ROBERT JOHNSON BLUES

ROBERT JOHNSON’S BLUES JOURNEY

I come home from a long a hard days work  in the cotton fields. I have been working up to my neck in sweat and dirt all day picking those darn dry cotton off their buds. I come home to my faithful dog Butch and to my woman. Walk right into the kitchen and call out my baby’s name. But my call isn’t answered. Where could my baby be?

I see Butch sitting in the hallway. “Where’s mama Butch?” He looks at me sadly with his sad doggy brown eyes. I feel confused.

I walk up the old rickety staircase of our old shack and walk straight into bedroom. Butch follows closely on my heels.The metal framed bed is made up. The house looks clean: the washing been done, the floors swept and there are vases of flowers on every window sill. No dust at all. No sir, no dust at all. But I can’t find my baby.

Then I realise something. I am hungry. I spent a whole day working and a man has gotta have some food in his belly. He gotta have something to eat! There is no cooking smells. By baby’s cooking is the best in the Mississippi delta as far as I am concerned but there is no supper for this husband tonight.

I see a brown crisp envelope resting lightly on the green patchwork quilt of our bed. I walk over and pick it up. I put the envelope to my nose and smell the "lily of the valley" perfume that my baby wears. The sweet, 
fragrant smell is as familiar to me as she is.

I feel anxious. Something isn’t right. The house to too quiet. So quiet I can hear a crow calling in the distance. I don’t know if I should open the letter. But I do and the shock hits me like a fast freight train.

She’s gone and left me for another man!!

I walk over to her dresser and wardrobe. Everything is gone. Her flowery dresses, her hair brush, mirror and perfume…..she even took the secret 100 dollars bills tashed away in the secret compartment of our draw. She really, truly has gone and left me. I can’t understand why?

I need to think. I need to find out why she left me. How long had she been having an affair? Whose this other guy? Was she not happy with me? She had been my sweet heart and baby since we were in our teens. I gotta find her!!!.

My name is Robert Johnson. I am that famous blues guitarist from years ago and this is my short story of how I travelled across the States to find my baby. Because she is gone and I am gonna get her back.

Next morning I take a few things and place them in the trunk of my Terraplane. I lock up the shack of our house and Butch goes to stay with the neighbours. I am going to travel from here to Chicago to find her. I make sure I take my trusty wooden guitar with me.This guitar ,this girlfriend, my lucky charm and bestfriend, has never let me down with my playing her or listening to her sweet beautiful sound. I will play my Blues away as I travel across route 66.

I know my Baby’s gone to Chicago. I found a few of her love letters that she penned to her friend boy. He lives in Chicago and Chicago is my destination.

I as I drive across the dry barren landscape I feel as desolate as the scenery before me. I feel so sad, my is heart broken. I feel like crying. I feel so confused. What did that man have that I did not have? I try to make my baby happy in anyways that I could. I provided her, worked so hard to make her happy to earn her love. Ok I did not have much money but once I became a famous Blues musician that would have been no problem. No siree – no problem at all.

Ok I am dreamer. But I believe in my music.Its God’s gift to me. I want to spread my music to the world. People need to hear what I have to say! I want to make people happy. This is my vocation, my life, my purpose.

I should have spent more time with her. I guess me working on the land and playing at jook joints all night probably didn’t help. She must have been lonely and then turned to her lover instead. She had a lot of church going friends. Did she meet him there?

I see dark clouds in the horizon and soon the heavens pour. The rain is beating heavily on the bonnet on my Terraplane. Like a steady beat of my broken heart. Again I feel like crying and I want the rain to mingle with my tears.

I soon arrive at my first stop: my friend Willie Johnson’s house. His house is so welcoming and homely. There is a light on in his kitchen.

I park the Terraplane carefully in the driveway. I go up to the front door and knock. Willie Johnson opens the door and there is a huge welcoming smile on his face.

“Bob my man. Its so great to see you!!. Come on in my kitchen”.

Seated at the wooden kitchen table with a cold beer in my hand I tell Willie Johnson my sorrow. The fire is a blazing and the room is warm and inviting.

Willie Johnson listens. “You know Bob you must go to Chicago and get her back. No man should take your woman like that. When you get back you must treat her right. A woman wants to be loved and cherished. You just have to win her love back again that’s all. Show her that you are the better man here.”

Next day I get into my Terraplane and drive away again. I soon reach the Route 66 again.  

I think of the first the time I met my baby. She was only 17. She heard me in the barn a playing my wooden guitar. She said she was hypnotised by the music I played. Bewitched. She was transfixed. She came into the barn and sat down and listened on a bale of hay.

