Hellhound Postscript: Blues Walkin' Like a Man

And so ends one version of the life of Robert Johnson--my 40-year-old script admired by many over the decades, but criticized by some too for sentimentality. (I'd say in defense that I tried to portray a flawed man rather than a myth.) At any rate, Hellhound is now on-line for anyone to examine and decide for him/herself.

Eventually there were other attempts: Alan Greenberg's too-surreal Love In Vain (which appeared as a book but was never filmed), and the silly Crossroads picture, and the Blaxploitation Leadbelly movie (which I egotistically thought might have "borrowed" some ideas from my widely circulating script), and the more recent Johnson docudramas--they all had ideas worth considering, but none of them attempted to create a whole world and a thoroughly imagined life.

I may not have nailed it, but I did struggle to do justice to one amazing Bluesman's poorly documented, Depression-era history, and be as culturally/socially/linguistically accurate as a white man writing a third of a century later might be.

Was Johnson's life tragic? Or was he merely heroic and skillful, pathetic and foolish in equal measure? The two or three known photos of him are finally as confusing as the recorded memories of other musicians and (supposed) friends concerning his musical prowess and his sad early death.

Only the great 29 songs (in 40-some existing takes) and the mystery remain.

Hellhound Intro: Dustin' My Broom

In the late Sixties, I wrote--on spec--the screenplay for a proposed feature film based on the music by, and few facts known about, great African-American bluesman Robert Johnson, sometimes called "King of the Delta Blues Singers"; the script was titled Hellhound on My Trail.

Around 1970 I copyrighted this with the Library of Congress and registered it with the (then-known as) Writers Guild of America, West, Inc. Over the next couple of decades various people occasionally tried to sell my script and get a production mounted. I even published a portion of it in a Boston-based rock magazine called Fusion, but no further interest resulted.

So time passed. Since it's been nearly 40 years, I've decided to publish it myself now, section by section, a few pages at a time, in this blog. I don't really care about the possibility of its being stolen--after all, there have been other attempts at telling the Johnson story, though no completely fictional film to my knowledge--and even back in the early Seventies I couldn't claim ownership of the man and his history (just my own invented retelling of it).

But I do believe my script to be a creditable piece of work (even though I am white, attempting to capture black language of long ago), fairly well imagined back when almost nothing was known about him--neither his background, nor his death, nor even how old he was--and no photographs had been found; and I'd like to leave it for posterity (maybe).

If you are a fan of Robert Johnson's music, check back regularly as I chase this particular Hellhound.