Dear Hendrix,
It’s the spooky season. And while I can’t wait to take you out trick-or-treating this Halloween, I wanted to preface the festive occasion with a little music for you (and all those folks reading this on their cell phones at home).
But when your mother is a professional DJ, a playlist can’t just be any old playlist. It has to include a little music education. So here goes! Musically speaking, when most people hear the word “goth,” bands like the Cure, Bauhaus, and Joy Division likely spring to mind. But goth, to me, is something different entirely.
I think of blues artists like Blind Willie Johnson, Son House, and Robert Johnson. These are songwriters and performers that taught me about darkness. They amplified American folklore, singing about figures like John Henry, the folk hero steel driver, the same way others might have heralded Hercules.
So I highlighted five songs by these artists who tell the story of the eerie, haunting American South, from its dark past to its chilling music. These artists, who thrived around the turn of the 20th century used their guitars like hammers, forging timeless masterpieces, despite the backdrop of slavery, the Civil War, lynchings, and extreme poverty. To me, they’re all goth.
Happy Halloween!
P.S. There will be another letter going more into this interpretation of Goth through the lens of black history. But for now, enjoy the tunes.
“Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground” by Blind Willie Johnson (1927)
If the title isn’t goth enough for you already, wait until you give this song a listen. The track is all slide guitar and hums. What I love about these old recordings is feeling like I’m in the same room as the artist. The sound of the slide knocking against the fretboard and the sound of antique silence haunting in the background as Johnson hums is divine. The song displays great loneliness, grief, and heartache. Johnson lost his sight at a young age, when his stepmother threw lye in his face while arguing with his father. Later, in 1945, Johnson’s house was destroyed in a fire, but he stayed there living in the ruins until he died that September. If that isn’t the foundation for some dark music, I don’t know what is.
“Death Letter Blues” by Son House (1965)
I’ve loved Son House for as long as I can remember. His song “Death Letter Blues” is goth at its finest. As soon as the track begins, we hear a slide screaming for answers. Son House sings with it, “I got a letter this morning, how do you reckon it read?” As the song continues, we learn the heartbreaking answer. The gal the singer loves is dead. The force behind Son House’s guitar is enough to make you want to get up and dance and holler, which is a strange feeling because he’s delivering to us some pretty awful news. Leave it to the blues to make death this vivacious… Son House is so dynamic, he makes his guitar sound like two people are playing at once—maybe it’s the angel and the devil on his shoulder—one on rhythm and one on lead. Everything sounds delightfully messy on the metal-bodied resonator. There is no wrong note Son House can hit in this song’s story of death and grief.
“Cross Road Blues” by Robert Johnson (1936)
Robert Johnson is likely the most influential blues guitarist to ever live. And his song “Cross Road Blues” is one of his most famous tracks—even now. Like the Son House song, this tune was recorded with just Johnson and his guitar. Although, also like the song above, the artist’s playing can easily be mistaken for two sets of hands. We don’t see the devil or the angel, we just hear them. After all, you can’t talk about Johnson without mentioning the infamous legend. How he went down to the crossroads in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and how he supposedly sold his soul to the devil in exchange for wicked guitar chops. Those chops have gone on to influence countless modern legends, from Keith Richards to Jimmy Page. It all begins on this song. (Fun fact: I played a show in Clarksdale in 2019 with my band, but the devil stood us up!)
“Last Kind Words Blues” by Geeshie Wiley (1930)
There is little known of the life of Geeshie Wiley. We aren’t even sure about her actual birth name (some say her real name may have been Lillie Mae). But while we don’t know much about her personal life, some of her music still lives on and, in many ways, that’s all the info we need. For example, just dive into this haunting track. It tells the story of her father going out to fight in the “German War” (World War I). The singer gives instructions on what to do with his body if he is killed. Geeshie’s haunting guitar, backed by the second guitar played by Elvie Thomas (aka L.V. Thomas), features a lead that mimics the main vocal melody. It establishes the mood, the feeling. It sounds like a cruel morning, cold and yet eerily stoic. You can almost know what it feels like to live in that moment thanks to this recording.
“Freight Train” by Elizabeth Cotten (1904)
We can’t talk about the blues without talking about Cotten-picking. The Venn Diagram of the two (the blues and the picking style) comes to us via the artist Elizabeth Cotten. Her song “Freight Train” is about death (my favorite subject!). It’s a common theme in the blues, but Cotten is no common songwriter or performer. She was left-handed and played a right-handed-stringed guitar upside down, plucking the song’s melody with her thumb and the bass line with her fingers. Her instrumentation was so good, it could easily be mistaken for a child’s lullaby. That is, if you didn’t listen to Cotten’s voice. Her shaky and aged voice told us all about loss and how it feels to her. Years later, Cotten was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for her foundational playing style—and rightfully so. Discovered by the Seeger family while working as a maid, Cotten won her first Grammy at 90 years old. Indeed, if you ever think it’s too late to start on guitar, Henny, just listen to Elizabeth Cotten. She can wake the dead.
Eva Walker is a writer, a KEXP DJ, one-half of the rock duo The Black Tones, and mom to her baby girl, Hendrix. She also co-wrote the book The Sound of Seattle: 101 Songs That Shaped a City, which was released in 2024. Every month for The Stranger, she writes a letter to Hendrix to share wisdom learned from her experiences—and her mistakes. Read all installments here.
