"Blind" Willie Johnson - Dark Was The Night

"Blind" Willie Johnson (January 22, 1897 – September 18, 1945) was an American singer and guitarist whose music straddled the border between blues and spirituals.
While the lyrics of all of his songs were religious, his music drew from both sacred and blues traditions.

Texas blues musicians were known for big, expressive voices, but perhaps none more so than Blind Willie Johnson, a preacher and street musician who sang gospel music with a decidedly blues feel.

Johnson endured almost unfathomable hardships in his life: he was blinded by his stepmother, who threw lye in his face as a child; and he subsequently spent his entire life in poverty before dying of pneumonia one winter while living in the ashes of his burned-down house. But despite his troubles, his faith remained strong and compelled him to make some of the most incredible music ever recorded.

“Dark Was The Night (...Cold Was The Ground) was recorded in 1928 and has no words in the song, just Johnson’s amazing slide guitar and impassioned moaning. It is utterly mesmerizing, and one of the most emotionally charged performances you will ever hear.

Johnson was one of the first great slide guitarists, using a piece of metal (in Johnson’s case, probably a knife) held against the strings to alter the guitar’s pitch mid-note. Here, he makes the notes sing and cry with the same stirring passion as his voice. Combined, it makes for an unbelievable, otherworldly experience.

The song title derives from an 18th century hymn which begins with the lines "Dark was the night, and cold the ground / On which the Lord was laid".

In 1977, it was included in a collection of sounds and music for the Voyager spacecraft (the Voyager Golden Record) to represent Earth and the human experience to any other life forms in the universe.