Good Friday with Blind Willie Johnson

On Good Friday, we are thinking again about a couple of Blind Willie Johnson songs. And in case you’ve ever wondered why this day which commemorates the crucifixion of Jesus Christ could possibly be called good – the Oxford English Dictionary says that “good” refers to a day of religious observance, noting that the term first appeared in the 13^th century; so it effectively means “holy”: i.e. Holy Friday.

Perhaps Willie Johnson’s most famous song is Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground. Of his 29 recorded songs, it’s the one that made it into the illustrious company of Beethoven, Bach, Mozart and Stravinsky on the “Golden Record” on board the 1997 unmanned Voyager space probe, intended for the ears of any intelligent extraterrestrial life form who might come upon it.

The song is an old sacred hymn, which, In Johnson’s hands, becomes an evocation of Christ’s solitary experience in the Garden of Gethsemane on the eve of his crucifixion, where his anticipation of what was likely to lie before him produced sweat which “became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” The Gospel of Luke is describing a condition we know as hematohidrosis, where capillary blood vessels that feed the sweat glands rupture, causing them to exude blood, which occurring under conditions of extreme physical or emotional stress.

Despite the fact that you really can’t hear the words in Johnson’s recording of the song, it is quite graphic. Johnson, more so than on other songs, moans and groans his way through the song as he plays his eerie slide guitar. Johnson was something of a master on slide guitar, was able to get great tone out of simply using a pocketknife as his slide, and the combination of his guitar work and the moaning are enough to take us into that moment of anguish with Christ in the Garden, prior to his impending execution.

Crucifixion was a brutal means of execution, used widely by the Romans to punish offenders and dissuade others from law-breaking. The victim was tied or nailed to a large wooden beam and left to hang, perhaps for several days, until eventual death from exhaustion and asphyxiation. It was slow, painful, gruesome, humiliating, and public. Anticipation of such a death would certainly account for the extreme anxiety that brought on hematohidrosis.

The lyrics of the song are sombre and challenging (see this post), but Johnson clearly felt that the music and his mournful moaning were enough to take us into that moment of anguish with Christ in the Garden, prior to his impending execution.

The other Willie Johnson song relevant to Good Friday is (I Know) His Blood Can Make Me Whole, a traditional spiritual song he recorded in 1927. Barbecue Bob had recorded the song earlier in the year. The song talks about “touching the hem” of Jesus’s “garment,” a reference to the gospel story of the woman who had suffered from haemorrhages for many years who was healed simply by touching Jesus’s clothes. The song, though, is about how faith in Jesus’s death can bring redemption and healing. Johnson does not shy away from presenting the challenge of what he felt was the central element of his faith.

Check out this great version by Martin Swamps

A Song for Good Friday: Lead Belly, Nirvana, The Welcome Wagon

Huddie Ledbetter, better known as “Lead Belly,” survived a life that included desperate poverty and long stretches in prison to become a renowned blues and folk singer. Discovered by the Lomaxes in the early 1930s in the notorious Angola prison in Louisiana where he was serving time for stabbing a white man in a fight, Lead Belly was released to become the “King of the Twelve-String Guitar,” – the most enduring image of Lead Belly is wielding his large Stella twelve-string.

His last recording session was around one year before his death, when he set down as much of his repertoire as he could, from field hollers, blues, and country & western songs to children’s tunes, ballads, autobiographical pieces, and popular hits of the day. There are some spiritual songs in there too, including the poignant He Never Said a Mumbling Word.

The song refers to the Good Friday story of the crucifixion, drawing attention to the Gospel’s account of Christ’s silence before his accusers when on trial – “They led Him to Pilate’s bar,
Not a word, not a word, not a word… He never said a mumblin’ word.” There’s a sense of destiny in all of this, that Jesus willingly gave himself up to his executioners, because he knew it served a great purpose.

In Lead Belly’s rendition of the song, it clips along, almost jauntily, sung unaccompanied and driven by rhythmic clapping. It scarcely seems to do justice to the subject matter, until half way through the song when Lead Belly sings, “He’s coming back again, He’s coming back again for me.”

The song was recorded again in 1989 by Nirvana, in a version that in some ways is not too dissimilar from Lead Belly’s, but driven now by electric guitar. Somehow, though, the rough, rather discordant guitar strumming and the vocals seems to fit the brutality of Christ’s crucifixion. Interestingly, however, the “He’s coming back again,” is missing from Nirvana’s version.

