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From Dirty Linen, Oct./Nov. 2008
No blues
musician is more the stuff of legend than Robert Johnson. Although Johnson cut only 59 tracks in his career,
of which 42 survived, his songs are a cornerstone of the country blues repertoire, whether it be “Love In Vain,”
“Sweet Home Chicago,” or “Cross Road Blues.” His life is equally larger than life,
filled with tales of an alleged death by strychnine poisoning and spooky tales of a midnight deal with the devil at the crossroads. Tom Graves’
book focuses on the history behind the legends, detailing just what can be documented of Johnson’s life and the legacy
that mushroomed long after his death, when Johnson was championed by the likes of Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones.
This slim book provides a thorough overview of the sketchy details of Johnson’s life, as told by family members,
Johnson’s few surviving peers and friends, and several other writers who have researched his legacy. Graves
details how the stories of a crossroads deal with the devil were originally linked to the life of a different blues musician,
Tommy Johnson, and he considers the theory that Johnson died, not of poison, but from syphilis. The second
half of the book deals with Johnson’s legacy, starting with his “discovery” by John Hammond right when Johnson
died, through the popularity of the various reissues of his music, and the fictional movie that brought the “devil at
the crossroads” legend into the mainstream. Graves’ study is well researched and entertaining
and worth a read by anyone interested in Johnson and his remarkable legacy. by Michael Parris, San Jose, California
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From Blues Revue, Aug./Sept. 2008
Novelist and journalist Tom Graves teaches at LeMoyne-Owen
College in
Memphis. For Crossroads he secured the endorsement of Steve LaVere, the
caretaker of Robert Johnson's
estate, who wrote the book's foreword.
Aficionados of Johnson already know both the facts and the myths, so the
book will appeal mainly to those new to his story.
Crossroads is well-researched, informative, and easy to read.
The emphasis
is on Johnson's posthumous ascendancy to the hallowed status of blues
immortal. There's also
a great human interest story with the chapter on
Robert Johnson's son Claud (born in 1931), a gravel truck operator
from
Crystal Springs, Mississippi, who inherited more than $1 million as a result
of LaVere¹s efforts. However,
the inclusion of the court transcript that
documents an eyewitness account (by Claud's mother's friend) of Claud's
conception is questionable; serious blues students want historical accuracy
and veracity, but this seems superfluous.
There also might be objections to
the author's assertion that Big Bill Broonzy and Sonny Terry were
"relatively
minor figures in the world of blues"; Broonzy has cast a long
shadow, and most current blues harpists consider Terry
to be a significant
artist. Quibbles aside, Graves' book is an enjoyable read that separates the
man from the
myth. Crossroads is published by Demers Books and retails for
$14.95.
by Thomas J. Cullen III, Blues Revue
magazine
From Library Journal, Aug. 2008 With a fan’s enthusiasm and a scholar’s scruples, Graves (English &
Humanities, LeMoyne-Owen Coll., Memphis; former editor, Rock & Roll Disc magazine) sets the record straight
on the life and times of Robert Johnson and his influence
on musicians since his passing in 1938. The myths aren’t exploded but instead explained as the response of those who
discovered his music, especially those young rock musicians who fell in love with it in the late 1950s and early 1960s. And
that’s the strong point of this book, where fact and fiction collide; in addition to
shattering some ridiculous illusions about Johnson’s life, the author convincingly shows that Johnson’s skills
as a musician and composer are what count. Fortunately, contemporaries of Johnson and those close to him left behind enough
information to show what Johnson was really like, and Graves offers some useful items, as when he explains the value of the
few validated photographs of Johnson. This book, which finally salvages Johnson’s life from the myths surrounding it,
is highly recommended. by
William G. Kenz, Minnesota State Univ. Lib., Moorhead
From
Blogcritics Magazine, Oct.17, 2008 When you google the name
Robert Johnson, you’ll discover the results show more than two and one-half million hits. At the same time, Crossroads:
The Life and Afterlife of Blues Legend Robert Johnson — the most complete book in existence about the life and death
of RJ, as he was also known — comprises less than 114 small-sized pages of text, not including the index, notes, and
bibliography, which make up an additional 19 pages according to the numbering on them. How can that be? RJ is undoubtedly the best known but
