XL ARTS

Players hope to get Robert Johnson show right, down to the strum

Play explores the life behind the legendary blues guitarist

By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin
AMERICAN-STATESMAN ARTS WRITER
Thursday, April 17, 2008

It's hard portraying a guitar hero in a guitar town.

Just ask Aaron Alexander. The energetic 20-something Austin actor admits to plenty of anxiety about playing the legendary blues guitarist in "Robert Johnson: Trick the Devil," the critically acclaimed off-Broadway play by Bill Harris that opens today at the Rollins Studio Theatre at the Long Center for a two-week run. The play, a joint project of ProArts Collective and Austin Community College, examines the last days of Johnson's short, mysterious life.

"I don't play guitar," Alexander says as he gets ready for a recent rehearsal. "I don't actually have to play the guitar in this show. But I do have to hold it, strum it and make it a part of my character."

He pauses. Then inhales quickly, his voice rising a pitch. "And do you know how scary it is to try do that in a town where everybody knows everything about the guitar or plays the guitar?"

Alexander doesn't have a wealth of historical reference to build his character on. Neither do any scholars.

Johnson — whom Eric Clapton called "the most important blues musician who ever lived" — was born in poverty in 1911 in Hazelhurst, Miss. He spent his life as an itinerant blues musician traveling the Delta, playing small honky-tonks and on the street. Johnson recorded only 29 songs, in two recording sessions — the first in 1936 in San Antonio, the second in 1937 in Dallas. He died in 1938, reportedly poisoned, though the details of his death are disputed. His legacy wasn't widely known until musicians and scholars in the 1960s began to resurrect his story and record his music.

"I've got the only two known photographs of Johnson on my iPod," Alexander says, flashing the pair of grainy black-and-white images, one taken in a photo booth, the other a more formal portrait with Johnson in pinstripe suit. "It's hard to know just who this man was."

What is not disputed is that Johnson displayed an uncommon combination of singing, guitar skills and songwriting ability that has influenced generations of musicians. Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, the Rolling Stones — all have proclaimed Johnson a progenitor of rock 'n' roll.

But musical legacy aside, there's always been speculation on how Johnson went from harmonica-playing wing man to guitar genius seemingly overnight. The favorite myth? Johnson went down to the crossroads and sold his soul to the devil.

"Harris' play really is an attempt to give form to Johnson as a person," director Marcus McQuirter of Austin Community College says. "There is so much mythology about Johnson we sometimes forget to consider him as just a man trying to live his life."

"Trick the Devil" is the first ACC/ProArts collaboration to be staged in the Long Center's new Rollins theater. Last year, the organizations' joint production of "Funnyhouse of a Negro" received multiple nominations from the Austin Critics Table and netted a Best Director Award for McQuirter. "Trick the Devil" is a beneficiary of the Long Center's "Boost" program, which waives theater rental fees for selected groups. "I heard such wonderful things about their production of 'Funnyhouse for a Negro'; we were excited to know (this collaboration) wanted to use the Rollins," says Tammie Ward, programming director for the Long Center.

McQuirter is excited about debuting in the Rollins. But like Alexander, he's quick to admit he has a case of nerves when it comes to presenting a play about the so-called godfather of rock 'n' roll in the Live Music Capital of the World. "Did we get a guitar with the same number of frets as the one Johnson used?" he says. "You know someone in Austin is going to know that kind of thing."

That's probably true — Austin is a guitar town, after all.

jvanryzin@statesman.com; 445-3699