Robert Johnson

[sam_webmaster]

New photo of bluesman Robert Johnson unearthed; only third photo in existence

By Dylan Baddour, Thursday, December 17, 2015

This photo, found in an antique auction desk in Florida in 2013, is purported to show American blues legend Robert Johnson (left), according to Lois Gibson, an award-winning forensic artist and facial analyst in Houston.

A newly-analyzed photo purportedly shows Robert Johnson, the mysterious blues legend whose meager recordings became a groundwork for American popular music.

Only two such photos have been unequivocally confirmed, and the prospect of another is held as a holy grail in blues society.

Johnson was an influential early blues singer and guitarist whose songs have been covered by the likes of The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin, The White Stripes, Fleetwood Mac and countless others. He also infamously is alleged to have made a deal with the devil, who personally tuned Johnson's guitar at a crossroads in Mississippi, thus giving him his extraordinary guitar skills in exchange for his soul.

He wandered the South and earned acclaim picking guitar tunes, but he made just two recordings—in San Antonio in 1936 and in Dallas in 1937.

The identification comes from Lois Gibson, award-winning forensic artist for the Houston Police Department and professional analyst of historical photographs. She also announced identification of a Johnson photo in 2008; that one was accepted by the Johnson estate but widely contested by blues historians.

The new photograph turned up in an antique Winthrop desk, filled with odds and ends, bought in a 2013 auction by Donald Roark, a 64-year-old retired lawyer and professor in Pensacola, Florida.

In a cluttered draw was a three-by-five inch photo of four people seated at a public table, the man in question on the left.

"I guess it was because of the hat," Roark said, recalling his first glimpse of the picture, and his memory of the photo cover of the Robert Johnson album he owns. "I chuckled and thought that guy kind of looks like Robert Johnson."

When he asked his wife who the man looked like, she said Robert Johnson. He sat on the suspicion for two years, until reaching out to Gibson's manager online for a professional take on the photograph.

It was one of the five-or-so requests for a photo identification Gibson gets each month, she said.

"Ninety-nine percent of them I look at and well, I don't laugh in their face, but I shrug it off," she said.

But the purported Johnson photo gave her pause. Gibson, who spent the last three decades analyzing and reconstructing faces, said she recognized Johnson's face. But the scene offered further evidence—three people who Gibson identified as known acquaintances of Johnson: Calletta Craft, Johnson's wife from 1931, who bears a marked eye condition; Estella Coleman, who housed Johnson since 1933; and her son Robert Lockwood Jr.

That crowd would set the purported image in the mid 1930s, before Johnson made a name as a nomadic guitar player and blues singer, and before was afforded the privilege to record.

Two years after his first session, Johnson died in 1938 at age 27 (making him the first great musician in the notable company of the "27 Club," alongside Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain).
But his enduring sound, captured in Texas studios, helped motivate music for decades to come with its eerie invocations of the devil. His sound famously inspired the young ensemble that would become the Rolling Stones. The Washington Post reported in 2011 there are 30 records with at least one cover of a Johnson song on them that have sold more than a million copies.

Because of Johnson's mysterious legacy, blues scholars are eternally skeptical of the emergence of new photos. A May 2015 article in Texas Monthly evoked a purported Johnson image—confirmed as the image currently in question--which scholars swiftly dismissed.

But Gibson, who won a Guiness World Record for most successful forensic artist, said that historical scholars are not qualified to make those assertions about photographs.

"These blues people are not specialists in facial structure. I am," she said. "They would not know a superciliary arch from a philtrum."

With only two sure photos of Johnson, shot in studio and documented at the time, a broad consensus on the authenticity of the newly-surfaced photo is unlikely.

http://www.chron.com/entertainment/music/article/New-photo-of-bluesman-Robert-Johnson-unearthed-6703035.php

 

[reswati]

New photo of bluesman Robert Johnson unearthed; only third photo in existence

By Dylan Baddour, Thursday, December 17, 2015

This photo, found in an antique auction desk in Florida in 2013, is purported to show American blues legend Robert Johnson (left), according to Lois Gibson, an award-winning forensic artist and facial analyst in Houston.

A newly-analyzed photo purportedly shows Robert Johnson, the mysterious blues legend whose meager recordings became a groundwork for American popular music.

Only two such photos have been unequivocally confirmed, and the prospect of another is held as a holy grail in blues society.

Johnson was an influential early blues singer and guitarist whose songs have been covered by the likes of The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin, The White Stripes, Fleetwood Mac and countless others. He also infamously is alleged to have made a deal with the devil, who personally tuned Johnson's guitar at a crossroads in Mississippi, thus giving him his extraordinary guitar skills in exchange for his soul.

