Blues Singers 
The story of the dejection vocalizer who sells his soul to the devil at the crossroads in club to acquire skill equally a guitar player is doubtlessly familiar to many Americans living today. In
O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the story is told commencement hand by a character named "Tommy Johnson." Johnson is played in the movie past real-life musician, Chris Thomas King. Though the story is familiar enough on its own, it has obvious parallels to similar stories in European culture going dorsum to the "Faust" narrative and perhaps even to the Orpheus myth in Greek culture, and it probably has equivalents in African American folklore every bit brought to North America during the slave merchandise. Such stories take also found lease in the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne and the musical "Damn Yankees." And then, regardless of any particular reader of the film's own familiarity with the blues legend, the narrative outline is firmly entrenched in the cultural imagination of the United states. The initial appearance of the "Tommy Johnson" character in
O Blood brother, Where Art Thou? is available below:
What distinguished the graphic symbol "Tommy Johnson" in O Blood brother, Where Fine art Chiliad?, nevertheless, is that the detail variation of soul-selling that is the crossroads story only gained widespread currency in the 1960s. This fact is curious in that, for many familiar with the story, it refers to the blues singer Robert Johnson. Johnson made a few dozen recordings in the eye 1930s and by popular consent (if not musicological fact) is considered to be the quintessential performer of "Delta blues," a style of African-American music originating in the Delta region of upper Mississippi sometime in the 1920s.
Though Johnson made recordings, he was not well known outside of a small core of white blues enthusiasts and African Americans who attended his performances and bought his records during the 1930s. Johnson was slated to perform in Columbia Records' talent scout and A & R man John Hammond's justly lauded concert series "From Spirituals to Swing" at Carnegie Hall when information technology was discovered that he had died under suspicious circumstances. The mystery of his expiry, every bit well as the declaration that he had "sold his soul to the devil" to play the guitar no doubt anchored involvement in him as much as his recording legacy. When the urban folk revival of the late 1950s and early 1960s created a niche marketplace for old recordings of Delta blues-a form that had largely died out or morphed past the 1940s as African Americans moved n, evidenced past the electric way of Dingy Waters et al-Johnson was i of the first to receive the reissue treatment. In the ensuing years, his championing by rock musicians like Eric Clapton and Keith Richards as well equally the "complete" recordings (41 in all) has ensured that amidst the performers of Delta blues, Johnson is easily the most well-known.
It seems likely, then, that coincidental examination of O Blood brother, Where Art Thou? would lend an assessment that "Tommy Johnson"=Robert Johnson. Nevertheless, co-ordinate to a number of blues scholars, the musician known in real life equally Tommy Johnson was probably the originator of the "devil at the crossroads" story as it applied to a blues musician. Though they were unrelated, both Johnsons originated from relatively the same expanse of Mississippi. Given that Tommy Johnson began making recordings several years before Robert began his own career. Tommy was as well significantly older than Robert. Though the filmmakers seem to exist making a sly reference to insider noesis in naming their graphic symbol "Tommy Johnson," information technology is besides entirely probable that the story comes from any number of other, unrecorded and forgotten dejection musicians from the Delta. Regardless of the
naming of the character, "Tommy Johnson" is attired in clothing akin to what (for a long time) was considered to be the just extant photograph of Robert Johnson, pictured wearing a lid and adjust with a guitar propped on his crossed legs. Complicating the "Tommy Johnson" problem even more is the song that Chris Thomas King performs in the film solo, equally his grapheme. Information technology is titled "Hard Time Killing Flooring Blues" and its composer and original performer is neither the existent Tommy Johnson nor Robert Johnson but another Delta dejection vocalizer and musician who performed as "Skip" James. Ostensibly a song about the Great Depression, James' original version possesses a echo-heavy guitar which accompanies the singer's quite eerie falsetto vox. Though non as effecting as the original, Chris Thomas King (who plays the guitar and sings himself) performs the vocal in a suitably mournful manor. A prune from the film of Chris Thomas Rex performing is below, followed by Skip James' originial:
Skip James: "Hard Time Killing Floor Blues"
Merely what are readers of the film to make of this graphic symbol, "Tommy Johnson"? If you examine the contours of the form of the "crossroads" story and take into account its historical and cultural context, the narrative reveals itself (in my interpretation) to possess powerful instructional purpose equally a metaphor. Blues singers of the Delta region were itinerant performers; though some of them certainly played for money every bit street performers and about all of them played for white people at segregated parties, a slap-up deal of importance must be stressed upon the role of the "juke" articulation in Southern African-American civilization. The word "juke" itself is derived from a west African word that meant, more or less, "bad." Though the touch on of its connotative power has diminished as "jukebox" become
common parlance, a "juke articulation" were blues musicians would perform retains the association by virtue of the activities that accompanied the music; i.due east., drinking, promiscuous sex, and frequent violence. In pitching oneself as allied with the devil (equally both Robert and Tommy Johnson claimed to accept done) the performer acknowledges and accepts a role within (or rather against) social conventions that vicious aslope the more than destructive impulses of the culture. In the sense that blues music accompanied destructive behavior, it truly tin can be seen equally the "devil'southward music" and its practicioners are left to sketch in the details of their chosen lifestyle in vocal. The "Tommy Johnson" character in
O Blood brother, Where Art Thou? can be seen as a sort of archetypal blues singer from this regard in that he embodies both the particulars of its virtually famed practicioner--down to the way he is dressed like Johnson--too as being a kind of stereotype stand-in for whatsoever other performer of the era and manner.
Notwithstanding, none of the interpretation above carries much weight inside O Blood brother, Where Fine art G?. The grapheme "Tommy Johnson" is immediately identifiable as he appears on screen both by his naming himself and explaining his character, and visually by the shot of the fabulous "crossroads" of his attendant narrative. According to Barthes' principles of "mythic language," the character "Tommy Johnson" is already operating within the sphere of mythic soapbox. No explanation is given every bit to the context of either "dejection singer" or "selling your soul to the devil"; of course, this is considering none is needed. Given the post-1960s rising of the real Robert Johnson's name and mythos within the full general culture of the United states of america, this innuendo within the film stands alone every bit a meta-linguistic "signifier"-though of class, other than the pleasance of allusion, just what the sign and the signified are in this equation remains to exist seen.
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