Rory Block
The Lady and Mr. Johnson

 This album has the scent of sulfur and foundation and its title already seems to indicate who its true authors are: "The Lady and Mr. Johnson". On the cover, the smiling ghost of the epic bluesman (played by his young nephew Richard) is a presence both comforting and sinister behind Rory because, as clarified in the notes written by her, the spirit of Mr. Johnson was always present throughout the recording sessions. "Sometimes," writes the Lady amused, "we didn't leave the house, sometimes we worked, and other times we tried to record." All this should not be surprising. Instead of Robert Johnson, wouldn't you also prefer to spend time with this beautiful white lady, rather than with Peter Green or Eric Clapton?

If you don't know her yet, she is Rory Block and, if you think that country blues is the preserve of black men from the last century, you should know that she is currently regarded as the greatest living blues interpreter (she won the "The W.C. Handy Award" for 5 consecutive years), and as a young girl, at her own risk and peril, she studied with Son House and Reverend Gary Davis. Born in 1949 in New Jersey in a shack without pipes by two parents who, as she herself recounts, were probably the world's first "hippies" (while Kerouac was traveling and writing "On The Road", her father, after winning a literature professorship at a college, gave it all up and headed west: the "new west": the east!), she started strumming the guitar at 10, recorded her first album at 12 (with her father playing the violin), and at 15 ran away from home with Stefan Grossman (who was evidently a bit of a Lolita-lover, but certainly not stupid) in search of the true blues. Today Rory is 59 years old, is a great friend of the legendary Jorma Kaukonen, guitarist of Jefferson Airplane (to whom she passes along stray dogs), and when she's on tour, she brings baseball bats and gloves because she can't give up playing softball in rest areas. On her official website, besides the usual sections (tour dates, discography..), you can find photographs of her with her three dogs and in the "Life Story" link, some of the beautiful portraits of the historical bluesmen she has known. 

"The Lady and Mr. Johnson", the pinnacle of her career, opens fairly predictably with "Cross Roads Blues", but the Lady is subtler than her big boots suggest. For a few seconds, the introduction of the most cursed song of all is entrusted solely to her splendid voice and a Baptist church choir. Is it not said that Robert Johnson gave his soul to God? Here then, just as the poor bluesman's mother would have liked, the dark tale of the crossroads enters triumphantly into God's house and becomes the most legendary of apologues on the temptations strewn on the path of a poor Christian. However, as soon as the Lady starts playing her Martin guitar, the incense gives way to sulfur and incredibly, we hear Mr. Johnson. "Last Fair Deal Gone Down" is still the same time-suspended nightmare, and not even Diamanda Galas would have managed to sing an "If I Had Possession Over Judgement Day" or a "Hellhound on my trail" so sulfurous. Certainly, Rory Block's impressive guitar style, often played on the delays, (which includes Kaukonen himself among her admirers), however clean it may be, is even more angular than that of her ghostly mentor, and her singing does not have that same delicate oriental touch in the falsettos, but precisely for this reason, "The Lady and Mr. Johnson" should be recognized as the most philological and at the same time original tribute ever dedicated to the most famous bluesman of the delta since no one, endowed with such great personality, has really approached this extraordinary songbook with so much love, to the point of not being alone.