Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground: How Blues Musician Willie Johnson Reached Outer Space

There isn’t much known about Blind Willie Johnson, the legendary Blues musician who received posthumous fame much after his short recording career. His recording career is as hazy as the smoke he burned and so tragically died in.

Blind Willie Johnson was born on January 25, 1897, in Pendleton, Texas, a small town near Waco where he would live out his childhood as the son of a sharecropper. Willie Johnson wasn’t born blind, but according to several accounts, he was blinded by his stepmother when he was seven years old.

In a fateful moment and fit of anger which Blues historians now recount, young Willie was blinded by a solution of caustic lye water which was splashed on his eyes after an argument between his real father and stepmother about her infidelity.

According to legend, the last thing young Willie Johnson saw was the night sky studded with stars and constellations.