Love In Vain
ROBERT JOHNSON WAS ONLY 31 YEARS DEAD WHEN The Rolling Stones covered his Love In Vain on
Let It Bleed
in 1969, but already his music felt as if it were being broadcast from a very different, very ancient world. “The old, weird America,” the author Greil Marcus called it, one documented in detail on Harry Smith’s truly arcane
Anthology Of American Folk Music.
There’s always a danger of othering these country blues, these honest expressions of grief and lust and other appetites; to patronise Johnson and his contemporaries as somehow supernatural forces rather than musicians trying to make a living in arduous and racially prejudiced times. Many of the 15 tracks we’ve brought together for this month’s MOJO CD,
Love In Vain,
are nearly a century old now and, so rough and ready and mostly unmediated, were not built to last. But the ephemeral can grow old and surprise us all, can shape the culture in ways none of these great musicians could’ve anticipated.
Love In Vain
is not a collection of historical relics, but one of enduringly spectacular music.
1 Blind Gary Davis
Death Don't Have No Mercy
Recorded in 1960, this is the most recent cut on
Love In Vain.
But Blind Gary Davis (usually known as the Reverend Gary Davis) had been playing the holy blues since the early 20th century – he was born in 1896 – around North and South Carolina. By 1960, he was a cornerstone of the folk revival in New York, inspiration to Dylan, the Grateful Dead and many more.