the least known about and understood country blues icon ever. In his short life, 27 years, he recorded a total of 41 cuts
[many of them alternates], far fewer than many other lesser country bluesmen. Yet every country blues fan, except for perhaps
those born this morning, knows the story of how he sold his soul to the devil. The irony is the story is a complete fabrication. If the above sentences seem to contradict
one another, or make little sense, welcome to the legacy of Robert Johnson. One problem is, of course, that country blues
was not considered much of anything but entertainment for blacks until the folk revival of the 1960s began making waves among
the mostly college student fans of the time. Once country blues caught on, however, it became unstoppable, as evidenced by
its popularity still today, nearly 50 years later. When it was initially revived, however, many of the 78-rpm records that
were extant during these bluesmen’s lifetimes have long since been destroyed or played to death. The quality of them
was very inferior as well, leading them to quickly wear out, still another reason for their scarcity. But first, what is country blues? According
to Dictionary.com, Webster’s New Millennium™ Dictionary of English defines it as “a musical style in which
a country singer is accompanied by acoustic guitar.” Well... not quite. But among blues fans, that’s an altogether
too simplistic definition. It’s also called prewar blues, meaning the predominantly black music of the South, Mississippi
in particular, that was sung and popularized from shortly after the beginning of the 20th century until around the beginning
of the Second World War by such bluesmen and blueswomen as RJ, Charley Patton, Ma Rainey, Victoria Spivey, Son House, Skip
James, and many others. And when you plug in “Prewar Blues” at Dictionary.com, it does not even give a definition,
rather it shoots you over to Ask.com, which lists a bunch of different pages to waste your time on. Which is the whole problem with defining
the term. But I digress. Let’s get back to RJ and Crossroads. Tom Graves, the much-published author of this short book,
does manage to bring out a few previously unknown or only guessed at conclusions about RJ, while at the same time bringing
a few of his own, new questions to the surface. But considering what he had to work with, and what he had to work through
to get what he presents to us, the book is an enjoyable soupçon of a story. It’s an easy and enjoyable read,
while at the same time it leaves you hungry for more. It would be easy to write another thousand words on Crossroads, but then that would, of course, defeat the purpose
of getting you to read it instead. Plus you’d miss out on a very enjoyable and (un?)satisfying read. It’s satisfying
in one aspect, that of being the most accurate chronicle yet of his life, but it’s also unsatisfying in that it will
make you hungry for more research on RJ. by
Lou Novacheck
From Blues Bytes, Aug. 2008 There have been several attempts to write a biography of blues legend Robert Johnson over the years,
most notably by Peter Guralnick and Elijah Wald. While both efforts were well-done, they seemed incomplete due to the fact
that there are a ton of gaps in Johnson’s story and the accurate information available at the time was simply not enough
to carry an entire book (Guralnick’s book was actually more of a dissertation and Wald incorporated Johnson’s
story into a general history of the blues). Tom Graves, former editor
of the magazine Rock & Roll Disc, and contributor to publications like Musician, Rolling Stone, The New York Times Book
Review, and others, has taken a stab at separating fact and myth from Johnson’s story with Crossroads: The Life
and Afterlife of Blues Legend Robert Johnson (Demers Books). Like the other bios, Graves has painstakingly researched
his subject and presents the facts as currently known, separates fact from myth, and even addresses at length all the events
of the past couple of decades, including Johnson’s renewed popularity based on the early ’90s release of his complete
recordings, the discovery of Claud Johnson, who was determined to be Johnson’s son and heir, and the controversy over
the bit of film found in 1998 that was rumored to contain footage of Johnson playing on a street corner. Graves also discusses the “Crossroads” legend that has been part of the Johnson legend for
so many years and it’s amazing to read how this story has thrived for so many years given its humble beginnings. There’s
also a chapter devoted to the third photo of Johnson (pictured with his nephew) that has only been seen by a few people since
coming into the possession of researcher Mack McCormick. Graves also looks at the sometimes contentious, and sometimes complicated,
