It's a commonplace to say that art history is scattered with figures who received their due only posthumously. Van Gogh and Gauguin, Melville and Kafka, Mozart and... you fill in the rest. For a long time the performing arts were something of an exception — one either made an impression "live" or was ushered into oblivion — but with the advent of recording technology, musicians, too, were offered a second shot at fame. The British folk singer Nick Drake, to take a comparatively recent example, died virtually unheard in 1974 and remained the smug secret of the cognoscenti until a Volkswagen ad, of all things, elevated him to mega-cult status nearly three decades later. The early bluesmen hold a special place in this dubious pantheon, with singer upon singer dying in poverty and obscurity, only to have some rock guitarist make a killing long afterward off one of his songs. It's a cliche of the genre, and perhaps no one embodies it better — sadly for him — than Robert Johnson.

Since his canonization ca. 1990, Johnson has become a veritable industry. Web sites offer obscure bits of folklore and the chance to buy his two acknowledged portraits. Books and documentaries celebrate his mysterious life, while his 29-song output has been repackaged and re-repackaged to the vast profit of Sony Music (clever, those Japanese). There are Robert Johnson T-shirts and Robert Johnson guitar slides made of cast bronze with his name embossed (which must be hell on the strings), and just recently Gibson released the Robert Johnson L-1 guitar, faithfully reproducing the model he played at roughly 200 times the price. In addition, over the past five years there has emerged what almost qualifies as a mini-genre unto itself: the album of Robert Johnson covers.

The most recent and by far the most famous of these if Eric Clapton's new disk, Me and Mr. Johnson, which brings "the greatest living blues guitarist" together once more with the man he calls "the greatest folk-blues guitarist that ever lived." Clapton has never made any secret of his veneration for Johnson's music, and he certainly can't be accused of jumping late onto the bandwagon. His classic outing with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers in 1966 features, for his first recorded vocal, a cover of Johnson's "Ramblin' on My Mind." And two years before he blew out the Fillmore with Cream's supercharged version of "Cross Road Blues," he and Stevie Winwood recorded a quieter, funkier rendition. (Lest we forget, Cream had also covered Johnson's "From Four Till Late.") Clapton has paid other visits to the Johnson shrine along the way, notably with his memorable acoustic performances of "Walkin' Blues" and "Malted Milk" on Unplugged (1992). But on Me and Mr. Johnson, he finally gives full vent to his admiration, adding 14 more pieces of the canon to his repertoire.