Book Review: Beyond the Crossroads: The Devil and the Blues Tradition
By Dr. Adam Gussow
The University of North Carolina Press
Reviewed by Frank Matheis – December, 2017
Blues forums are not the place where you would expect well-known writers and blues aficionados to criticize a book just by reading parts of the introduction, but alas, so it was. Beyond the Crossroads: The Devil and the Blues Tradition was criticized for being too academic, for challenging old-guard musicologists and for “being written for other musicologists.” The thing is, many of those critics openly admitted that they had not actually read the book.
It seems like people hungrily devour blues folklore about musicians selling their souls to the devil, but when it comes to a deep analysis of that topic, the devil, some will shy away.
What a mistake!
Dr. Adam Gussow, Associate Prof. of English and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi, is a scholar who delves deeply into his academic research. He previously explored the subject of murder in Seems Like Murder Here, winner of the 2004 C. Hugh Holman Award from the Society for the Study of Southern Literature, a subject which he exposed equally thoroughly as the new book about the devil in the blues tradition. Gussow worked on this new book for seven years and it is easy to see why. He worked through the original transcriptions of 125 songs and nearly 500 cited research sources and interviews, to develop this important, detailed and thorough work. Some will surely recall his work in the guitar-harmonica duo of Satan & Adam, with Sterling “Mr. Satan” Magee. He wrote about that experience in Mister Satan’s Apprentice. This new book is breathtaking in its wide and comprehensive coverage of the topic and comprehensive research and, foremost, it evokes critical thinking. He not only challenges norms, but he dares to touch sacred cows and refreshes our own perception and ideas.
We live in a time where people are used to everything fast and easy. Short soundbites, tweets and Facebook postings become the accepted norm. Opinions mask as facts and knowledge. Anti-intellectual, superficially or low educated people loudly and arrogantly condemn “academic elites” on social media; and, seemingly everyone claims to know and understand the blues and its origins. Here is a true scholar who just published an important book that should be of interest to intelligent people who want to “understand” rather than to just form the blues into what they want or imagine it to be.
Alright then. Scholarly books are for scholarly people. Gussow does not write superficial, fast-reads. Instead, for any serious reader and blues aficionado, Beyond the Crossroads: The Devil and the Blues Tradition offers a fascinating look into one of the widely recurring characters in song: the devil. It’s not a book for everyone, even not all lovers of blues. But if your bookshelf is packed with Ferris, Evans, Charters, Pearson, Wald and more, it will be a fine read.
Every reader will likely approach this subject through their own life’s experience. This writer vividly remembers sitting at his beloved grandmother’s feet to be told of eternal hellfire, boiling kettles of oil and the temptations Lucifer offers us constantly in life, only to lure us into the burning inferno. In Lutheran parochial school, they created visions of the devil as the personification of evil, the enemy of Christ, the hell spawn who threatens at any moment to pull us into damnation for the slightest sin, or even just to think about committing the sin. This is the devil I knew, the way Chris Smitter sang:
The devil ain’t a legend, the devil’s real, In the empty way he touched me, where I hardly feel…
Then, they took us to the theatric play by Goethe, Faust, where we learned what happens when you sell your soul to the devil. Once it’s done you can’t change your mind and be clear, he will come to collect. Eventually I rejected this upbringing to embrace the same way John Lee Hooker sang:
Ain’t no heaven, Ain’t no Heaven, no Burning Hell
When I die, where I go, nobody know.
I think we have a soul, but we can’t sell it. Yet, people worldwide, even those who profess to be atheists, somehow are infatuated with legends about Robert Johnson and Tommy Johnson allegedly selling their souls to the devil on a crossroad outside of Clarksdale, Mississippi at midnight.
So, who and what is this devil? Is he Satan, the same personification of evil taught in most Christian churches – What do those blues lyrics, that make him so important of a subject, really mean? Gussow answers those questions with surprisingly varied and interesting points, revealing a complex set of perceptions of who and what the devil is and means. Once he takes us on this fascinating journey, we will most likely realize how narrow our own understanding of the concept is.
Most blues fans are aware of the Southern Baptist’s frequent rejection of blues as the devil’s music, based on Christian polemic. Gussow cover that topic in depth. He also explores the concept of the devil of West African origins, sometimes called Legba, and the notion that this devil personification survived the African slavery experience over hundreds of years and lived on in African American cultural inheritance and folklore. Legba, it is said, has different characteristics than the Christian Satan. Legba is the guardian and a trickster of the crossroads and entrances, one who communicates with spirits. The Christian churches have labeled this widely served African deity as “the devil” and some claim that when the African American blues musicians refer to him by that reference, they are not, in fact, talking about the Satan with horns, hoofs and a tail, but a tall black man with a pipe.
