Blind Willie Johnson
Musician · 1897–1945 · Pendleton, Texas
Best known for
Songwriter
Blind Willie Johnson was a Texas gospel-blues singer and bottleneck-slide guitarist whose thirty Columbia recordings, cut between 1927 and 1930, document one of the most powerful and influential voices and slide-guitar techniques in early American recorded music. His wordless “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground” was included on NASA’s 1977 Voyager Golden Record, sent into interstellar space as a sample of human civilization.
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- Born January 25, 1897, in Pendleton, Texas, near Temple, to sharecropper Dock Johnson and Mary King; raised in Marlin after his mother’s death when he was four.
- Blinded at seven when his stepmother — during a fight with his father — threw lye in his face.
- Sang on the streets of Beaumont, Marlin, and Dallas through the 1920s.
- Recorded thirty sides for Columbia Records between December 1927 and April 1930, all gospel-blues numbers performed solo with slide guitar and a powerful chest voice.
- His version of “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground” was selected by Carl Sagan’s NASA team for inclusion on the 1977 Voyager Golden Record.
- His slide guitar style was a direct influence on Robert Johnson, Howlin’ Wolf, Eric Clapton, and Ry Cooder.
- Lost his Beaumont home to a fire in mid-1945; slept in the ashes, contracted malarial pneumonia, and died on September 18, 1945.
