Blind Willie Johnson was an itinerant Texas street singer who made his last record in 1930 and died in poverty. Yet such was the force and individuality of his guitar playing and singing that all thirty of the gospel songs he recorded during his brief professional career are easily available today. His versions of "If I Had My Way I'd Tear This Building Down," "Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning," and "Bye and Bye I'm Going to See the King" are now considered classics and have attracted admirers in many fields of popular music.

Johnson dropped back into obscurity after his fifth and final recording session for Columbia Records in the spring of 1930 and for many years his strong, highly personal renditions of gospel songs could be heard only on bootleg records. But eventually, through the efforts of jazz historians like...