Robert Johnson

I used to have a subscription to Vanity Fair until I realized it sucked. However, once in a while, they do have a gem of an article and this is one of them. The article tells the story of a recently discovered photo which may be of blues legend Robert Johnson (only two authentic photos exist.) (via Idolator)

This article reminded me of a pretty good documentary The Search For Robert Johnson. It features John Hammond, Jr (mentioned in the Vanity Fair article.) The documentary itself is engrossing, showing Hammond travelling through the south trying to piece together Johnson's life. The awesomely hilarious part comes in when Hammond performs Johnson's songs (once alongside an old school contemporary of Johnson's.) Now, Hammond seems to be a real musician (and his dad was obviously heavily involved in discovering great musical acts like Aretha Franklin, Bruce Springsteen, etc) but he uses a lot of the documentary to showcase himself singing. It gets cringe-inducing cause it's just not that great in comparison to the original Johnson recordings.

You can get a taste at the end of this clip: