Music to your ears

“When Robert Johnson got through playing, all our mouths was open. He sold his soul to the devil to get to play like that.” - Son House

With a new setting comes new music. The delta blues most accurately sets the mood for our new adaptation of Desire Under the Elms.

Robert Johnson was known as the King of the delta blues, much admired by fellow artists like Son House. Delta blues was the earliest type of blues music, first recorded in 1920s usually with just one man on the guitar. SDSU's production of Desire largely emphasizes the music of one man on the guitar, a character known as the blues man.

Long before blues music went commercial, it was underground music, unknown by most of white America. First it dealt unflinchingly with the experiences and feelings of most black Americans. Though conditions were harsh and brutal, the music's mood was never bleak... ironically, it acted as desperate humor. A humor so willingly needed to distance psychological hurt. Our production employs music to exemplify such pain, and more so, desire.

The character Tommy Johnson in the popular feature film O Brother, Where Art Thou is losely based off real-life Robert Johnson who was thought to have sold his soul to the devil (as Son House describes in this post's opening quote).
Check out the brief scene that introduces Tommy Johnson: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEQCZTaRdRo

Also, I found a podcast of delta music that may act as a great resource: http://www.deltabluesmuseum.org/high/podcast.asp

I can be contacted for additional delta blues tracks by Robert Johnson. I copied his album, King of the Delta Blues, from my fathers library. “This is the ten commandments of the Blues; he came first [in recorded blues] and everything else followed.” – Joel Hurwit