guitar playing as "exciting as almost anything in the folk blues field". Music writer Rudi Blesh included a review of Johnson's "Hellhound on My Trail" in his 1946 book Shining Trumpets: a History of Jazz. He noted the "personal and creative way" Johnson approached the song's harmony. Jim Wilson, then a writer for the Detroit Free Press, also mentioned his unconventional use of harmony. In a 1949 review, he compared elements of John Lee Hooker's recent debut "Boogie Chillen": "His [Hooker's] dynamic rhythms and subtle nuances on the guitar and his startling disregard for familiar scale and harmony patterns show similarity to the work of Robert Johnson, who made many fine records in this vein." Samuel Charters drew further attention to Johnson in a five-page section in his 1959 book, The Country Blues. He focused on the two Johnson recordings that referred to images of the devil or hell"Hellhound on My Trail" and "Me and the Devil Blues"to suggest that Johnson was a deeply troubled individual. Charters also included Johnson's "Preachin' Blues" on the album published alongside his book. Columbia Records' first album of Johnson's recordings, King of the Delta Blues Singers, was issued two years later. Musicianship Johnson is mentioned as one of the Delta artists who was a strong influence on blues singers in post-war styles. However, it is Johnson's guitar technique that is often identified as his greatest contribution. Blues historian Edward Komara wrote: This technique has been called a "boogie bass pattern" or "boogie shuffle" and is described as a "fifth–sixth [degrees of a major scale] oscillation above the root chord". Sometimes, it has been attributed to Johnnie Temple, because he was the first to record a song in 1935 using it. However, Temple confirmed that he had learned the technique from Johnson: "He was the first one I ever heard use it... It was similar to a piano boogie bass [which] I learned from R. L. [Johnson] in '32 or '33." Johnny Shines added: "Some of the things that Robert did with the guitar affected the way everybody played. In the early thirties, boogie was rare on the guitar, something to be heard." Conforth and Wardlow call it "one of the most important riffs in blues music" and music historian Peter Guralnick believes Johnson "popularized a mode [walking bass style on guitar] which would rapidly become the accepted pattern". Although author Elijah Wald recognizes Johnson's