Rumbling, grumbling, humbling, tumbling… most any adjective ending in -umbling is appropriate to describe Blind Willie Johnson’s one-of-a-kind, earth shaking baritone. While his sound can potentially frighten first time listeners, the lyrics soon reveal the true nightmare: Johnson’s endless, reverential disquietude about God’s wrath. He walks a tightrope between the celebratory salvation of “Church, I’m Fully Saved Today” and the hell-nipping-at-my-heels of “John the Revelator”, never able to find comfort anywhere here on earth (and only hoping he will elsewhere). If Blind Willie’s God is real, most of us alive today are in for a seriously terrifying hereafter. Until then, we’ve got Dark Was the Night, this stellar single disc, sixteen track compilation to deliver us from evil.
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