Description

When Columbia released King of the Delta Blues Singers in 1961, nobody knew what Robert Johnson looked like. He had recorded his songs in 1936 and 1937 and died young in 1938, surrounded by stories, including the legend that he sold his soul to the devil at a crossroads. With no photograph to use, the label commissioned a painting by Burt Goldblatt, and the result is one of the most mysterious images in American music.

Goldblatt painted a lone musician seen from directly above, hunched over his guitar, his face completely hidden. The colours are warm and bold, with heavy outlines and a strong contrast between light and shadow, and the figure wears plain field clothes. The overhead angle makes the viewer feel like a stranger looking down into a room, which suited a performer who was more myth than man. In effect, the cover turned the lack of a photograph into an image of the legend itself.

The album, the first collection of Johnson's recordings, inspired a generation of British and American musicians, from Eric Clapton to Keith Richards. A copy of it appears in the cover photograph of Bob Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home. The two surviving photographs of Johnson were only discovered later, and by then the faceless painted bluesman had already become part of his story.

Credit

Cover painting by Burt Goldblatt