He wandered the South and earned acclaim picking guitar tunes, but he made just two recordings—in San Antonio in 1936 and in Dallas in 1937.

The identification comes from Lois Gibson, award-winning forensic artist for the Houston Police Department and professional analyst of historical photographs. She also announced identification of a Johnson photo in 2008; that one was accepted by the Johnson estate but widely contested by blues historians.

The new photograph turned up in an antique Winthrop desk, filled with odds and ends, bought in a 2013 auction by Donald Roark, a 64-year-old retired lawyer and professor in Pensacola, Florida.

In a cluttered draw was a three-by-five inch photo of four people seated at a public table, the man in question on the left.

"I guess it was because of the hat," Roark said, recalling his first glimpse of the picture, and his memory of the photo cover of the Robert Johnson album he owns. "I chuckled and thought that guy kind of looks like Robert Johnson."

When he asked his wife who the man looked like, she said Robert Johnson. He sat on the suspicion for two years, until reaching out to Gibson's manager online for a professional take on the photograph.

It was one of the five-or-so requests for a photo identification Gibson gets each month, she said.

"Ninety-nine percent of them I look at and well, I don't laugh in their face, but I shrug it off," she said.

But the purported Johnson photo gave her pause. Gibson, who spent the last three decades analyzing and reconstructing faces, said she recognized Johnson's face. But the scene offered further evidence—three people who Gibson identified as known acquaintances of Johnson: Calletta Craft, Johnson's wife from 1931, who bears a marked eye condition; Estella Coleman, who housed Johnson since 1933; and her son Robert Lockwood Jr.

That crowd would set the purported image in the mid 1930s, before Johnson made a name as a nomadic guitar player and blues singer, and before was afforded the privilege to record.

Two years after his first session, Johnson died in 1938 at age 27 (making him the first great musician in the notable company of the "27 Club," alongside Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain).
But his enduring sound, captured in Texas studios, helped motivate music for decades to come with its eerie invocations of the devil. His sound famously inspired the young ensemble that would become the Rolling Stones. The Washington Post reported in 2011 there are 30 records with at least one cover of a Johnson song on them that have sold more than a million copies.

Because of Johnson's mysterious legacy, blues scholars are eternally skeptical of the emergence of new photos. A May 2015 article in Texas Monthly evoked a purported Johnson image—confirmed as the image currently in question--which scholars swiftly dismissed.

But Gibson, who won a Guiness World Record for most successful forensic artist, said that historical scholars are not qualified to make those assertions about photographs.

"These blues people are not specialists in facial structure. I am," she said. "They would not know a superciliary arch from a philtrum."

With only two sure photos of Johnson, shot in studio and documented at the time, a broad consensus on the authenticity of the newly-surfaced photo is unlikely.

http://www.chron.com/entertainment/music/article/New-photo-of-bluesman-Robert-Johnson-unearthed-6703035.php

 

Cool, the guy looks groovy,

these gigantic fingers are an amazing feature......nice find, thanks for sharing, completely missed this news on this side of the pond.

[Sathington Willoughby]

New photo of bluesman Robert Johnson unearthed; only third photo in existence

By Dylan Baddour, Thursday, December 17, 2015

This photo, found in an antique auction desk in Florida in 2013, is purported to show American blues legend Robert Johnson (left), according to Lois Gibson, an award-winning forensic artist and facial analyst in Houston.

A newly-analyzed photo purportedly shows Robert Johnson, the mysterious blues legend whose meager recordings became a groundwork for American popular music.

Only two such photos have been unequivocally confirmed, and the prospect of another is held as a holy grail in blues society.

Johnson was an influential early blues singer and guitarist whose songs have been covered by the likes of The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin, The White Stripes, Fleetwood Mac and countless others. He also infamously is alleged to have made a deal with the devil, who personally tuned Johnson's guitar at a crossroads in Mississippi, thus giving him his extraordinary guitar skills in exchange for his soul.

He wandered the South and earned acclaim picking guitar tunes, but he made just two recordings—in San Antonio in 1936 and in Dallas in 1937.

The identification comes from Lois Gibson, award-winning forensic artist for the Houston Police Department and professional analyst of historical photographs. She also announced identification of a Johnson photo in 2008; that one was accepted by the Johnson estate but widely contested by blues historians.

The new photograph turned up in an antique Winthrop desk, filled with odds and ends, bought in a 2013 auction by Donald Roark, a 64-year-old retired lawyer and professor in Pensacola, Florida.

In a cluttered draw was a three-by-five inch photo of four people seated at a public table, the man in question on the left.

"I guess it was because of the hat," Roark said, recalling his first glimpse of the picture, and his memory of the photo cover of the Robert Johnson album he owns. "I chuckled and thought that guy kind of looks like Robert Johnson."