As my fingers worked their magic across the fret board, gently creating that blue melodic sound, we fell in love. She fell in love with my music and she fell in love with me.

I soon stop at my second point in my journey: a motel in the middle of no where.

After checking in I see the motel has a live band playing from eight o’clock onward.

I have my guitar, so why not? I speak to the landlord and he wants me to demonstrate my musician qualities. So I do and I audition for him. That night I get the gig.

Soon its 7pm and the joint starts to fill. Everyone is waiting for a good show. I have already been introduced to the band and it’s agreed I will have a solo spot for the evening.

I play the Blues that night with all my passion. I don’t know what is it about the Blues. It touches the heart and soul. I can be me, when I sing the Blues.

Everybody listens to my music, just the way my baby first did when we first met.

I go to my motel room after the show and sit on the bed. Is she lying in her lovers arms the way she use to lie in my arms? Is he whispering sweet nothings in her ear? Will she have her lover’s child? I can’t take this anymore. I can’t stop these tormenting thoughts running through my mind. I hate her lover and I hate her for what she is doing to me. It’s just evil and cruel. How com someone who said she loved me just leave me? How could she do this to me Lord? Is she worth getting back? Should I find another woman? Those love letters she wrote her friend boy. She used to write letters like that to me so many years ago. How could that man steal her heart?

I can’t stand this torment. I can’t stand this pain anymore. I want it to end. I have to find her. I have to bring her back. I hate this room. I feel so lonely in this bed. Its so dark and silent outside. I can hear a wolf in the distant.

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I am on the move again in my Terraplane. Down highway route 66. Suddenly I see smoke: lots of thick black smoke. I stop my motor by a fork in the road under a tree – my third stop in my journey to find her.

My motors died on me. Man! Why now? Why this moment? I feel so mad! But it’s my fault. I forgot to load the petrol.

I sit down by the side of the road on the dirt, head in my hands. I will have to walk to Chicago. Maybe hitch hike or take a bus. But I have got to get to Chicago.

So I take my guitar and my suitcase and what money I have and start to walk. I walk and walk my blues away.

I begin to think. There is a legend that says that I met the Devil at the Crossroads in the form of huge black man. I says to him I want to be the greatest Blues player that ever lived. He grinned at me and said I could be but I have to trade my soul. So I agreed. Is this story real or a myth? I will leave that question unanswered.

I arrive at the fourth stop in my journey. I arrive in Chicago at her lover’s plush apartment. He is made of money – anyone can guess that. I knock on the door. She opens the door. I can’t remember much else. She is surprised to see me. She tells me straight she has finished with me and she don’t love me no more. She asks me to leave, begs me to leave before her lover comes home. I say I ain’t leaving Chicago without her. I remind her of all the good times we shared and how she fell in love with me and my music. She says all I have ever loved is my music and that there is no room in the world for her. She says she can’t compete no more. She hates my guitar, she hates my music now and she hates me. She says she felt lonely with me and she can’t stand that loneliness anymore. She does not want to be a wife of a lonely Bluesman. Her lover gives her all she needs.

She begs me to leave again. The next thing I know HE returns home. Her lover and me have a bloody fight and then I can’t remember much else after that……………

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My love has been in vain. I lost my baby forever. I sit at the bar with a glass of whisky in my hand. I drown in my blues. I drowns my sorrows away. My head hurts with the bruise on my forehead.. I feel I have been punched bad, but I can’t feel the pain. I just feel the pain of my heart.  She won’t come back to me. I want to cry and wring my hands. I feel lost in this joint with cigarette smoke and low lights. I am in my own private hell. The devil may as well take my soul now. Earlier another woman comes up to me and wants to flirt with me. I ain’t having it. I just want to be with my beautiful wife.

My beautiful gorgeous wife……..

She broke my heart……….

What will I do? How can I carry on now? I just want to die. I want to fade away.

I leave the joint and go into a nearby church my fifth stop in my journey.  I need to pray. I need to pray to my Good Lord.

I sit before the image of his son and pray in God home. And then I hear the answer in my prayers.  I see the one thing that gives me fulfilment. The one true love in my life, who has never let me down. Who has been by my side from day one.

A sudden sense of peace descends upon me and I feel a comfort that no woman’s arms can give me now.

My music is that comfort. My God given music is my vocation,my wife and trusty loyal guitar my girlfriend. I am in Chicago for a reason and that’s not to get my baby back but to bring the Mississippi Delta Blues to the city – a city like Chicago and then to spread the music to the world.

And that is what I am gonna do. My journey has only just begun. My love indeed has not been in vain……

By Subrata Saha  ( 22/04/2011)