In 1977, when the Voyager deep space probes were launched on their journey into interstellar space, they each carried a gold record containing music from a wide variety of cultures. Of the four selections of American music chosen, one was a recording of Texas street evangelist “Blind” Willie Johnson’s haunting gospel song, “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground.”
Despite Johnson’s recording taking its place among the works intended to represent human culture to the cosmos, his life has long remained shrouded in anonymity and conjecture. Like many African American musicians in the segregated South of the early twentieth century, he managed a precarious existence that hardly lent itself to extensive documentation.
Now, after intensive research, both in the field and in archives across the region, author Shane Ford fills in many of the blanks in what may be known or deduced about the life of a musician whose work he describes as “transcendent.” Along the way, he corrects the many errors that have arisen around Johnson and his career: errors that have unfortunately been repeated so often that they have come to be accepted as fact. Beginning with the earliest roots of the blues amid the moans and field hollers of enslaved persons and proceeding with imagination and meticulous regard for the available—albeit sparse—documentation of the life of the artist, Ford paints a picture of “Blind” Willie Johnson and his times that allows us to perceive him in greater detail than ever before. The Ballad of “Blind” Willie Johnson offers readers a deeper appreciation of one of the most unique voices in the history of American music.
