Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground: Difference between revisions
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"'''Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground'''"<ref group=note>Because documentation is scarce in early recordings, the title of the song appears differently in many sources. It is often called "Dark Was the Night" or punctuated as "Dark Was the Night (Cold Was the Ground)".</ref> is a [[Gospel (music)|gospel]]-[[blues]] song written and performed by American musician [[Blind Willie Johnson]] and |
"'''Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground'''"<ref group=note>Because documentation is scarce in early recordings, the title of the song appears differently in many sources. It is often called "Dark Was the Night" or punctuated as "Dark Was the Night (Cold Was the Ground)".</ref> is a [[Gospel (music)|gospel]]-[[blues]] song written and performed by American musician [[Blind Willie Johnson]] and likely recorded in 1927. The song is primarily an instrumental featuring Johnson's self-taught [[slide guitar|bottleneck slide guitar]] and picking style accompanied by his vocalizations of humming and moaning. It has the distinction of being one of 27 samples of music included on the [[Voyager Golden Record]], launched into space in 1977 to represent the diversity of life on Earth. "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" was chosen as the human expression of loneliness.<ref name="nelson"/><ref name="Kraus">Kraus, Nicole November 11, 2007. [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/11/magazine/11roadtrip-sidebar-t.html?pagewanted=print Disappearing Into the Desert], ''The New York Times''. Retrieved on January 1, 2010.</ref> |
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The song has been highly praised and covered by numerous musicians and is featured on the soundtracks of several films. It is the basis for the soundtrack of the 1984 [[Palme d'Or]] winning film, [[Paris, Texas (film)|Paris, Texas]].<ref>{{cite book | last1=Bogdanov | first1=Vladimir | last2=Erlewine | first2=Stephen | last3=Woodstra | first3=Chris | url=http://books.google.com/books?id=nS2l6Z_J99kC| title=All Music Guide to the Blues: The Definitive Guide to the Blues | publisher=Hal Leonard | year=2003 | page=284 }}</ref> |
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==Background== |
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| ⚫ | The song is 3 minutes and 21 seconds of Johnson's unique guitar playing in [[Open D tuning|regular tuning in open ''D'']] for slide. Popular stories say he substituted a knife or penknife for the bottleneck.<ref name="obrecht">Obrecht, Jas (June 1998). "Can't Nobody Hide from God: The Steel-String Evangelism of Blind Willie Johnson", ''Guitar Player'', '''32''' (6), p. 57–62.</ref> His melancholy gravel-throated humming and moaning accompanies the guitar, both acting as voices, reminiscent of long meter Baptist choir vocalizations.<ref>Dargan, p. 60.</ref> Although Johnson's vocals are indiscernible, several sources indicate the subject of the song is the [[crucifixion of Christ]].<ref name="bogdanov">Bogdanov, ''et al'', p. 284.</ref> His records were sold on the [[Vocalion]] label with other blues acts like [[Bessie Smith]], who Johnson outsold during Depression years. An early review in ''[[Bookman (magazine)|Bookman]]'' praised his "violent, tortured, and abysmal shouts and groans, and his inspired guitar playing".<ref name="obrecht"/> |
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Most of the life of Blind Willie Johnson is undocumented and stories about him have circulated with varying degrees of reliability. Johnson was born in 1897, near [[Brenham, Texas]]. He grew up impoverished and lost his sight as a youth. Most stories attribute his blindness to his stepmother's dousing him with a bucket of [[lye]] while enraged at his father.<ref name="corcoran">Corcoran, p. 68.</ref> |
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| ⚫ | Johnson taught himself how to play guitar and dedicated his life to gospel music, playing for people on street corners. [[Columbia Records]] had a field unit that traveled to smaller towns to record local talent. Johnson recorded about 30 songs in five sessions between 1927 and 1930. Among the first of these was "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground".<ref name="bogdanov"/> |
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| ⚫ | Johnson never recorded after 1930. He died in 1949 in [[Beaumont, Texas]]. Most |
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| ⚫ | Johnson never recorded again after 1930. He died in 1949 in [[Beaumont, Texas]]. Most accounts claim that his death was caused by pneumonia caught from sleeping on a wet mattress in his house after it had burned down. His death certificate, however, states malaria, syphilis, and inexplicably, blindness, were the causes.<ref name="corcoran"/> |
