If
Robert Johnson
could look down from heaven or up from hell, he'd likely find it very interesting that
John Hammond, Jr.
had covered his songs. Here is a white guy, after all, who sounds like a black
blues
singer and chooses -- of his own free will -- to frequently return to the repertoire of an obscure black guitarist/singer from the 1930s.
At the Crossroads
collects this musical meeting of the minds -- or souls -- by gathering 14 of
Hammond
's
Johnson
covers, recorded between 1965 and 1978. Like
,
relies mostly on solo acoustic guitar. In this way, it's easy to certify his versions of
"Come on in My Kitchen"
and
"32-20 Blues"
as the real deal, or, as a
folk
enthusiast would say, "authentic." At the same time, renditions of
"Milkcow's Calf Blues"
"Stones in My Passway"
are less raw and penetrating than
's, and one could easily say that
's real gift is that of a popularizer of rural
acoustic blues
. The last four cuts include full-band takes of
"Sweet Home Chicago,"
"When You Got a Good Friend,"
"Judgment Day,"
"Rambling Blues."
While these cuts surely won't pass the purity test, they're nonetheless lots of fun.
is a cross-cultural, racial, and generational document, and offers a good one-stop look at one artist's nod toward another. ~ Ronnie D. Lankford Jr.