Dark Was The Night, Cold Was the Ground

Ry Cooder once said “Dark Was The Night, Cold Was the Ground” by Blind Willie Johnson as “the most soulful, transcendent piece in all American music”. Cooder himself used a version of this in the opening scenes of Wim Wenders’ “Paris, Texas”, using a slide guitar to depict a vast, desolate landscape.

Johnson himself was blinded at the age of seven when his stepmother threw a handful of lye into his eyes, deliberately. He grew up in the deep south during the birth and early evolution of the blues, although he was a religious man who recorded spiritual and religious music. He is considered one of the best slide guitar players ever. The musician Marc Silber said ” “Dark Was the Night” is a “moan.” A moan is simply a style of wordless singing. And since it is a lament without words, we are left to wonder about the singer’s personal story, experiencing only his pain. Johnson’s “Dark Was the Night” moan is both gorgeous and eerie at the same time as the sliding notes on the guitar strings chase and match the singer’s haunting, wordless vocals”. “Dark Was The Night” is Johnson’s sermon on Christ, the Passion and his sufferring.

His work has been cited and covered by many; Led Zepplin, Ry Cooder, Bob Dylan, Springsteen, The White Stripes…

This link from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory shows the current position of the space probe Voyager 1, at 15,850,000,000,000 km from the sun

What is more amazing than the fact that Voyager 1 has left the solar system, having crossed into the heliosheath in 2005, and will enter the heliopause in 2015 (where the solar wind’s strength is no longer great enough to push back the stellar wind of the surrounding stars), is the fact that Blind Willie Johnson’s tune is on the golden record that is on board.

Blind Willie Johnson, who died of pneumonia in the burnt out remains of his house, penniless, and in obscurity. Listen to it here while contemplating where Voyager is right now.

Absolutely haunting.