Letter: Blues legend recorded in Dallas

[TexasStooge]

By THOR CHRISTENSEN / The Dallas Morning News

DALLAS, Texas - Blues legend Robert Johnson's whole life is shrouded in mystery, from his alleged pact with the devil to how he died to where his body is buried. But at least one riddle – the Dallas site of his landmark 1937 recordings – has finally been solved.

For years, historians guessed Mr. Johnson cut "Hellhound on My Trail" and other blues classics at 508 Park Ave., a three-story art deco building that still stands two blocks east of Dallas City Hall.

Yet nobody knew for sure. The only person who recorded Robert Johnson, producer Don Law, died 23 years ago without ever writing down the location of the Dallas session – or so the experts thought.

But now, San Diego blues fanatic Tom Jacobson has tracked down a long-lost 1961 letter that says 508 Park is indeed the spot where Mr. Johnson recorded 13 songs that changed the course of the blues and influenced the likes of Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin.

That one small address turns out to be one giant leap for music historians.

"It's a big deal for us," says Dr. Michael Taft, head of folk culture archives at the Library of Congress, which acquired the letter in December.

"I'm not going to say the building should be a shrine. But it's a very important site because we know so little about Robert Johnson. To finally be able to say this is the building he recorded in, that's a way of bringing Robert Johnson back to life."

Mr. Johnson was a young, unknown Mississippi singer-guitarist when he came to Dallas on June 19, 1937. Mr. Law, an Englishman who moved to Dallas to work at Brunswick Records, had first recorded him eight months earlier at the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio.

And when "Terraplane Blues" became a minor hit, Mr. Law got him to come to Dallas to cut another batch of songs, including "Love in Vain" (later recorded by the Stones), "Traveling Riverside Blues" (redone by Led Zeppelin) and two tunes that fueled the legend that he sold his soul to Satan in exchange for his talent: "Me and the Devil Blues" and "Hellhound on My Trail."

But 18 months after the Dallas sessions, the singer was dead at age 27, reportedly poisoned by the jealous husband of a woman he'd tried to seduce at the Three Forks juke joint in rural Mississippi. To this day, no one's sure where he's buried.

For decades, the 29 songs he recorded in Texas – the only ones he ever made – drifted into obscurity. Finally, they re-emerged in 1961 when Columbia Records issued them as King of the Delta Blues Singers, an LP that became the Rosetta stone of the '60s blues revival.

"Johnson's words made my nerves quiver like piano wires," Mr. Dylan wrote in his 2004 autobiography, Chronicles. "The stabbing sounds from the guitar could almost break a window. The record ... left me numb, like I'd been hit by a tranquilizer bullet."

Eric Clapton called Mr. Johnson his single greatest influence – as well as the most intimidating.

"I used to think, 'If Robert is looking down, what would he think of this?' " he told The Dallas Morning News in 2004.

But while blues experts knew exactly where Mr. Johnson recorded in San Antonio, the Dallas location was a long-running mystery.

Some theorized the site was 508 Park Ave, since that was where Don Law and Brunswick Records were based in 1937. Legend has it that everyone from Charlie Parker to Bob Wills recorded in the building, which was originally a Warner Bros. film distribution center for the movie theaters on Elm Street.

So, in 1998, Mr. Jacobson – a 57-year-old San Diego blues freak and photography expert – traveled to Dallas to see the old building where Mr. Johnson probably recorded. Later, he went to New York City to meet Frank Driggs, who produced and wrote the liner notes for King of the Delta Blues Singers.

There, in Mr. Driggs' basement, sat piles of rare recordings and documents he'd taken from Columbia Records because he said his bosses didn't care about blues history.

"Every time they changed management, the new management had that much less interest. So I just took the stuff home with me and kept it in the cellar," says Mr. Driggs, 75.

The two men spent three days digging through the cellar before literally tripping over a stack of rare test pressings of the Robert Johnson sessions. Mr. Jacobson bought the recordings from Mr. Driggs – as well as the 1961 letter in which Mr. Driggs asks Mr. Law to describe Robert Johnson, and Mr. Law scribbles his answers in the margins.

The old yellow document confirms some of the few stories that exist about Robert Johnson – like the night in San Antonio he asked Mr. Law for money to pay a prostitute ("She wants 50 cents and I lacks a nickel") and how he was so secretive about his guitar technique that when other musicians watched, he played facing the wall in a corner of the room. The letter says the blues legend was paid all of $25 per song.

But for Dallas music buffs, the key passage is when Mr. Driggs asks "Where were the Dallas masters cut?" and Mr. Law replies "In a makeshift studio in our own branch office" – the first and only confirmation that 508 Park Ave. is indeed the site.

"It finally seals it up," says Dallas Blues Society founder Chuck Nevitt.

"It's just an incredible document," says Mr. Jacobson, who donated the letter to the Library of Congress. "It's an important piece of Americana about a musical genius."

It could also play an important role in the future of 508 Park, which has sat vacant for years in a part of downtown that's yet to see urban renewal. Glazer's, a Dallas beverage distribution firm, has owned 508 Park Ave. since the 1950s. The company has been trying to sell it for years, to no avail, says R.L. Glazer, chairman of the board.

In 2004, Eric Clapton shot part of his Sessions for Robert J DVD inside, but nobody seems quite sure what to do with the building: There's not even a plaque marking it as a historic site.

The building's facade is protected as part of the Harwood Street Historic District. But the rest of 508 Park – including the room where Robert Johnson made his last pivotal recordings – could eventually be turned into condos, or even demolished.

As Mr. Nevitt puts it, "The way they tear stuff down in this town, it's remarkable the building's still there."