Austin Music Historian Discovers Blind Willie Johnson’s Grave

Since his afterlife in 1945, the grave of Blind Willie Johnson, one of the greatest bottleneck-slide guitarists of all time, has been unmarked. Now, acknowledgment to 18 months of analysis and a dozen visits to the Blanchette Cemetery in Beaumont, Texas by Austinite Jack Ortman, the final comatose abode of this affecting Texas artist will get the acceptance it deserves.

Johnson’s music has consistently been admired by his adolescent musicians. His songs accept been covered by Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Paul McCartney, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, White Stripes, Bruce Springsteen, Hot Tuna, the Grateful Dead and amaranthine added artists. More than 30 years afterwards his death, Johnson’s recording of “Dark was the Night (Cold was the Ground)” was included on a Sounds of Earth almanac launched into amplitude onboard NASA’s Voyager One. Nearly 60 years afterwards Johnson’s death, Texas guitar fable Johnny Winter alleged that song one of his 10 admired songs in a Guitar World interview.

Johnson’s childhood, like his abortive death, was heartbreaking. His mother died if he was a baby; his step-mother addled him with lye if he was seven years old. (His song “Motherless Children Have a Hard Time” was covered by Clapton on 461 Ocean Boulevard in 1974.) One of Columbia’s better affairs chase recording stars during the Great Depression, Johnson recorded 30 songs amid 1927 and 1930. When the abridgement concluded his recording career, he became a Baptist minister. He operated a “House of Prayer” in Beaumont with his wife and connected to accomplish on artery corners. In 1945, a blaze ravaged their home. With boilerplate to go and little funds, they slept on newspapers on their water-damaged bed. Johnson bent pneumonia but was angry abroad at a bounded hospital because he was aphotic (or black, depending aloft the source). He died aural a week: his final comatose abode unknown; his grave unmarked.

Determined to bare that page of Texas history, Ortman began authoritative the 230 mile expedition from Austin to Beaumont every two or three weeks. “I’m into the history of music and musicians of the Golden Triangle − Beaumont, Orange and Port Arthur, Texas” he explained. “During my research, I kept advancing above advice that Blind Willie had lived in Beaumont during the 30s and 40s. The sources aswell appear that he died in Beaumont. My accustomed concern fabricated me seek added and I started award advice that no one was abiding area he was buried. That was it, my moment of realization, and I thought, ‘What a absolute activity for me’.”

Ortman began researching Johnson’s life, accession books, articles, and CD liner notes. After account an article in the Austin American Statesman by Michael Corcoran, and a affiliate about Johnson in Corcoran’s book All Over the Map, he abstruse that Corcoran had begin a archetype of the Johnson’s afterlife affidavit that acclaimed he was active in Blanchette Cemetery.

Ortman headed for that cemetery and met Estraleta Sonnier, the new administrator of Community Cemeteries, an awning alignment for several Beaumont cemeteries. He again absorbed up with the Tyrrell Historical Library and the Jefferson County Historical Commission and was told Johnson was active at Community Cemeteries, which had him analytic two added burying grounds. After a brace of asleep ends at those cemeteries, he already afresh focused on Blanchette.

Johnson was active in a pauper’s grave in the “colored section” of the Blanchette Cemetery, which has a alternation hotlink fence amid the white and atramentous sections. When Ortman apparent his final comatose abode in July, Johnson had been asleep for about 65 years. Sam Charters, music historian, almanac producer, and columnist of The Country Blues, The Legacy of the Blues, and several added books on dejection and jazz, searched for his grave in the mid 1950s. Corcoran abandoned his seek in 2003. Ortman believed the time was appropriate to try afresh and credits his success to a amount of factors.

“Right from the beginning, I acquainted if I were to accept any success, I bare the captivation of all the players,” he said. “My cold was accepting to apperceive the humans at the cemetery and all the actual commissions on a claimed basis. Discovering the area took accumulation the “Industrial Maps” of Beaumont from the 1920s to the 1960s; accepting a new administrator of the Blanchette Cemetery; utilizing aerial aeriform photos from satellites in space; timing; and a lot of luck.”

“I anticipate added advisers had been analytic for a cairn with Blind Willie’s name adamant on it,” he added. “When I begin out he was active in a paupers grave, it afflicted the focus of my search. After I alone all the ‘marked’ and ‘paid for’ tombs and narrowed what was larboard as the paupers graves, I had begin the endure of the missing ‘Blues Founding Fathers’.”

Requirements for an Official Texas Historical Marker from the Texas Historical Commission (THC) are acrimonious and crave applications to be submitted by a canton actual commission. The Jefferson County Historical Commission is appointment Ortman’s appliance this fall. When approved, the THC writes the inscription, requires transaction for the brand (approximately $1500, already apprenticed by an bearding donor), and has a branch casting the marker. Ortman affairs to host an actualization celebration with the Jefferson County Historical Commission if the delay is assuredly over.

“Well adapted and 65 years overdue, Blind Willie Johnson will assuredly get the acceptance he deserves as a seminal Texas musician,” Ortman added.

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