New York: Dutton, 1989.
Searching for Robert Johnson is, at 83 pages, the shortest piece of literature in the Blues Hall of Fame, but the intense public interest in Robert Johnson and the insightful work of Guralnick, who has been called the dean of American roots music writers, qualify it as a worthy inductee. The main text was first published as a 1982 article in Living Blues magazine; the book adds photos (none of Johnson had ever been made public in 1982), a bibliography, and a discography of Johnson and his influences, contemporaries, and musical heirs. Although subsequent research has yielded more details from the census and other sources, the basic Johnson biography as we now know it remains much the same as Guralnick cogently presented it, based largely on the research of Mack McCormick and interviews with Johnny Shines, Robert Lockwood, and others who knew Johnson. (One missing episode is the mentoring role of Ike Zinnerman, an obscure guitarist Johnson knew in Mississippi; information on Zinnerman was first published in Steve LaVere’s liner notes to the 1990 Robert Johnson box set.) While the tale that Johnson sold his soul to the devil dominates many discussions on Johnson, Guralnick spends only about a page on the topic and never attributes any truth to the story.
–Jim O’Neal
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