\u2064 <em>contributor, a fellow of the Royal \u2064Historical \u200dSociety, and a jazz guitarist.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Languages do not simplify, but literature can. As languages are used more, their grammar and vocabulary become more complex. However, as a style develops, its principles and effects become more apparent. This allows for clarification, simplification, and ultimately abstraction. Ezra<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":947,"featured_media":1986044,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[544],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1986043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-free-beacon"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1986043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/947"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1986043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1986043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1986044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1986043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1986043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1986043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}