Robert Johnson is arguably one of the most important figures in all of recorded music. The tales of his brief life and mysterious death are enough to draw most people in, but his music is even more powerful. His voice, capable of falsetto wailing and eerie plain-talking, along with his fluid fretwork, truly make his songs feel “other-worldly.” The Centennial Collection – The Complete Recordings, was issued in 2017 to celebrate the 100 anniversary of Robert’s birth.
These recordings have been issued many times before. If the
title of this set sounds familiar, it’s shared by the 2-CD box set 'The Complete Recordings', which
sold over a half a million copies back in 1990. But, this new
collection has some significant improvements, the biggest being the
sound quality. The tracks on the 1990 version are muffled and tinny, as if Johnson is calling you from a Dallas phone booth in 1937. On The Centennial Collection, you can
actually hear Robert breathing between vocal phrases, hear his hands
move across the guitar, and even hear traffic passing by the hotel where
these songs were originally recorded.
Another improvement over the 1990 release is the sequence of songs:
the older collection chose to include the alternate takes right along
with the released ones, so you’d get two versions of the same song back
to back, making for repetitive listening. In this new set, they’ve
chosen to put the master takes first, then stick the alternate takes of
those songs at the end of the disc.
For the freeload, tell us about your favorite relative, who is not in your immediate family, e.g., a parent, sibling, spouse, or child.
Next door, five acres each, is my brother in law. He is a mister-fix-it and can improvise just about anything. And he has a good heart for helping. My other is my youngest cousin who, although 3 or 4 hundred miles away, was always there over the years to help out. Geez, the family has gotten a Lot smaller in the last couple of years. My heart want's to help but I now have trouble walking. I need a doctor who knows what help I'm asking for. My step daughter is another I should add to the list. But in her late 40's is beginning to have her own health problems. And she wants to text.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this Babs. I had the 1990 version.
Spouse and parents are dead. My brother lives in another state. My spouse's children, one cares, the other doesn't. Family got small. Life got weird.
DeleteSorry rock¿n'roll up tho the Everglades
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJtRHMqGD7k
My cousin, one year older, he still lives in Holland. As kids I couldn't stand him, for all kinds of silly reasons, but during the last 10 years or so we developed a liking for each other. Coming July I'm returning to Holland for a kind of family reunion, just cousins, as parents, uncles, and aunts have all (well almost all, some just 'disappeared' believe it or not!) passed away...
ReplyDeleteAs steVe wrote: 'Family got small'...
Paternal side of family, there literally is no immediate family - all are deceased. Maternal side of family, there are numerous aunts and uncles, both they are all dead to me - look up any grotesque picture of elderly MAGA folks, and that's them. There is thankfully, one exception. A cousin who is about 15 years younger than me (and, he had an older brother who was much closer in age to me, who sadly died about 30 years ago, due to Aids). Great guy who lives in NO and works as a sound engineer in the film industry. When I told him we were moving to Europe, he cracked that "Hell, next family reunion, that leaves just me as the one they are likely to poison."
ReplyDeleteMy Aunt Madeline.
ReplyDeleteMadeline (RIP) was my mother’s younger sister, who owned an art gallery in Quebec City, Canada from the 1950s to the 1980s. For as along as I can remember, she came down to New York several times a year to buy art. When I became a teenager (in 1960) she started taking me on shopping trips in Manhattan, where she bought me Jazz albums, clothes, (much to my mother’s chagrin) more provocative underwear than I was wearing at the time, haircuts at Vidal Sassoon’s New York salon, and at lunch she ordered me cocktails and wine. Madeline always treated me, and spoke to me, as an adult and equal.
There will be a funny snippet about Madeline, in a forthcoming Grateful Dead post.
Link
ReplyDeletehttps://we.tl/t-9KVX4t0JWC
True to my name, I had what is no doubt some sort of grey market release that I picked up for a buck. So this will be quite luxurious...
ReplyDeleteEnjoy.
Delete"Ëlgin movements". Obviously his pronunciation of "elegant". I don't know why blues historians puzzled over this for years. i've been interested in Delta blues and regional variations for most of my life and have heard most of the pre war bluesmen on record, and I found that their lyrics were generally "code", to disguise feelings concerning living within cooee of crazed white trash. However, Robert Johnson often seemed to be able to write lyrics in a form that we all could understand. He had everything going...technical skill et al and really after hearing most of this wonderful genre of the past 100 years, all roads lead to Robert Johnson.
ReplyDeleteSorry, above comment is mine.
ReplyDeleteI have a brother who remains in England. Our extended family there was never close, I regret to say. It's an Anglo Saxon thing, particularly in the south of England.
ReplyDeleteTwo brother-in-laws. Polar opposites poetically, but so alike in temperament that they could be brothers themselves. I attribute it to similar childhoods (losing parents at a young age) in very different environs (inner city versus farmland). Anyway they are true heroes and deserve the repect of every male for remaining with my sisters (who I also love).
ReplyDeleteThank you for this Babs. I also am upgrading from 1990.
ReplyDeleteFamily has always been complicated for me. Some relatives are MAGA and always were, even when they were Democrats. Others were always Republican, but more educated (and a bit more confused now). I like them better. My wife is my best friend.
You're welcome, Psychfan. You'll hear quite a difference.
DeleteMy great Aunt Mary, who was my grandfather's twin sister EXCEPT she was ten years younger than him. She was in her twenties throughout the 1920's prohibition-era San Francisco, leading an independent life on her own, never married and never held on to a cent. Of course, that never stopped her from shopping in the finest stores in SF's Union Square. As she said, "I deserve nice things" and nobody could argue with that because she was a sweetheart. I managed to inherit a few of her "nice things", including a silver prohibition-era cocktail shaker which has been prominently displayed on the hi-fi cabinet in my living room for decades. Unfortunately most of her possessions had to be sold off to fund her end-of-life care. She was a great gal and I still miss her.
ReplyDeleteFor the first time ever, I let a guy help me out from the grocery store. This because the girl at check out played with the fob in her pocket and locked my cart wheels. The kid noticed my Pink Floyd T shirt, then he saw my Grateful Dead key chain. He offered up fungi and something to smoke that I don't remember the name of. Kids today. Sheesh.
ReplyDeleteLate to the party but my favorite non-immediate relative had to be my grandaddy. He was a "poor dirt farmer" as the Levon Helm song went.
ReplyDeleteP.S. I was born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi. My dad knew all about the R.J. myth. I-55 through Hazlehurst is now the "Robert Johnson Memorial Highway."
A cousin of my father, Chicho. A great surfer and skier, former teacher of gimnastics at school who later turned into shrink. He showed me Frank Zappa and Santana. Music Lover, 12 years older than me, a great influence in my early years. Love him.
ReplyDeleteI've always been part of a small family (my mother's extended family almost all died in the Holocaust). My sister's husband is in a much bigger family, and he's always been really nice to me. For a start, during my first year of college, he was in the same tiny town and introduced me to half the bands from that era that I like.
ReplyDeleteD in California