Robert Johnson's Influence On The Delta Blues

Robert Johnson’s guitar playing style was a major influence on the Delta blues tradition. An analysis of the Johnson’s early inspiration through Son House’s guitar playing technique will be defined during the early stages of his career. More so, the cross-ethnic influence of Hawaiian slide guitar techniques will provide a deeper insight into the origins of the Delta Blues style in Johnson’s unique playing abilities. These factors define the major influence of Robert Johnson on the Delta blues tradition, which was developed and modified throughout the 1930s.

Introduction:

This ethnomusical study will define the important contribution of Robert Johnson as a master of the Delta blues guitar style. Johnson found an early inspiration watching

The Delta region offered a wide geographic area in which many musicians, such as Robert Johnson could travel from Memphis, Tennessee down to Mississippi playing blues in various music venues. Often, this music was part of a dynamic musical traditions that incorporated many differing musical styles in the African American community:

Like other early Delta blues singers, Robert Johnson was part and parcel of an oral tradition that began with a mixture of field hollers, chants, fiddle tunes, and religious music and ended up as the blues.

These types of musical performance would eventually adopt the Hawaiian sound of slide guitar, which Johnson would learn from fellow blues musician, Son House. This style of guitar playing would become synonymous with the Delta blues style, since Johnson and other Delta blues musicians would play this music in the hundreds of barrooms and music halls in the Delta region. Finally, Robert Johnson would become famous for mastering the Delta blues style more than other player in the 20th

Johnson was heavily influenced by House’s Hawaiian use of slide guitar as part of this sound, which defines the multicultural exchange between the indigenous ethnic music of Hawaii and the rhythm and blues sound of African American music in the Delta Region. Johnson, much like many other African-American musicians, had a deep respect for the use of a bottleneck or metal slide that Hawaiians used on their stringed instruments:

There were also instances of convergences when Hawaiian and African-American musicians made cross over appearances…Hawaiian and African American music bore resemblances.

This style of guitar playing was connected through the use of a bottleneck or metal slide guitar application to the strings, which gave a metallic sound to the instrument. This way of playing the guitar was primarily uti8lized by Son House, which was then passed down to Robert Johnson. This guitar plying would be the definitive sound of the Delta Blues style that Johnson would popularize during the