In Beyond the Crossroads: The Devil and the Blues Tradition, Gussow goes through great length to show the many blues singers and songs that invoke the devil. Among the many interesting glimpses, we learn about Peetie Wheatstraw, the so-called “Devil’s son-in-law.” Gussow explores the concept that in the eyes of some African Americans, who lived under Jim Crow oppression and who vividly recalled the barbarity in the post-slavery period, the idea that the white people were the devil was not uncommon. It’s easy to see how this imagery could arise, given the harsh subjugation. To people with those sentiments, whites were the devil and their own lives, in violence, poverty and oppression, a living hell. This viewpoint has carried through to today in some parts of the African American black power movement. Wheatstraw had a white woman share his bed and walked a small white dog, as if to salute the white world with a middle finger. Gussow states, “He is signifying on the white devil – the white man, the power to be who are keeping back folks down. The devil’s son-in-law is the man who has married the (white) devil’s daughter.”
That word “signifying” is another fascinating exploration in this book. Most blues fans are conscious of sexual innuendo, sometimes thinly veiled, because at the time explicit lyrics were banned, so people resorted to symbolism to get their point across. It was plain to see that when Bessie Smith sang “Take me for a buggy ride” she was actually not keen on looking at the rear of a horse. “Hot Tamales and they’re red hot…yes, she’s got ‘em for sale,” well, go figure.
Similarly, signifying, as Gussow explains, is also evident in other lyrical expression where the singer was unable to articulate what was really meant without being beaten or killed, something that Gussow calls “skillful signifying.” So, the singer may use the word devil to mean the overseer, the big boss man or any oppressive force, but covertly. The boss may hear it and never know the song is about him. Now, decades later, however, the predominately white blues fans worldwide will hear the word “devil” and take it literally, perhaps never grasping the element of signifying.
The blues is full of ripe legends and none greater than Robert Johnson, who somehow always ends up being the dominant figure of popular interest.
As a disclaimer, let me state that I am a huge and longtime fan of Robert Johnson’s music, but a major critic of the cult mystification and demonization of Robert Johnson. I can hear his songs for the millionth time and love it. The other stuff, well, no.
Gussow slips RJ to Chapter 5. but then unloads the big questions: What does “selling yourself to the devil really mean?” Did Robert Johnson actually ever say that he in fact sold his soul to the devil, or is it what people wanted to draw out of those three much misinterpreted songs? Son House was the one that stated Johnson had returned after a short absence with supernatural playing ability. Nobody seemingly likes the answer “maybe he just practiced hard”? The myth sells more records. Maybe Son House deflected from the fact that Robert Johnson was just plain out better than House? A way of saving face? Gussow shows numerous examples how the “sold his soul” statement can be a disparaging comment for anyone “wayward” without an actual crossroads devil pact by the musician. We know that Robert Johnson spend a time with a musician named Ike Zimmerman, who was his teacher and mentor. Dr. Bruce Conforth had found and interviewed Ike’s family. Ike was neither devilish nor were they at a crossroads. He was a good musician with a day job, a decent guy, but he liked playing in the peace and quiet of the local graveyard, in the still of night. His granddaughter stated, “They would leave to go to that cemetery. It’s got them old tombstones…He’d sit back with him (Robert Johnson). He wasn’t at no crossroads…There wasn’t no crossroads. They went ‘cross the road. Robert was Ike’s protégé. They were friends and partners. Gussow’s profound statement is: “The secret shared by Ike and his protégé was that there was no secret.
So, what about the soul selling that Johnson evoked? Gussow offers plausible explanations for that, and all of the overwrought ideas about Johnson…but, for that interesting journey, read the book.
This writer heard stories about young Europeans traveling to Clarksdale to try to sell their soul to the devil so that they too could be the new Van Halen or Eric Clapton. Apparently, the devil stopped taking souls, because since the mythical soul sales by Tommy and Robert Johnson, there have been no similar successful deals recorded. People tried but the devil never showed up, but Clarksdale hotels and restaurant did alright anyway. Gussow gives a lengthy exposé about the blues tourism and the reality of this poor, predominately black Mississippi town and the oddity of the predominately white operated and utilized blues business.
That chapter will leave you a combination of smirking and just a little peeved, but alas, as the Beatles sang, Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about.
Beyond the Crossroads is masterfully researched, impeccably well-written, spell bindingly interesting food for thought for curious minds. It explains many things about “the devil and the blues” that most blues fans think they may have known, but most likely misunderstood. In some ways, it is an eye-opener and a much-needed critical look at the commerce of mysticism.
An important addition to any serious blues reader’s bookshelf.