war of wills between McCormick and Johnson archivist Stephen LaVere (who wrote the foreword for this book). This is, by far, the most complete and accurate book so far on Robert Johnson. Graves’ main goal,
however, is to entice readers to “connect the dots” between Johnson’s legacy and modern blues, jazz, country,
and even hip-hop. Crossroads: The Life and Afterlife of Blues Legend Robert Johnson is an interesting and absorbing
book that not only will be of interest to new fans, but will fill in some gaps for longtime fans. by Graham Clarke
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From Memphis
magazine, Sept. 2008
For the record: Who is
Robert Johnson? If you answer “The King of the Delta Blues Singers,” you’d be, in the
opinion of a lot of others (including blues enthusiasts John Hammond and Alan Lomax and guitarist Eric Clapton), on solid
ground. Answer that Johnson got his signature guitar licks one midnight at a Delta crossroads in a pact with the devil, and
you’d be on shaky ground, in the land of myth. So says Steve LaVere, archivist for the Robert Johnson
estate, who writes, “Nearly every major article or book previously published about Johnson contains major flaws –
either the research was faulty and unsubstantiated or it was rife with false ideas, romantic exaggeration or myths that were
treated as fact.” That’s LaVere in the foreword to Crossroads: The Life
and Afterlife of Blues Legend Robert Johnson (DeMers Books) by Memphis music writer and novelist Tom Graves. Graves
will have none of it when it comes to the legendary Johnson: the major flaws, the false ideas, the romantic
exaggeration, and the myths. His aim in this brief but handy clearinghouse of a book is to separate fact
from fiction and set the record straight, a job even Johnson’s friends in the 1930s had trouble doing. Just
ask musician Johnny Shines who played with the guitar great. As Graves describes it, Shines found Johnson
to be a man who was “essentially unknowable.” That also goes for the exact manner of Johnson’s
death and even the precise location of his grave. But no doubting Johnson’s profound influence on
popular culture after his death in 1938, and that includes, as covered by Graves in the second half of Crossroads,
a genre of music with a life of its own: rock and roll. by Leonard Gill
From BluesWax,
Sept. 23, 2008 Sifting Through Fact and Fiction This short book is an interesting
study in not only the historical facts of Robert Johnson's life, but also in the legends surrounding his life and death.
The beginning chapters give the basic biographical details of Johnson's life, sketchy though they may be. More interestingly,
the book is largely devoted to explaining how an almost unknown and forgotten Bluesman came to be an icon of the Blues. It's
the rise of that legend that preoccupies author Tom Graves' work. Graves is adept at retelling the
facts, culled from firsthand sources as well as building on the work of Blues researchers like Steve LaVere, David Evans,
and Gayle Dean Wardlow. He opens with a chapter that quickly sets up the social and economic environment of the Mississippi
that Johnson was born into, including a short history of the Blues up to that point. On that backdrop, he unfolds the simple
facts of Johnson's life. These facts themselves are difficult enough to follow, given the dearth of documentation regarding
the birth or death of an itinerant black man in the early part of the 1900s. The remainder of the book is an
explanation of how Johnson came to represent Blues in the popular consciousness. Part of that is a deconstruction of the legend
of the crossroads. (For the uninitiated, the legend is that Johnson made a Faustian deal with the devil at the crossroads
thus making him a great Bluesman.) The stories go that because of his weakness for women and whiskey, Johnson was poisoned
by a jealous husband and died in Greenwood, Mississippi. Graves
takes these stories apart through interviews with people who knew Johnson, including Robert Lockwood Jr. and David "Honeyboy"
Edwards. Graves sheds some light on the persistence of the Blues with an explanation of how the "zeal
and passion of a few obsessive whites" brought African-American music and art to the forefront of American popular culture.
Promoter John Hammond introduced the world to Johnson's music in 1938; ethnographer Alan Lomax captured not only regional
and ethnic music but stories and first hand accounts from Johnson's contemporaries. The Folk explosion of the 1960s resurrected
the career of more than one Delta Bluesman, and the British Rock 'n' Roll scene carried the torch even further. He
follows the growth of the legend through the mid-1980s movie Crossroads (Ralph Macchio's swan song, as far as I can see),
and the re-release of Johnson's complete catalog in the 1990s.
