ReMastered: Devil at the Crossroads

Was slightly hesitant to watch this documentary because I'm not extremely familiar with Blues history but then I thought that's even more of a reason to watch and I'm so glad I did. Just hearing the trials and tribulations Johnson went through lends a higher amount of respect to his music and himself as a person than can even be imagined. What a fantastic musician and also adds more fuel to the fire for all of you conspiracy theory folks out there. A MUST WATCH!

A comprehensive history of Blues Legend Robert Johnson, at least based on the limited information about him. Johnson was a legendary and innovative Guitarist who had a huge influence in modern music as we know it today. A must see if you are a fan of music, or of history in general.

I'm not a blues purist myself. I tend to like them distilled through the likes of the Stones, Clapton, Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac and others but I know just enough to be curious about the brief life and times of Robert Johnson, the great American blues guitarist and singer and founding member of the legendary "27" club, being the shared age at which a number of highly prominent musicians, including Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones, Any Winehouse and others have died ever since Johnson's original demise.

Ideally, I suppose this rather brief Netflix documentary could have been edited down still more to 27 minutes to further emphasise the point but I guess that would have been taking things a bit too far, although so little is known about Johnson's life that I guess it could actually have been done in half the time.

Here, the little that is known about him, is fleshed out with animations and of course lots and lots of people talking about him. The great myth or legend, depending on your viewpoint about Johnson, is the whole deal about him selling his soul to the devil at the crossroads. More credible perhaps is that he went away and was taught by a master guitarist who allegedly said to him that the best place to rehearse and practice was in a graveyard at midnight.

Although it's clear there isn't much meat to the bone so far as his life story is concerned, it was still interesting to learn that he had two significant relationships in his life with very young women both of which were nipped in the bud we are told by over-protective family members who couldn't handle the fact that Robert made his living by playing what they called the devil's music, a.k.a. The blues. He did have a child by his second girlfriend (his first girlfriend also died tragically in childbirth before he could reach her) although the boy only had one memory of ever seeing his father and that only when he was being turned away by the boy's great grandfather on a surprise visit. The most interesting interviewees in the film I thought were of his only son and two subsequent grandsons, one of whom styles himself as a latter-day blues singer.

It really is a pity that there is no video footage available of the man himself in action but at least there is his legacy of 29 individual recordings and the bitter-sweet story is told that the legendary music historian and producer John Hammond had lined Johnson up to play in a special concert at New York's Carnegie Hall only to learn of course that Johnson had died some months before.

Unsurprisingly, I detected more than a hint of hyperbole and yarn-spinning by some of the contributors here, which I suppose is only to be expected. Nevertheless I found this introduction to one of the legendary figures of 20th Century music to be an informative and entertaining mini-documentary which may yet lead me down my own crossroads to take in some of Johnson's music.

What I like about this Netflix series of documents is that they are short and sweet, you don't have to invest that much time in them and come out with a little bit of knowledge.

I had personally never heard of Robert Johnson before watching this and it was definitely interesting to learn a bit about his life and how influential his music was. I would have liked to gone deeper into his supposed deal with the devil, but maybe that's all there is.

The story of Robert Johnson is undoubtedly a fascinating one, It's incredible the impact he had on the music industry and I would absolutely recommend watching this or doing your own research.

The biggest problem is that (as the documentary self confesses) not a lot is known about the life of Robert Johnson and as such it feels like there is very little 'meat on the bone' for a documentary. (In short he couldn't play guitar, disappears for over a year and then comes back a phenomenon, before passing on way too soon).