Review: 'Portrait of a Phantom: The Story of Robert Johnson’s Lost Photograph'

In 2005, guitar salesman Zeke Schein found an original photograph depicting a man he was convinced was Robert Johnson on ebay. He won the auction after bidding $3,100 (the actual sale price was $2,176.56), passed the photo around to various bluesmen and a forensics expert, and not only amassed evidence that his picture is most likely the real deal (though it remains officially unverified), but identified the photographer and the second man in the photo: Johnson’s traveling companion and collaborator, Johnny Shines. The discovery of the photo was significant because there had previously only been two known photos of the man who was arguably the key figure in blues—more because he wrote timeless songs and developed a complex guitar technique than because of any cheesy Faustian bargain myth.

Twelve years later, Schein parlayed that experience into a book called Portrait of a Phantom: The Story of Robert Johnson’s Lost Photograph. Johnson’s life is such a great big question mark muddied with tall tales told by unreliable sources that I wasn’t expecting to learn much about him from the book. I was mostly curious to see how Schein could wring a whole book out of an interesting yet slight incident that had already been the topic of a Vanity Fair article. He does so by giving a moment-by-moment account of the bidding process, explaining how he got his book deal, providing a brief history of all the British rockers Johnson inspired, explaining hoodoo, and discussing his own experiences selling guitars to famous people. Schein justifies the latter by winding the anecdotes back to Johnson. Bob Dylan plays a bit of “Stop Breakin’ Down Blues” while checking out a guitar in the shop; Elvis Costello is on his way to a Robert Johnson tribute show where he is to play “From Four Until Late”, and so on. Schein also spends a lot of time grumbling about the tiresome blues geeks who question the veracity of his photo in online forums and the difficulties of getting his photo onto CDs and T-shirts.

 

Portrait of a Phantom is a slight story stretched nearly to its breaking point, and Schein’s low-key disgruntlement gets a bit wearing, but he was smart to keep it short and get novelist Poppy Z. Brite (Exquisite Corpse) to help him with the text, because the book is readable. There’s also no denying the historical significance of Schein’s find. It may not have necessitated an entire book, but that photo will surely play an essential role in fleshing out any future writings on the King of the Delta Blues Singers.