Gospel Blues Musician. A popular singer and slide guitarist, he enjoyed meteoric fame in the late 1920s. Although he recorded religious material exclusively, his work has been embraced by generations of blues, folk and rock musicians. Ry Cooder called Johnson's hymn-based instrumental "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" (1927) "the most soulful, transcendent piece in all American music." Johnson was born near Brenham, Texas, and following his mother's death was raised in Marlin by his father. From the start he was drawn to the musicmaking at his local church. He was barely old enough to speak when he declared that he wanted to become a "beecher" (preacher) and was presented with a cigar box guitar. Legend has it he was blinded at age 7 by his stepmother, who threw lye in the boy's face to avenge a beating from her spouse; the veracity of this story, or how he subsequently came to possess his awe-inspiring bottleneck technique, may never be known. During the 1920s he was based in the city of Hearne and got by busking from there to Dallas, sometimes competing on street corners against another champion shouter, Blind Lemon Jefferson. Most of his repertory was derived from 19th Century hymnals. In 1927 Columbia Records sent a field crew to Dallas to record local talent, and Johnson was their star find. Here was a performer whose style straddled gospel and blues with a spirit that reached beyond both. His guitar rhythms were percussive and highly syncopated while his incomparable sliding produced unique tonalities. He manipulated his singing in a similar manner, alternating a fire-and-brimstone bass falsetto with his natural tenor. On "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground", one of his first recordings, he cast aside the lyrics to hum and moan the melody in unison with his spectral playing, creating an effect of otherworldly pain and loneliness. Johnson cut 30 sides for Columbia between December 1927 and April 1930 and became the label's most popular "race" artist, outselling Bessie Smith. His classics include "I Know His Blood Can Make Me Whole", "Jesus Make Up My Dying Bed", "It's Nobody's Fault But Mine", "If I Had My Way I'd Tear the Building Down", "Lord I Just Can't Keep From Crying", "Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning", "You'll Need Somebody on Your Bond", "God Moves on the Water", "Trouble Will Soon be Over", "John the Revelator", "Go to Me with That Land", "Everybody Ought to Treat a Stranger Right", and "Let Your Light Shine On Me". On several tracks he was accompanied by his first wife (1927 to 1933), singer Willie B. Harris. The onset of the Depression hit the record industry hard and in 1930 Johnson's recording career came to an abrupt end. He settled in Beaumont, Texas, married a second time (singer Angeline Johnson), and at some point was ordained. In the 1940s, as Reverend W.J. Johnson, he occasionally broadcast spiritual music over radio stations in Texas and Louisiana and ran the House of Prayer from his Beaumont home. The house was gutted by fire in September 1945. With nowhere else to go Johnson and his wife slept in the charred ruins, on a wet mattress covered with newspapers. The Reverend caught pneumonia and soon died - allegedly after being denied treatment at a local hospital because he was blind and black. (That the coroner could ignorantly list "blindness" as a cause of his death lends credence to this). He was buried in an unrecorded grave at the Blanchette Cemetery, a place so run down and obscure it was not rediscovered until 2009. The following year a cenotaph for Johnson was placed at the site. Perhaps because he sang religious blues instead of straight-ahead blues, Blind Willie has never had the modern cachet of a Robert Johnson. A 1993 CD set of his complete recordings sold only 15,000 copies, and he has yet to be elected to the Blues Hall of Fame. But he has left a mark on those for whom music really matters. He influenced or has been covered by Charley Patton, Son House, Reverend Gary Davis, Muddy Waters, Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton, Grateful Dead, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Ry Cooder, Bruce Springsteen, Depeche Mode, Nick Cave, Alex Chilton, and Steve Vai. In 1977, a team of researchers led by Carl Sagan included Johnson's "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" among 27 pieces of international music on the Voyager Golden Record, which was sent out on the Voyager 1 and 2 interstellar space probes. It is intended to represent human sadness. Sagan explained, "Johnson's song concerns a situation he faced many times: nightfall with no place to sleep. Since humans appeared on Earth, the shroud of night has yet to fall without touching a man or woman in the same plight".