In addition to these more popular aspects
of the Johnson legend and lore, Graves also discusses the ownership of the few photographs of Johnson,
a short film clip that might be Johnson, and the legal wrangling of the copyrights to Johnson's songs. Graves
doesn't bring us a ton of original research or new information. What he has done is put it together in a logical narrative
that's less about Johnson the man and more about Johnson the phenomenon. He never claims to be handing down the final
word on Johnson, but leaves plenty of room for speculation about the man and the legend. by Eric Wrisley
From
Book News, Aug. 2008
[In Crossroads] Graves applies
the lively narration of music journalism to this brief biography of Delta blues guitarist Robert Johnson. The author
does not shy away from the famous legend about Johnson's apparently instant virtuosity -- that he sold his soul to the
devil in exchange for his chops -- but investigates its source and the hoopla it caused over the previously obscure guitarist,
particularly after the movie Crossroads came out in 1989. Johnson's death came just 27 years into his life and it
falls just five chapters into this book. The remaining nine discuss the Johnson legend and legacy, a feud over photos
of the bluesman, and the three-second film that some say prove the legend. This book is distributed by Independent Publishers
Group.
From The Old-Time Herald Magazine, Oct./Nov. 2008 When a forthcoming book about iconic Delta blue singer Robert Johnson arrived, I contacted a few knowledgeable friends
– all cited in the book – and got similar responses. “Another book on Robert Johnson!”
And, yes, of course, that it is…but with this difference: Crossroads is written
not so much for the blues particularist or scholar (read: “fanatic”) as
it is for regular folks who appreciate the genre and are curious to know more about Robert Johnson, arguably the most alluring
and certainly the best-selling of the recorded pioneers of early country blues. That said, it should be noted that the true focus here
is not on Robert Johnson himself as much as on the evolution of the myth and enterprise enveloping him today.
Crossroads offers a chronicled unfolding of the discoveries, rivalries, and events that gave shape and impetus
to the Johnson “brand.” Author and educator Tom Graves readily admits that from the outset
he did not expect “to uncover any new information about Robert Johnson” because so many for decades have fine-combed
the Delta for even the slightest hint of something fresh. What Graves does provide is an imminently readable
synthesis drawn from the best scholarly sources of all that’s happened relative to Robert Johnson over the past seven
decades since his mysterious death at age twenty-seven. I know full well the allure of the Johnson myth as one caught up in it back in
the 1960s, sparked at the time by the 1961 release of the Columbia Records album Robert Johnson: King
of the Delta Blues Singers, the first vinyl recording of sixteen exclusively Johnson tracks. Until
then, other than a track or two on a blues compilation album, the Johnson canon could not be taken in full, the performances
available only on rare, brittle, and pricey 78 rpm shellac disks recorded in 1937 and 1937. The success
of the Robert Johnson album was due to a combination of factors: the mystique of meager biographical information
and no known photographs, but even moreso the stories that had been floating around about Johnson’s deal with the devil
at the crossroads, trading his soul for the gift of performance, and a writhing-on-the-floor agonizing death attributed to
the devil claiming his due. But then, there were the performances and songs. The urgently strident voice, ebullient guitar
technique, complex finger work and chord changes, cutting and shimmering bottle-neck slide, pulsating rhythm, and words that
resonated with the myth, making it seem all the more real. That faraway voice sang out of the groove about
falling down on his knees at the crossroad, “hot foot powder” sprinkled all around his door, blues “falling
down like hail,” “stones” in his “passway,” a “hellhound on his trail,” and he and
“the devil…walking side by side.” Covers of Johnson’s songs by the top rock ‘n’ rollers of the day added to his cachet.
Eric Clapton and Cream, “Cross Road Blues,” Led Zeppelin, “Traveling Riverside Blues,” and
the Rolling Stones, “Love In Vain,” with the oblique metaphoric closing lines about the pain of leaving his woman:
When the train left the station, with two lights on behind
When the train left the station, with two lights on behind
Well, the blue light was my blues, and the red light was my mind
All my love’s in vain Those were prime ingredients in Robert Johnson’s resurrection in the 1960s, but the story continued to unfold
in coming decades, as ably documented in Crossroads. Graves offers inftorductory context and divides
the book into two sections, “The Life of…” and “The Afterlife of…” As
to the man, we learn the certain true facts about Johnson culled from varied sources but primarily from the work of Johnson’s
principle researchers and authors – Sam Charters, Peter Guralnick, Barry Pearson, Bill McCullough, David Evans, Elijah
Wald, Gayle Dean Wardlow, and most notably, Mack McCormick and Steve LaVere. Robert Johnson came of age on a Mississippi plantation, frequented juke joints,
and pestered the established bluesmen to let him play between sets. Graves recounts the remembrance of
the great Son House: “Robert, he’d get the guitar and go bamming with it, you know…Just
keeping noise, and the people…they’d come and tell us…stop that boy. He’s driving
everybody nuts.” House next heard Johnson two years later and could not “believe the change.”