Maybe the best version of the song comes from the Welcome Wagon in 2014. The slow tempo, the banjo, the strings, the slide guitar and the gently sung lyrics carry the sombreness of the story from “Pilate’s bar” to the cries of “crucify” from the mob to the “nailing to a tree.” No second coming in this version either, the artists clearly wanting to focus the attention on the crucifixion.

In St. John’s version of Christ’s trial before Pilate, Jesus is not entirely silent, albeit his answers were, to Pilate’s ears, rather enigmatic. Eventually, though, Pilate asks, maybe cynically, “What is truth?” and receives no answers. “The answer to Pilate’s question, this answer he so desperately seeks in his confusion and emptiness, is standing right in front of him. The one who was the way, the truth, and the life. Christ did not give an answer, because he himself was the answer.” (In All Things).

 

Leadbelly on Good Friday

They hung him on a cross…for me.

The Welcome Wagon takes up Leadbelly’s lyric, “He never said a mumblin’ word.”

It’s Friday, but Sunday’s coming.

Desolation Blues

James Cone said that “The blues are about black life and the sheer earth and gut capacity to survive in an extreme situation of oppression.” Yes, of course the blues are entertainment, music to dance to and usually, as Son House said, are about what happens between a man and a woman. But we can’t get away from the fact that the blues originated in the context of the suffering and discrimination suffered by black Americans in the early decades of the twentieth century. Blind Willie Johnson, blinded as a child, and who died a pauper in 1945 after living in the ruins of his burnt-down house, expresses a deep-rooted sorrow in “Lord I Just Can’t Keep from Crying”:

When my heart’s full of sorrow and my eyes are filled with tears

Lord, I just can’t keep from crying sometimes.

The blues express the mourning of a people. They are what the Bible call a lament.

This isn’t something you hear about too often in our churches – we prefer happier, more joyful expressions of faith. Nothing wrong with that, but there’s got to be an opportunity to give voice to the sorrow and fear and distress that is part of the experience of life. Those of us who live in North America or Europe have relatively stress-free lives for the most part; the majority of the world, living in poverty, suffering from war, subject to food and health insecurity have much more to be anxious about. But all of us, rich or poor, at some time or another have to go through difficulty – as I’ve been reminded recently by readers of this blog or of my book – ill-health, family problems, job or money worries, sometimes life-threatening, frightening, painful.

Old Testament specialist Water Brueggemann says that “the practice of lament is a sine qua non for believing people who embrace need and vulnerability in the presence of God.” Lament, he says, needs to be “a permanent theological practice.” All of us, at one time or another are feel vulnerable, are in need and, like Willie Johnson, “just can’t keep from crying.” And giving expression to that vulnerability, as Brueggemann reminds us is part of our humanity and part of our relationship with a loving God. It’s OK to cry out in despair and pain. Because, if there’s anything that Good Friday reminds us of, it’s that the very nature of God is expressed in weakness and suffering and pain.

Good Friday is the day when Christians remember the suffering and execution of Jesus the Messiah. The church calendar knows this past week as Holy Week, and sees it as a chance for Jesus followers to reflect on the significance of the last week of Jesus’s life as he goes to Jerusalem, falls foul of his enemies and is then captured, tortured and executed. It’s a grim story, seemingly at odds with the joy and hope that is characteristic of most of the New Testament and which marks a lot of Christian worship.

After the story of the Passover celebration by Jesus and his disciples in Mark 14, the group are said to “sing a hymn,” before headed out to the Mount of Olives and the terrible train of events that was to ensue. I wonder what they sang? Was it a song of triumph and expectation? I suspect it would have been a Psalm, Israel’s hymn book. The Psalms are a great resource in times of trouble, helping to express both the sorrow and fear that we feel, but at the same time a trust in God. As the story moves on, it gets to that point of Jesus’s utter desolation and sense of abandonment, when he cries from the cross, quoting Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

That sense of utter hopelessness gets to the heart of human experience. It reminds me of one of the slave songs remembered from anti-bellum days, which eventually resurfaces in the spirit of the blues:

Oh Lord! Oh My Lord!

Oh My Good Lord! Keep me from sinkin’ down . . .

Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen . . .

I’m bowed down with a burden of woe

O who will deliver po’ me?

Good Friday is a dark day, for sure. But it’s one where we get to see the participation of God himself in human pain and despair. It’s where we see God in Jesus sharing our pain, crying our lament, bearing our burden. And that’s something all of us need to know at one time or another.

Of course, as the old preacher said, “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s comin’.” Good Friday’s not the end of the story.

Good Friday

 

Leadbelly’s Good Friday song…