Robert Johnson Revised: Let It Roll From the Beginning... 4.11

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit letitrollpodcast.substack.com Elijah Wald was teaching a class on the Delta blues in historical order. His students couldn’t wait to get to Robert Johnson. They loved Charley Patton, they loved Skip James and Son House - and when Johnson finally came on, the room sagged. The kid was good, but after Patton and James he wasn’t doing anything new. That letdown is how Wald came to understand why Johnson was barely noticed in his own day. Host Nate Wilcox brings back Dr. Yuri Campbell, scholar and musician, to weigh what the previous episode’s conversation with Elijah Wald about “Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues” actually taught us. It returns now as part of Let It Roll From the Beginning..., in which the whole Let It Roll archive is being re-cast in chronological order by topic, and follows straight on from Wald’s own episode. Yuri explains why Johnson was the perfect blank slate for the folk and blues audiences of the 1960s - obscure, dead, few recordings and a dark sound - and why the blues itself was a brand-new form in the 1910s, not a survival from Africa. Nate lines up Johnson’s crossroads legend next to Charlie Parker’s woodshed year, and asks why a hugely successful Robert Johnson box set made Johnson an industry while Lonnie Johnson and Peetie Wheatstraw stayed obscure. Also: how the record business went to the country only after the cities bought radios, then came back for the Delta on the strength of jukeboxes; why innovation in the blues stalled once the industry worked out what it could sell; genre as a cognitive shorthand; Texas Alexander and Lonnie Johnson’s “Levee Camp Moan” as a collision of the pre-modern and the modern; and the gravestone service where the Black locals laughed at “Terraplane Blues” while the white fans stayed solemn - with Nate’s story of N.W.A sweeping the metalheads of his border-Texas hometown. Let It Roll is dedicated to the memory of Ed Ward, Russell Thomas and Danny Park. MUSIC IN THIS EPISODE * “Hellhound on My Trail,” Robert Johnson * “St. Louis Blues,” Bessie Smith with Louis Armstrong * “Levee Camp Moan,” Texas Alexander with Lonnie Johnson * “It’s Tight Like That,” Tampa Red and Georgia Tom HOW TO HEAR THE FULL EPISODE IN YOUR OWN PODCAST APP Paid subscribers get the complete episode. It doesn’t come through Apple Podcasts or Spotify - those carry the free preview. To get the full-length episodes in whatever app you already use, set up your private feed: 1. Go to letitrollpodcast.substack.com and open your subscription page 2. Scroll down to Private podcast feed 3. Click Set up podcast and copy the link 4. Paste it into your podcast app - in Apple Podcasts that’s Library -> ... -> Add a Show by URL That link is yours alone, and every new full-length episode lands in it automatically. Or skip all that and use the Substack app - sign in and everything’s already there.