“And that boy got started off playing…and when he got through, all our mouths were standing open.
All! He was gone!” Robert Johnson parlayed his formidable skills into a career as an itinerant bluesman, intermittently checking in
to makeshift Texas studios to record a total of 41 takes and outtakes…and from there, the legend was off and running.
In Crossroads, Tom Graves overviews the ill-fated appearance at John Hammond’s 1938 “Spirituals
to Swing” concert at Carnegie Hall, the complications delaying Columbia’s release of [a 1970s Robert Johnson vinyl
box set], and the circumstances that led finally to the release [in 1990] of the definitive Robert Johnson:
The Complete Recordings. One of the more compelling sideshows in the Johnson story is the rivalry between two of his most avid and earliest
researchers, Mack McCormick and Steve LaVere. Both have delivered stunningly in clearing up confusions
and mysteries about Johnson’s life, and that includes locating relatives, friends, and lovers, establishing whereabouts,
and most excitingly, discovering the two known photographs of Robert Johnson. One – a grainy photo
booth snapshot of Johnson, cigarette dangling from lips – adorns the cover of Crossroads, the rights to the
image controlled in the name of Johnson’s heirs by LaVere, who also contributes the book’s foreword.
Both the lowlights and highlights of the McCormick/LaVere rivalry seem fairly covered with credit given where credit
is due. Crossroads
is a handy guide to the Robert Johnson saga. Graves touches on the salient talking points – the possible
film snippet, which bluesman really sold his soul at the crossroads, the Hollywood film, the US postage stamp, the
correct recording playback speed, the lost songs, and the lost son! A few moments struck me as out of sync,
such as an account of 1950s multi-track recording techniques and brief mentions of Ozzy Osbourne and Charlie Daniels.
All-in-all, though, Crossroads is a brisk, insightful read, a reliable overview, especially for the blues
neophyte or interested fan seeking to learn more about the quintessentially American/African American roots music phenomenon
known as Robert Johnson. by Jerry Zolten
From The (Jackson,
Miss.) Clarion-Ledger, Oct. 23, 2008 Bluesman Robert Johnson
died in Greenwood 70 years ago at age 27, but his short life continues to fascinate modern audiences. The current issue of Vanity Fair
contains a long article about a purported photograph of Johnson, while the latest in a string of books about the blues legend
is Tom Graves' Crossroads: The Life and Afterlife of Robert Johnson (Demers Books). Graves, a music journalist who teaches at LeMoyne-Ownen
College in Memphis, divides the book into a summary of the known facts about Johnson's life, and a series of short chapters
that address how modern myths about Johnson developed. Topics such as Johnson's early family life, personality and musical
career are addressed by Graves without the romanticism that characterizes - and distorts - so much of modern understandings
of Johnson. More contentious are
the debates surrounding Johnson after his death, which are perhaps best exemplified by the three gravestones for Johnson in
the Greenwood area. The establishment - and controversy - over these markers is just one of the many topics that Graves covers
in the remainder of the book. Interest
in Johnson by blues enthusiasts took off shortly before his death, and Graves chronicles step-by-step the growth of legends
of Johnson, particularly those concerning his alleged pact with the devil. Graves also details how the modern popularity of
myths about Johnson were advanced by the bluesman-meets-devil film Crossroads and the phenomenal sales of a CD boxed
set in the early '90s. Other
issues addressed here include debates over ownership of the two known photographs of Johnson and the legal proceedings surrounding
Johnson's estate. Claud
Johnson of Crystal Springs was determined to be Johnson's son, and now heads Robert Johnson Blues Foundation. This will undoubtedly not be the last book
on the legendary bluesman, but serves as a welcome primer on all things Johnson. by Scott Barretta
From Maximum Ink, Nov. 29, 2008
This
is a small book as music biographies go, but its 124 pages are researched well. Blues musician Robert Johnson has influenced
not only many blues artists to follow him, but also many rock musicians. The book tries to separate fact from legend without
being clinical. Robert Johnson, legend has it, gained his guitar talent by trading his soul away to Satan at a crossroads
somewhere deep in rural Mississippi. When he died at age 27 of a mysterious poisoning, many thought it was the devil returning
for payment. This study of Johnson’s life debunks these myths, while emphasizing the affect he has had on modern musicians.