When he asked his wife who the man looked like, she said Robert Johnson. He sat on the suspicion for two years, until reaching out to Gibson's manager online for a professional take on the photograph.

It was one of the five-or-so requests for a photo identification Gibson gets each month, she said.

"Ninety-nine percent of them I look at and well, I don't laugh in their face, but I shrug it off," she said.

But the purported Johnson photo gave her pause. Gibson, who spent the last three decades analyzing and reconstructing faces, said she recognized Johnson's face. But the scene offered further evidence—three people who Gibson identified as known acquaintances of Johnson: Calletta Craft, Johnson's wife from 1931, who bears a marked eye condition; Estella Coleman, who housed Johnson since 1933; and her son Robert Lockwood Jr.

That crowd would set the purported image in the mid 1930s, before Johnson made a name as a nomadic guitar player and blues singer, and before was afforded the privilege to record.

Two years after his first session, Johnson died in 1938 at age 27 (making him the first great musician in the notable company of the "27 Club," alongside Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain).
But his enduring sound, captured in Texas studios, helped motivate music for decades to come with its eerie invocations of the devil. His sound famously inspired the young ensemble that would become the Rolling Stones. The Washington Post reported in 2011 there are 30 records with at least one cover of a Johnson song on them that have sold more than a million copies.

Because of Johnson's mysterious legacy, blues scholars are eternally skeptical of the emergence of new photos. A May 2015 article in Texas Monthly evoked a purported Johnson image—confirmed as the image currently in question--which scholars swiftly dismissed.

But Gibson, who won a Guiness World Record for most successful forensic artist, said that historical scholars are not qualified to make those assertions about photographs.

"These blues people are not specialists in facial structure. I am," she said. "They would not know a superciliary arch from a philtrum."

With only two sure photos of Johnson, shot in studio and documented at the time, a broad consensus on the authenticity of the newly-surfaced photo is unlikely.

http://www.chron.com/entertainment/music/article/New-photo-of-bluesman-Robert-Johnson-unearthed-6703035.php

 

Doesn't look like him IMO.

[Patrycja]

WOW that's incredible if indeed true. I love these 'found in random place' stories. My first gut feeling was that it does look like him, mile long fingers and spooky look and all. You could also verify going by the other people in the photo. Would make sense for him to be sitting with his wife, for instance.

[Sathington Willoughby]

Roberts nose is bigger than that and his right eye is bigger than his left.

[Kiwi_Zep_Fan87]

Doesn't look like him IMO.

Exactly what I was thinking. 

[Strider]

Hard to tell with his hand covering half his face and hat covering his hairline. It would be nice for it to be true but I remain skeptical at the present.

[kingzoso]

I am a big fan of the music of Mr. Robert Johnson and his purported deal with the Devil.  This is just my opinion but I would think that if Robert Johnson did indeed sell his soul to Legba/Lucifer, then Lucifer/Legba would have wanted Roberts face and picture on every wall and corner stretching from the Mississippi Delta to the South Side of Chicago. 

I suppose that Legba wanted to take and make Robert Johnson more mysterious and enigmatic.  Either way, both options would have worked but it seems that the dark and mysterious and the only 3 or 4 known photographs of the "King of the Delta Blues" was Lucifers final decision. 

How I would have loved to have been there when Mr. Scratch "finely tuned" Robert Johnson guitar at those Crossroads way back when and showed Robert what he was destined for, however short-lived but eventually Immortalized as the most influential musician of all-time.  A small price to pay for complete and utter Immortality (I suppose). 

[Ross62]

The first pic has been doing the rounds for years and is purportedly Calletta Craft.

The second pic is Robert Lockwood Jnr. in later years,his small nose and his ears seem to be the same as in Sam's pic.

The 3rd is the 2nd most recent? pic of RJ and Johnny Shines unearthed a couple of years ago and verified then by Gibson.But

 When Lockwood and Honeyboy Edwards were asked if they recognised either man in the picture “neither identified the men in the photo. Still, [photo owner] Schein wasn’t ready to give up. The bluesmen hadn’t said it wasn’tJohnson…”    Claud Johnson (Robert’s estranged son) might believe that the photo depicts his father, but he never actually met Robert Johnson and glimpsed him only once, almost 70 years ago when he was around 5 years old. 

The 4th is Sonny Boy Williamson, KFFA owner Sam Anderson and Robert Lockwood Jr. - ca.1940's 

And the 5th,as Sath pointed out shows a flatter nose than that in pic 3,maybe Robert had been in a fight not long before that famous pic was taken?

Still,there's something about the RJ? eyes in Sam's pic that has me wondering...