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| ⚫ | The song is 3 minutes and 21 seconds of Johnson's unique guitar playing in [[Open D tuning|regular tuning in open ''D'']] for slide. Popular stories say he substituted a knife or penknife for the bottleneck.<ref name="obrecht">Obrecht, Jas (June 1998). "Can't Nobody Hide from God: The Steel-String Evangelism of Blind Willie Johnson", ''Guitar Player'', '''32''' (6), p. 57–62.</ref> His melancholy gravel-throated humming and moaning accompanies the guitar, both acting as voices, reminiscent of long meter Baptist choir vocalizations.<ref>Dargan, p. 60.</ref> Although Johnson's vocals are indiscernible, several sources indicate the subject of the song is the [[crucifixion of Christ]].<ref name="bogdanov">Bogdanov, ''et al'', p. 284.</ref> His records were sold on the [[Vocalion]] label with other blues acts like [[Bessie Smith]], who Johnson outsold during Depression years. An early review in ''[[Bookman (magazine)|Bookman]]'' praised his "violent, tortured, and abysmal shouts and groans, and his inspired guitar playing".<ref name="obrecht"/> |
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==Legacy== |
==Legacy== |
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“Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground” is perhaps Johnson's most influential track. It was included on the [[Voyager Golden Record]] and sent into space with the [[Voyager spacecraft]]. |
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| ⚫ | In 1977 [[Carl Sagan]] and a team of researchers |
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| ⚫ | In 1977 [[Carl Sagan]] and a team of researchers were tasked with collecting a [[Voyager Golden Record|representation of Earth]] and the human experience for sending on the Voyager probe to other life forms in the universe. They collected sounds of frogs, crickets, volcanoes, a human heartbeat, laughter, greetings in 55 languages, and 27 pieces of music. "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" was included, according to Sagan, because "Johnson's song concerns a situation he faced many times: nightfall with no place to sleep. Since humans appeared on Earth, the shroud of night has yet to fall without touching a man or woman in the same plight."<ref name="nelson">Nelson, Stephanie; Polansky, Larry (November 1993). "The Music of the Voyager Interstellar Record", ''Journal of Applied Communication Research'', p. 358–375.</ref> Johnson's evocation of poverty, class disparity and alienation is unique to the project; no other sounds representing a negative human experience were chosen for the record. |
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===Tributes by musicians and writers=== |
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In the decades immediately followed Blind Willie Johnson's death, his recordings were mostly forgotten except by guitar enthusiasts and a preacher who copied his records for 1960s folk and R&B musicians such as the [[Soul Stirrers]], [[Staples Singers]], and [[Peter, Paul and Mary]].<ref name="obrecht"/> In 1968, the British group [[Fairport Convention]] recorded a cover of “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground” under the title "The Lord is in this Place...How Dreadful Is This Place". |
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In the liner notes of a 2002 record by [[Derek Bailey]], avant-garde jazz guitarist [[Marc Ribot]] compared “Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground” to the music of [[Django Reinhardt]] and the [[avant garde]] guitarist Bailey. |
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| ⚫ | In 2003, John Clarke in ''[[The Times]]'' wrote that "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" was "the most intense and startling blues record ever made".<ref>Clarke, John (December 6, 2003). [http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/article1035401.ece A Director's Cut], ''The Times''. Retrieved on January 1, 2010.</ref><ref name="Kraus"/> Francis Davis, author of ''The History of the Blues'' concurs, writing "In terms of its intensity alone—its spiritual ''ache''—there is nothing else from the period to compare to Johnson's 'Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground', on which his guitar takes the part of a preacher and his wordless voice the part of a rapt congregation."<ref>Davis, p. 119.</ref> |
