If Robert Johnson's career lends credence to the legend that the blues belong to the devil, Blind Willie Johnson stands as proof to the contrary. One of the greatest of the guitar evangelists, Blind Willie wrote songs that spoke of divine deeds, scriptures and salvation, not drunken debauchery, sex and sin. You'd never hear him utter a line like "Hello, Satan, I believe it's time to go." Yet the heavenly focus of Blind Willie's lyrics never took away from the earthiness of his music; if anything, it lent a certain respectability to the rhythmic insistence of his slide guitar.

All of which made Blind Willie a sensation in the late Twenties and early Thirties. Although he was hardly a prolific record maker his output consists of a mere thirty songs, cut between 1927 and 1930 he was phenomenally successful, for a time outselling even such secular stars as Barbecue Bob and Bessie Smith. Moreover, his music endured. Not only were his biggest hits regularly reissued on the gospel market, but his influence could be heard in a diverse range of performers, from Fred McDowell and Muddy Waters to Bob Dylan and Alex Chilton.

Nor is it hard to hear why. Johnson may have been extremely idiosyncratic, but there's no denying the power of his performances. His growling "false bass" voice takes some getting used to – said to derive from the preaching of sanctified ministers, it recalls to modern ears the "groaning" basso style of mbaqanga star Mahlathini but his bullfrog delivery fairly bristles with power and authority. And though he was never a particularly accomplished guitarist, his playing was full of drama and energy. He knew how to write a riff (just ask Led Zeppelin, whose version of "Nobody's Fault but Mine" adds little to Johnson's original) and put as much grit into gospel standards like "Let Your Light Shine on Me" as he did into bluesy originals like "You're Gonna Need Somebody on Your Bond."

Listen to The Slide Guitar Bottles. Knives & Steel and it's obvious Blind Willie Johnson was an original: Not only is his ghostly, quivering vibrato nothing like the more liquid tone preferred by Robert Johnson or Tampa Red, but he also seemed to be after an entirely different effect. Rather than use the slide to energize the beat. Blind Willie employed it as a counterpoint, so that on "God Don't Never Change" it moves across the basic rhythm like the Holy Spirit over the world. That's one reason why his slide work, the focus of Yazoo's Praise God I'm Satisfied, continues to fascinate, from the driving "Jesus Make Up My Dying Bed" to the otherworldly "Dark Was the Night – Cold Was the Ground."

Despite the eloquence of the instrumental bits, the focus of Johnson's recordings was preaching, not playing. That hardly made them less bluesy, of course. In the context of News & the Blues: Telling It Like It Is, a collection of blues songs on public issues and events, Johnson's "If I Had My Way I'd Tear the Building Down" makes the struggle of Samson seem every bit as contemporary as the fight in Jack Kelly's "Joe Louis Special," which is also included on the volume. But Johnson's real genius was in applying the physicality of the blues to his spirituals. That's what gives Sweeter As the Years Go By, a second compilation of Johnson's songs, its kick, from the call and response of "John the Revelator" to the thumping pulse that ignites "Let Your Light Shine on Me," and that is why Johnson's music seems vigorous, vital and moving even now.

Praise God I'm Satisfied and Sweeter As the Years Go By are available from Yazoo, 37 East Clinton Street, Newton, NJ 07860, 201-579-7763. (RS 602)

J.D. CONSIDINE