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Yeah, there's been about twenty billion and two threads about the potential outfall if the individuals known collectively as the 27 club had lived past that age. But no matter, the subject is too interesting to not discuss so here I'm gonna do just that, make a timeline about the continued effect of that club (and one not of that club).

I'm also gonna say that this thread is very speculative, mostly made for the fun I get from imagining it all together, while most of it can't be supported by hard fact, it mostly stems from asuming. If that's not up your alley then fine, but if you're something of a music fan, maybe you'll find something amusing in speculating with me what the impact would've been if these fantastic individuals had gotten to live.

Shall we begin:

August 13th 1938: Robert Johnson, traveling guitarist, who has performed for some weeks in Greenwood, Mississippi, goes to a juke joint. There the guitarist starts dancing with a young woman, the woman turns out to be the wife of the joint's owner, and the owner suspiciously doesn't seem to mind, instead offering Johnson beer. Johnson doesn't drink it, instead smashes it out of the owner's hand. A fight ensues, and Robert ends up in Leflore County Jail. He is charged with Battery and serves 6 months. (1)

Febuary 10th 1939: Robert Johnson is released early, for good behaviour, the time in prison has definitely changed him, he decides to leave the South and try his luck in the North. (2)

Excerpt from Robert Johnson: Bluesman from the South achieves great success at Café Society published in Down Beat magazine on June 18th 1944

"Robert Johnson has been a fixture on 52nd Street and Harlem since 1939, when he arrived from Mississippi, and now he is the new hot star out of Swing Street and especially Café Society, which has produced greats like Billie Holiday in the recent years, the guitarist himself doesn't have much to say about his newfound success, only his happiness that he finally after much trying got a record deal, Decca was quick to sign him, and his song "Sweet Home Chicago" has all but taken New York jazz enthusiasts by storm. The Bluesman, as most people have taken up to calling him, has one comment on the success of his music "Great. Now I can make more, maybe something with strings. I heard that Holiday record, that "Lover Man" record, I'd like to do something like that. Or something with hors. The great thing about success is that you can try new things. I like that.", and it seems that the simple guitar will stop dominating his music, and his two latest records, "Love in Vain" and a version of Bessie Smith's "St. Loius Blues" both have saxophones, trumpets, drums, violins and piano, the ending of "St. Louis Blues" using an entire orchestra. And through all this, the Bluesman is still there with his guitar, still powerful at the center of it, never overpowered by strings, horns or drumbeats(3). His newly created Robert Johnson Orchestra, performed at Café Society for the firt time three weeks ago, and ever since, the new, powerful sound has taken the jazz world by storm, though some Delta blues people mutter about Johnson's "betrayal" and "giving up" in favor of doing what's popular.(4) Nothing can say what lies ahead for Robert Johnson, but his records are moving beyond simple guitar tracks of the past, into something new and we here at Down Beat (who loved the new releases by the way) look forward to what the Bluesman will release in the future."

Febuary 17th 1939: Robert Johnson leaves the South after much consideration, and makes his way to the place he'd read about, the place where black men and women could achieve success in music, Harlem(5).

Early March 1939: Sketchy details report that some time between the 6th and the 10th of March, Johnson arrived in New York City. The only document from this time that makes it even certain he was there is a performance at The Cotton Club, the first one in New York City. Johnson's much later written journal says it did not go over well with the jazz crowd, something that most probably contributed to Johnson's later conversion to the genre.

April 1939: Robert Johnson starts performing in Greenwich Village, where he is much better received, his performances there has been suggested as lying the groundwork for the later Folk Revival in the Village. By mid April, he has a steady job for the first time. This job is, as he writes himself later, "a lifesaver, it truly kept me from going back to Mississippi and just giving up. And looking back, had I gone back, I would've been dead.". Robert also by this part, starts listening to the music of the Harlem scene, jazz.

May 1939-early 1940: The details are sketchy at best, and not many witnesses have stories that match up, but most agree that Johnson spent most of his time in the clubs of the Village at this point in his life, the only clubs that really accepted his guitar-only music. Most witnesses can concurr that the young struggling guitarist fell in with the Harlem drug crowd somewhere in early '40.(6)

Febuary 1940: Johnson asks around for a drummer, and finds Buddy Rich(7), the Delta Blues guitar style fits perfectly for a smooth, jazz based drumming that Rich introduced and soon, Rich introduced Johnson to piano and horn. Johnson begins mixing his eclecting blues arrangements with Rich's more traditional jazz structures, and the sound that Johnson became famed for starts evolving.

March 1940 - Early 1942: Johnson and Buddy Rich with a shifting set of musicians start playing the Harlem and 52nd Street Jazz clubs. The original, guitar focused Jazz becomes a big hit. Johnson starts to work towards a record deal, when in early 1942, after the horror of Pearl Harbour, Buddy Rich leaves to join the war effort. Johnson's criminal record disqualifies him from service, and with Rich gone, Johnson lost the most important creative force in his career.