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[[Jack White (musician)|Jack White]] of [[The White Stripes]] called it "the greatest example of slide guitar ever recorded"<ref>Di Perna, Alan (August 2007). "Jack the Ripper", ''Guitar World'', p. 78–94.</ref> and used the song as a standard to measure such iconic rock music that followed in its wake, such as "[[Whole Lotta Love]]" by [[Led Zeppelin]].<ref>Ordoña, Michael. (August 23, 2009). [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/23/PK9118TNQ9.DTL If guitar heaven exists, it's 'Loud'], ''The San Francisco Chronicle''. Retrieved on January 1, 2010.</ref> Guitarist [[Ry Cooder]] based the soundtrack of ''[[Paris, Texas (film)|Paris, Texas]]'' on the song, calling it "the most soulful, transcendent piece in all of American music".<ref>Corcoran, p. 73.</ref> In 2009 the music label [[4AD]] released a compilation CD titled "Dark Was The Night", featuring the [[Kronos Quartet]] covering the song "Dark Was The Night". |
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===Film and television=== |
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“Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground” was on the [[soundtrack]] of [[Pier Paolo Pasolini]]'s classic 1964 film, ''[[The Gospel According to St. Matthew (film)|The Gospel According to St Matthew]]''. [[Ry Cooder]] based his soundtrack to [[Wim Wenders]]' 1984 [[Palme d'Or]] winning film, [[Paris, Texas (film)|''Paris, Texas'']] on "Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground".<ref>{{cite book | last1=Bogdanov | first1=Vladimir | last2=Erlewine | first2=Stephen | last3=Woodstra | first3=Chris | url=http://books.google.com/books?id=nS2l6Z_J99kC| title=All Music Guide to the Blues: The Definitive Guide to the Blues | publisher=Hal Leonard | year=2003 | page=284 }}</ref> Cooder described the song as "the most soulful, transcendent piece in all American music."<ref>{{cite web |author=Corcoran, Michael |title=The Soul of Blind Willie Johnson |url=http://www.austin360.com/music/content/music/blindwilliejohnson_092803.html |accessdate=2008-11-13 }}</ref> |
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The song was also featured in the films ''[[Walk the Line]]'', a [[biopic]] of country singer [[Johnny Cash]], and ''[[The Devil's Rejects]]'', a serial killer film by rocker [[Rob Zombie]]. Blind Willie Johnson's music and life were topics of Wender's 2003 film, "[[The Soul of a Man]]", produced for the [[PBS]] series "[[Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues: A Musical Journey|The Blues]]." The film dealt extensively with the Voyager spacecraft recording. |
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[[Carl Sagan]] featured “Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground” in his popular science show, ''[[Cosmos: A Personal Voyage]]'', which aired in 1980.<ref>[http://www.users.bigpond.com/cosmic_voyager/Cosmos%20Episode%2010%20-%20The%20Edge%20of%20Forever.htm</ref> Johnson and "Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground" were mentioned on "[[The Warfare of Genghis Khan]]" episode of the television series ''[[The West Wing (television)|The West Wing]]'', which aired on February 11, 2004. The fictional [[Deputy White House Chief of Staff]] [[Josh Lyman]] used Johnson's recording to show the depth and soul behind the space program. As mentioned by Lyman, "Johnson's music left the solar system on December 16, 2004." |
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| ⚫ | John Clarke in ''[[The Times]]'' wrote that "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" was "the most intense and startling blues record ever made".<ref>Clarke, John (December 6, 2003). [http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/article1035401.ece A Director's Cut], ''The Times''. Retrieved on January 1, 2010.</ref><ref name="Kraus"/> Francis Davis, author of ''The History of the Blues'' concurs, writing "In terms of its intensity alone—its spiritual ''ache''—there is nothing else from the period to compare to Johnson's 'Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground', on which his guitar takes the part of a preacher and his wordless voice the part of a rapt congregation."<ref>Davis, p. 119.</ref> |
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== Notes == |
== Notes == |
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Revision as of 02:42, 23 September 2010
| "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" | |
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| Song |
"Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground"[note 1] is a gospel-blues song written and performed by American musician Blind Willie Johnson and likely recorded in 1927. The song is primarily an instrumental featuring Johnson's self-taught bottleneck slide guitar and picking style accompanied by his vocalizations of humming and moaning. It has the distinction of being one of 27 samples of music included on the Voyager Golden Record, launched into space in 1977 to represent the diversity of life on Earth. "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" was chosen as the human expression of loneliness.[1][2]