Led Zeppelin probably owes his estate some serious cash.
by
Jeff Muendel
From Blues
News (The Blues Society of Tulsa) – Nov./Dec. 2008 Crossroads:
The Life and Afterlife of Blues Legend Robert Johnson; Tom Graves; 133 pp.;softcover; Marquette Books; 2008; $14.95. In the
past 20 years much has been written about Robert Johnson, some of it true and much of it fanciful and romanticized myth. This slim volume sorts it out, perhaps better than any other single
piece of writing. Since the release of all of Johnson’s recordings on a 2-CD set and the discovery of several pictures
of the mystery man, adulation and speculation has abounded. Graves looks methodicallyand dispassionately at the man and the
myth, placing each in proper perspective. Most interesting is Graves’ account of Steve LaVere, who bought a picture
of Johnson from a relative, copyrighted his music and went about setting up a moneymaking trust for himself and Johnson’s
legal heirs. Many blues fans resented LaVere’s seeming commercialism, but when Johnson’s true son emerged, that
man received several hundred thousand dollars via LaVere’s
efforts. Anyone who is aware of Robert Johnson’s contribution to blues and rock music will want this book. It is as
true a picture of the man as we will ever have. by
Kerry Kudlacek
From Goldmine,
Dec. 2008 The mystery and intrigue surrounding the life, career and
death of Robert Johnson is one that continues to fascinate fans and scholars of the blues. Armed with everything
from a copy of Johnson’s death certificate to excerpts from court testimony, this book presents facts and digs in as
deeply as any volume really can into Johnson’s too-short life.
From Sing Out! Magazine,
Autumn 2008
In Clarksdale,
Mississippi, a sign at the intersections of highways 49 and 61 announces that it is "the crossroads," and it's
increasingly common to hear the location described as the scene of Robert Johnson's reputed sale of his soul to the Devil.
Never mind the fact that the intersection didn't even exist during Johnson's lifetime. Nearby Rosedale also boasts
that it's the home of the crossroads, though their claim largely derives from Cream's popular cover of Robert Johnson's
"Cross Road Blues." Clapton and company's version amended the original--which doesn't give a clue to the
crossroads' whereabouts--with the line "goin' down to Rosedale," drawn from Johnson's supernaturally
benign "Travelin' Riverside Blues." As long as blues tourists keep coming to the Delta looking for the crossroads
someone's going to tell them where it is, and journalists will no doubt continue to describe Johnson through romantic
fluff rather than turning to the careful research that is presented in a growing number of books about the mythology surrounding
him. Barry Lee Pearson and Bill McCullough's Robert Johnson. Lost and Found presented a careful genealogy of the construction
of the Johnson legend, illustrating how writers sloppily borrowed elements from different stories to construct a narrative
that's now taken on a life of its own. In Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues, Elijah Wald
addressed how latter day fans' conceptions of "authenticity" have led to misunderstandings over Johnson's
relative role in blues history and to the neglect of considerably more influential artists, notably Leroy Carr. Memphis-based
Tom Graves' recent Crossroads: The Life and Afterlife of Robert Johnson doesn't attempt to make as bold a statement
as either of these books, and is divided between a brief account of the known facts about Johnson's short life and a series
of short chapters that address episodes in myth-making. The essential trajectory of Johnson's life--his birth, early family
life, marriages, recording dates, travels and death are all relatively well-established, and Graves plays an even hand in
addressing those issues about which there is contention, such as how Johnson likely died in 1938 at (probably) age 27. The second
half is presented as a series of vignettes, beginning with early references to Johnson's music and life in jazz and folk
aficionado circles. Other topics include: the release of the first LP in the early 1960s; the belated copyrighting of Johnson's
music in the early '70s and disputes over the few photos of Johnson; the phenomenal sales of the "complete recordings"
boxed set in the '90s; the role of the film Crossroads in popularizing the Johnson myth; the discovery and legal proceedings
surrounding the discovery of Johnson's son Claud, who now controls the estate; and the purported and then quickly debunked--film
of Johnson that emerged in the late '90s.
Graves'
book doesn't provide too much new for those who've studied Johnson's life and afterlife closely, but it does put
everything in one place and serves as a useful and decidedly unromantic primer on all things Johnson. by Scott Barretta
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