“I Been Studying Rain”

This chapter considers the music, recording, and lyrics of the track “Preachin’ Blues (Up Jumped the Devil)” performed by Robert Johnson, recorded in the improvised recording studio of room 414 of the Gunter Hotel, San Antonio, Texas, on the morning of Friday, November 27, 1936. The music is examined alongside its perceived emotional, energetic, and expressive affects in order to explore what is represented by this performance and its performer in successive eras of contemporary popular music culture. Specifically, in what ways does this recording enable and constrain notions of authenticity, race, creativity, and myth-making within the discourse on popular music? How has this recording transcended its origins and successive rounds of technological mediation? In eras of socio-economic crisis and Civil Rights activism, what particular truths do creators, consumers, and cultural workers seek—and find—in this recorded text? The essay considers the ways that the original mono recording affects listeners’ perception of the performance's rhythms and notes. While Johnson's emotional intensity is without question, the clarity of some of his words is lost to time—particularly the haunting, indistinct phrase which is often parsed as “I been studyin’ rain.”