The song has been highly praised and covered by numerous musicians and is featured on the soundtracks of several films. It is the basis for the soundtrack of the 1984 Palme d'Or winning film, Paris, Texas.[3]
Background
Most of the life of Blind Willie Johnson is undocumented and stories about him have circulated with varying degrees of reliability. Johnson was born in 1897, near Brenham, Texas. He grew up impoverished and lost his sight as a youth. Most stories attribute his blindness to his stepmother's dousing him with a bucket of lye while enraged at his father.[4]
Johnson taught himself how to play guitar and dedicated his life to gospel music, playing for people on street corners. Columbia Records had a field unit that traveled to smaller towns to record local talent. Johnson recorded about 30 songs in five sessions between 1927 and 1930. Among the first of these was "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground".[5]
Johnson never recorded again after 1930. He died in 1949 in Beaumont, Texas. Most accounts claim that his death was caused by pneumonia caught from sleeping on a wet mattress in his house after it had burned down. His death certificate, however, states malaria, syphilis, and inexplicably, blindness, were the causes.[4]
Composition and recording
The song is 3 minutes and 21 seconds of Johnson's unique guitar playing in regular tuning in open D for slide. Popular stories say he substituted a knife or penknife for the bottleneck.[6] His melancholy gravel-throated humming and moaning accompanies the guitar, both acting as voices, reminiscent of long meter Baptist choir vocalizations.[7] Although Johnson's vocals are indiscernible, several sources indicate the subject of the song is the crucifixion of Christ.[5] His records were sold on the Vocalion label with other blues acts like Bessie Smith, who Johnson outsold during Depression years. An early review in Bookman praised his "violent, tortured, and abysmal shouts and groans, and his inspired guitar playing".[6]
Legacy
“Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground” is perhaps Johnson's most influential track. It was included on the Voyager Golden Record and sent into space with the Voyager spacecraft.
In 1977 Carl Sagan and a team of researchers were tasked with collecting a representation of Earth and the human experience for sending on the Voyager probe to other life forms in the universe. They collected sounds of frogs, crickets, volcanoes, a human heartbeat, laughter, greetings in 55 languages, and 27 pieces of music. "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" was included, according to Sagan, because "Johnson's song concerns a situation he faced many times: nightfall with no place to sleep. Since humans appeared on Earth, the shroud of night has yet to fall without touching a man or woman in the same plight."[1] Johnson's evocation of poverty, class disparity and alienation is unique to the project; no other sounds representing a negative human experience were chosen for the record.
Tributes by musicians and writers
In the decades immediately followed Blind Willie Johnson's death, his recordings were mostly forgotten except by guitar enthusiasts and a preacher who copied his records for 1960s folk and R&B musicians such as the Soul Stirrers, Staples Singers, and Peter, Paul and Mary.[6] In 1968, the British group Fairport Convention recorded a cover of “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground” under the title "The Lord is in this Place...How Dreadful Is This Place".
In the liner notes of a 2002 record by Derek Bailey, avant-garde jazz guitarist Marc Ribot compared “Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground” to the music of Django Reinhardt and the avant garde guitarist Bailey.
In 2003, John Clarke in The Times wrote that "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" was "the most intense and startling blues record ever made".[8][2] Francis Davis, author of The History of the Blues concurs, writing "In terms of its intensity alone—its spiritual ache—there is nothing else from the period to compare to Johnson's 'Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground', on which his guitar takes the part of a preacher and his wordless voice the part of a rapt congregation."[9]
Jack White of The White Stripes called it "the greatest example of slide guitar ever recorded"[10] and used the song as a standard to measure such iconic rock music that followed in its wake, such as "Whole Lotta Love" by Led Zeppelin.[11] Guitarist Ry Cooder based the soundtrack of Paris, Texas on the song, calling it "the most soulful, transcendent piece in all of American music".[12] In 2009 the music label 4AD released a compilation CD titled "Dark Was The Night", featuring the Kronos Quartet covering the song "Dark Was The Night".
