Willie Johnson born in January 1897, he is a gospel vocalist and guitarist from a family that lives on the level of starvation. At the age of 5, he started to earn money by playing guitar which made from his father’s cigarette boxes on the street. When Willie was 7, his stepmother had cheated on his father with another man. Therefore his father beat his stepmother very terribly. The woman who wants to take revenge threw vitriol to Willie's face and he became blind at the end of this incident. He had never gave up making music, Willie have had any the chance in marrige that’s why his two marriages ended with dissappointment. In 1945, he passed away at his ruined house. Cause of death was pneumonia.
In 1977, NASA decided to send a golden record to the space with voyager spacecraft. Carl Sagan wanted to have Willie Johnson alongside Bach and Beethoven on the golden record to be sad to depths of billions of light years of space One of the 27 songs on the record was his song "Dark Was The Night , Cold Was The Groung", composed of Willie's muttering and interjections. When the asked why he explained "Johnson 's song concerns a sittuatin 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 some plight " *
In the early 19th century . Could a woman who throw vitriol to a texan child's face know that the voice of the child would echo with eternity with the two greatest musical geniuses the planet ever seen.
-Blind Willie Johnson - Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground-
image1: ccriderblues.com
image2: www.npr.org
image3: www.guitarvideos.com
*Carl Sagan's word is quoted from "kona.com.tr" site.