by Jochen Markhorst
XI Just extending the line
Play every number that I can play I’ll see you baby on Judgement Day
In 2020, Robert Johnson’s stepsister Annye Anderson publishes her memoirs, Brother Robert: Growing Up with Robert Johnson, written down by music historian Preston Lauterbach.
It is a surprisingly enriching contribution to the little we know about one of Dylan’s greatest heroes, blues pioneer Robert Johnson. Sister Annye, for example, makes quite a point of how her brother had such a wide range of interests, and how he presented himself as a human jukebox at every gathering and party. “I remember him asking all the guests, and even the children, ‘What’s your pleasure?’” And then he would play a song by Fats Waller, or “Pennies from Heaven”, Gene Autry or Count Basie or “Sugar Blues” or Louis Armstrong, and Annye herself always wanted to hear the Singing Brakeman, also one of her brother’s favourites: “Nothing could take the place of the trainman, Jimmie Rodgers.”
And then he would just as easily play a Protestant hymn; “I’ve never known Brother Robert to attend church, but he knew every hymn in the book.” That’s 765 (Annye undoubtedly sang from the Baptist Hymnal, 1902), so that may be a somewhat overly optimistic representation of Johnson’s encyclopaedic knowledge of songs, but the gist of Annye’s memories is clear: Brother Robert knew a great many songs, from every conceivable corner, and Annye recounts it with the same awe with which colleagues talk about Dylan. As, for example, G.E. Smith, Dylan’s guitarist in the years 1988-90, recounts in the fascinating interview with Ray Padgett for Flagging Down The Double E’s, Ray’s wonderful Dylan newsletter of 2 March 2025:
“On the bus he’s playing these cassette tapes of all this great old traditional stuff, because by then he knew I was really into it. He said, “This is a good song, you should learn this one.” “And this one, see how this turned into this, and then Hank Williams wrote–” You know, he totally knows the history of all that music in the United States. He knows all those songs. Just off the top of his head.”
Traces of those Baptist hymns can be heard throughout recent music history. First and foremost Mahalia Jackson, obviously, but we hear it just as clearly in Aretha Franklin, Doc Watson, Johnny Cash, the Stanley Brothers and then trickling down to their disciples, such as Dylan. Who is well aware of this himself, of course: “My songs are either based on old Protestant hymns or Carter Family songs or variations of the blues form,” as he analyses in 2004 (in the LA Times interview with Robert Hilburn). As Sister Annye can identify the Baptists in her brother’s work:
“Brother Granville used to holler out in the field, when he was behind the plow. It sounded like what Brother Robert’s doing in “Terraplane”. I can still hear Brother Granville singing “Guide Me O, Thou Great Jehovah.” You heard that humming like Brother Robert does in “Come on in My Kitchen” in those old Baptist hymns.”
And we hear it even more tangibly in Johnson’s lyrics, of course. Among all the songs about sex, gambling, work and wandering on the monumental King of the Delta Blues Singers (1961), we hear how Side 2 opens with Johnson’s confession:
Oh, I'm gonna get me religion I'm gonna join the Baptist Church Oh, I'm gonna get me religion I'm gonna join the Baptist Church
… “Preachin’ Blues”, the song in which he also sadly has to admit that “the women and whiskey would not let me pray”. Every time he bows his head to pray, “then the blues come along and they blew my spirit away.” And just before that, just before he turned the LP over for the umpteenth time, Dylan listened to the closing track of Side 1 for the umpteenth time in his small apartment on West 4th Street:
If I had possession over Judgment Day If I had possession over Judgment Day Lord, the little woman I'm lovin' wouldn't have no right to pray
… “If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day”, the song in which Johnson incorporates echoes from Hymn 355 (In the great judgment day, Jesus is mine) or Hymn 663 (Day of judgment, day of wonders), or one of those other hymns about the day “when the last trumpet blows,” as Dylan sings in his own Judgment Day song “Ye Shall Be Changed” (1979).
In any case, the many plays of “If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day” have etched “Judgment Day” into Dylan’s working memory (Dylan spells it the British way, with the extra e), if we are to believe Dylan’s own account in Chronicles:
“I copied Johnson’s words down on scraps of paper so I could more closely examine the lyrics and patterns, the construction of his old-style lines and the free association that he used, the sparkling allegories, bigass truths wrapped in the hard shell of nonsensical abstraction.”
We see more – indirect – echoes of “If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day” in Dylan’s oeuvre. The song itself is derived from Hambone Willie Newbern’s “Roll and Tumble Blues” (1929), from which Robert Johnson copied not only the melody and structure in 1936, but also a few words (third verse: “And I rolled and I tumbled and I cried the whole night long”). Muddy Waters turned it into “Rollin’ And Tumblin’” in 1950, which in turn reappeared on Dylan’s Modern Times in 2006, in “Rollin’ And Tumblin’” – actually a copy of Muddy’s arrangement, including an identical first verse, being again the same lines that Robert Johnson wrote:
Well, I rolled and I tumbled, cried the whole night long Well, I rolled and I tumbled, cried the whole night long Well, I woke up this mornin', didn't know right from wrong
… after which Dylan takes a sharp turn towards lazy sluts, crazy women and unsatisfied wives, while Muddy and Robert Johnson remain a little more prudish and complain that whiskey and women won’t let me pray and the little woman I’m lovin’ wouldn’t have no right to pray.
And that too Dylan has known for a long time, of course, this chain from “Roll and Tumble Blues” to “If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day” to “Rollin’ And Tumblin’” – “And this one, see how this turned into this … he knows all those songs just off the top of his head,” after all. And, as Dylan says in that much-quoted MusiCares speech: “All these songs are connected – I was just extending the line.” After which he picks up his guitar again to play every number he can play. And will continue to do so until Judgment Day.
To be continued. Next up My Own Version Of You part 12: The dismalest tavern of them all
—————
Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books, in English, Dutch and German, are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle: 
- Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
- Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
- Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
- Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
- Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
- Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
- Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits
- John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville
- Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot: Dylan’s lookin’ for the fuse
- Street-Legal: Bob Dylan’s unpolished gem from 1978
- Bringing It All Back Home: Bob Dylan’s 2nd Big Bang
- Time Out Of Mind: The Rising of an Old Master
- Crossing The Rubicon: Dylan’s latter-day classic
- Nashville Skyline: Bob Dylan’s other type of music
- Nick Drake’s River Man: A very British Masterpiece
- I Contain Multitudes: Bob Dylan’s Account of the Long Strange Trip
- Bob Dylan’s Rough And Rowdy Ways – Side B
- Bob Dylan’s High Water (for Charley Patton)
- Bob Dylan’s 1971
- Like A Rolling Stone b/w Gates Of Eden: Bob Dylan kicks open the door
- It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry b/w Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues – Bob Dylan’s melancholy blues