Film and television
“Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground” was on the soundtrack of Pier Paolo Pasolini's classic 1964 film, The Gospel According to St Matthew. Ry Cooder based his soundtrack to Wim Wenders' 1984 Palme d'Or winning film, Paris, Texas on "Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground".[13] Cooder described the song as "the most soulful, transcendent piece in all American music."[14] The song was also featured in the films Walk the Line, a biopic of country singer Johnny Cash, and The Devil's Rejects, a serial killer film by rocker Rob Zombie. Blind Willie Johnson's music and life were topics of Wender's 2003 film, "The Soul of a Man", produced for the PBS series "The Blues." The film dealt extensively with the Voyager spacecraft recording.
Carl Sagan featured “Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground” in his popular science show, Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which aired in 1980.[15] Johnson and "Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground" were mentioned on "The Warfare of Genghis Khan" episode of the television series The West Wing, which aired on February 11, 2004. The fictional Deputy White House Chief of Staff Josh Lyman used Johnson's recording to show the depth and soul behind the space program. As mentioned by Lyman, "Johnson's music left the solar system on December 16, 2004."
Notes
- ^ Because documentation is scarce in early recordings, the title of the song appears differently in many sources. It is often called "Dark Was the Night" or punctuated as "Dark Was the Night (Cold Was the Ground)".
References
- ^ a b Nelson, Stephanie; Polansky, Larry (November 1993). "The Music of the Voyager Interstellar Record", Journal of Applied Communication Research, p. 358–375.
- ^ a b Kraus, Nicole November 11, 2007. Disappearing Into the Desert, The New York Times. Retrieved on January 1, 2010.
- ^ Bogdanov, Vladimir; Erlewine, Stephen; Woodstra, Chris (2003). All Music Guide to the Blues: The Definitive Guide to the Blues. Hal Leonard. p. 284.
- ^ a b Corcoran, p. 68.
- ^ a b Bogdanov, et al, p. 284.
- ^ a b c Obrecht, Jas (June 1998). "Can't Nobody Hide from God: The Steel-String Evangelism of Blind Willie Johnson", Guitar Player, 32 (6), p. 57–62.
- ^ Dargan, p. 60.
- ^ Clarke, John (December 6, 2003). A Director's Cut, The Times. Retrieved on January 1, 2010.
- ^ Davis, p. 119.
- ^ Di Perna, Alan (August 2007). "Jack the Ripper", Guitar World, p. 78–94.
- ^ Ordoña, Michael. (August 23, 2009). If guitar heaven exists, it's 'Loud', The San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved on January 1, 2010.
- ^ Corcoran, p. 73.
- ^ Bogdanov, Vladimir; Erlewine, Stephen; Woodstra, Chris (2003). All Music Guide to the Blues: The Definitive Guide to the Blues. Hal Leonard. p. 284.
- ^ Corcoran, Michael. "The Soul of Blind Willie Johnson". Retrieved 2008-11-13.
- ^ [http://www.users.bigpond.com/cosmic_voyager/Cosmos%20Episode%2010%20-%20The%20Edge%20of%20Forever.htm
Bibliography
- Bogdanov, Vladimir; Woodstra, Chris; Erlewine, Stephen (2003). All Music Guide to the Blues: The Definitive Guide to the Blues, Hal Leonard Corporation. ISBN 0879307366
- Corcoran, Micheal (2005). All Over the Map: True Heroes of Texas Music, University of Texas Press. ISBN 0292709765
- Dargan, William T. (2006). Lining Out the Word: Dr. Watts Hymn Singing in the Music of Black Americans, University of California Press. ISBN 0520234480
- Davis, Francis (2003). The History of the Blues: The Roots, the Music, the People, Da Capo Press. ISBN 0306812967