One Of Rock's Most Enduring Blues Songs Has Mysterious Origins

Tom Waits did a grumbly, smoked-out version of the song in 2016. Steve Vai did a chunky, horns-up version in 2013. John Mellencamp did a down-home, roots rock version in 2003. Harry Belafonte did a calypso carnival ride version in 1964. All of them, and others, took inspiration from Blind Willie Johnson's original folk recording of "John the Revelator" in 1930, but prior to that, the song's origins are a mystery. Most sources state that Blind Willie Johnson wrote "John the Revelator," but the song's call-and-response structure leads some to think the song originated as a field song sung by enslaved people in the American South. Regardless, Johnson deserves plenty of credit for delivering the song to us.

Johnson, aka the "Sightless Visionary," was born in Texas way, way back in 1897, and some of the details of his life have been lost to us. According to the Texas State Historical Association, it's said that Johnson was accidentally blinded by lye during a domestic conflict between his father and stepmother. During his childhood, he sang and played a homemade cigar box guitar at Baptist churches, and from 1928 to 1931, he recorded a handful of songs, one of which left the longest and deepest impression on listeners for almost 100 years: "John the Revelator." 

"John the Revelator" is an overtly Christian song, with lyrics like, "Daughter of Zion, Judah the Lion / He redeemeth, and bought us with his blood," sung in a minimalist, craggy-voiced, gospel-meets-blues style with a single guitar and background singer. It's that background singer who reveals the song's possible origin, as she repeatedly answers in a call-and-response style, "John the Revelator," to Johnson's lyrical questions. 

Plenty of songs with no known origin have taken on lives of their own, whether it be big folk rock hits, a folk classic like "House Carpenter" that Bob Dylan made his own, or lesser-known tunes like "Boll Weevil Song" on a Jimmy Page album. Such songs are generally called "standards," meaning time-honored, universally known songs that permeate culture and are simple enough to play. This is only somewhat the case with "John the Revelator," because it's so strongly associated with Blind Willie Johnson and has fewer than 60 official versions over almost 100 years of recording ("House of the Rising Sun" has 875 versions, in comparison). 

It took 34 years for Johnson's original 1930 recording to be covered the first time by Harry Belafonte in 1964. Belafonte's version sounds absolutely nothing like the original and carries none of its pathos, which might be why his cover spawned no further covers until 1993 – except for one. That cover belongs to blues singer Son House, who recorded an a cappella version in 1970 where he did both call-and-response sections and clapped here and there. This version is surprisingly moving, even religiously profound, and does the most justice to Blind Willie Johnson's original.

After Son House, we've got some of the covers we already mentioned; additionally, the White Stripes and Gov't Mule have recorded it, and Nick Cave has been known to play "John the Revelator" live. Steve Vai's recording actually layers his cover over Johnson's version. Whoever sings and plays "John the Revelator," whether it be an unknown acoustic strummer or a big-name artist, is taking part in a musical legacy of mysterious origins that still reverberates today.