By MIKE JOYCE
Published: January 25, 2006

Who is Vernon McAlister, and why has his name, etched on an old National steel guitar recently obtained by Richard Leo Johnson, inspired a fictional account of his life and a soundtrack to go with it?
Johnson, best known for his nimble fingerstyle acoustic guitar recordings, was so taken by the sound of his vintage National Duolian when he first played it -- "Bells, voices, horns and other mysterious qualities" emanated from it, he recalls in the CD's liner notes -- that he decided to use the instrument to orchestrate an imaginary telling of McAlister's life.
In keeping with blues mythology, the tale is murky: After being severely injured in a sawmill accident in Tennessee during the Great Depression, a lost soul named Vernon McAlister is presented with a steel guitar. He goes on to create "wild music, moving from swelling orchestral sounds to dissonant warblings and back again. His melodies were barely perceptible and his harmonies odd. The difference with Vernon was that since nobody ever really taught him to play the guitar he'd made up some crucial elements like how to tune it and how to pick it."
Orchestral, dissonant, odd -- all those adjectives apply to the music Johnson has composed for "Legend," a sharp departure from his previous, contemporary-sounding releases. Another adjective fits, too: cinematic. Imagine Ry Cooder scoring a film based on the life of the late Delta bluesman Bukka White and you'll have some idea of what Johnson is up to here. The 20 solo guitar performances evoke Southern blues, folk and gospel traditions by emphasizing altered-tuning atmospherics, full of yearning refrains, droning vamps, skittish rhythms and sustained overtones. Besides imbuing much of the music with a seamless beauty, the strategy makes "Love and Trouble," "Angry Angel," "First Night Alone" and other tunes all the more haunting.