Febuary-March 16th 1942: Johnson picks up a new drummer and rearranges his song "Love In Vain" in a more Jazz like structure, but also works in Broadway style torch song structure, the soaring song becomes a hit with audiences and leads to Johnson getting signed to Decca records on March 16th. The song is widely believed to be allegorical for Buddy Rich.

March-May 1942: Robert Johnson starts recording, mixing simple guitar only delta blues songs, Broadway style songs, Vaudeville, Ragtime, folk, jazz and bebop in a fantastic series of records that almost overnight made him a hit with audiences across the United States.

Excerpt from Robert Johnson: In Memoriam. Down Beat Magazine, July 16th 1956.
"'Its hard not to remember the first time you met Robert, ask anyone who did. I met him in 1940, just a few montsh before France was invaded and just a few months before the Phony War turned real, and at that time in history, I met Robert Johnson. You always want your first meeting with a legend to be so much greater than it actually was, you want it to be big and special and completely as you would imagine meeting a legend would be like, but really, all there was was this: He was looking around in New York for a good drummer to match his guitar, everybody knew he was the best guitarist around, he needed the best drummer, and that was me. Tommy Dorsey, whose orchestra I was actually trying to join at that time, suggested it to me, why don't you go and work with that Robert Johnson, that performer down in the village, the guitarist. The entirity of Harlem knew him, for no reason really, he was just a talented personality, and people remember those. So I decided to look him up, and we met. Really nothing bigger, we just met. Robert asked me to do some songs, drum to his guitar, help him mix his blues with the jazz he heard everyone else doing (he liked Jazz, he liked all music he heard in New York) and help him put together a band, a good band, he'd let me lead it if I wanted to, he just wanted to have some Jazz musicians, I said yes. For no reason I said yes. It was the beginning of a relationship that's lasted (though been interrupted) for 16 years. Rest in peace, Robert.' - Buddy Rich."(8)

May-August 1942: Johnson tours the eastern coast of the United States, to moderate success, enough so for Decca to keep him. He continued to sell records, and he continues to mix styles from his contemporaries and from his youth.

Summer 1942: Excessive recording and performing leads Johnson to develop an addiction to heroin, as well as an already developed alcoholism, the drugs add further finanical strain on the guitarist, driving him into more work.

Autumn 1942: Robert continues develop his own style while constantly changing styles, from October 1942 he abandons guitar completely, if only temporarily, in favor of Jazz. Mutters of his "selling out" begins to be voices.

Early 1943: Robert embraces Free Jazz completely, working with his singing more than ever before, both in studio and live. Ragtime, Broadway, Free Jazz, bebop, blues, swing and folk is all mixed, match, married and thrown together in Robert's drive to find a genre that satisfies him.

Mid 1943: Robert's addiction starts to spiral out of control, Decca demands that he enter hospital for it, and he complies. Three months is spent in hospital, receiving treatment, in August, he is back but drained from the experience. His music takes a darker turn and he picks up his guitar again and starts writing his own songs again.

Late 1943 to June 1944: Robert builds up his orchestra, consisting of a pianist, a string quartet, two saxophonists, one trumpeter, a drummer and himself singing and playing guitar. Missing is a traditional bassist, Robert explained this with "I'm my own bassist." referring to how he could play a bassline on his guitar. The band achieves great success with its mixture of blues, jazz, ragtime, pop and showtune.

I think I'll stop here, for now. So now first I'm gonna explain my interpretation, well if one listens to Robert Johnson, it's very clear that he was a very eclectic musician, who was mixing in styles that sound very unlike Delta blues of the time, that's why it sounds so much like blues rock to us (OK thats because every guitarist past Johnson has been influenced by him), but Robert Johnson was very eclectic and he seemed to like very many different kinds of music, which is why believe that if he lived and reached New York City, he'd somehow incorperated the jazz he saw around him and the showtunes jazz used exstensively and their sound into his own material. I just think he liked to do things in his own way, and that's why I think if he had gone to New York (which is possible, considering the Harlem Renaissance was happening) he could've gone that track, which is what I went with.

1: POD 1, IOTL he drank the poisoned whiskey (or what it was) and died. In this timeline he just starts a fight instead.

2: POD 2, his imprisonment would've lead to natural bitterness, and with the Harlem Renaissance happening, New York would've been a natural place for a young black musician to go to escape it all.

3: Basically he's doing art pop, or Rock n' Roll a decade or so early.

4: I just thought it was funny and very likely that he got the same response from his old fans as Dylan did when he "sold out".

5: Harlem Renaissance, already said all this, that's the background there.

6: This is just natural, lots of drugs going round back then, it was a popular subject for jazz artists for a reason.

7: Real guy.

8: Robert still dies fairly young, but has a broader effect on music that I will go into later.

SO this was all :).


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