Best Roots Gospel Album and Best American Roots Performance for Blind Boys of Alabama recording of "Mother's Children Have a Hard Time". All of Johnson's released material has become easily accessible thanks to its preservation on compilation albums such as Blind Willie Johnson 1927–1930 and The Complete Blind Willie Johnson, among others. Samuel Charters was the first major blues historian to attempt to uncover more about Johnson's life, first documenting him in his 1959 book The Country Blues. In 1993, Charters corrected some factual inaccuracies in Johnson's biography in the liner notes to The Complete Blind Willie Johnson. Other books related to Johnson include Shine a Light: My Year with Blind Willie Johnson and Revelation The Blind Willie Johnson Biography. In 1977, Carl Sagan and a team of researchers were tasked with collecting a representation of Earth and the human experience for sending on the Voyager probe to other life forms in the universe. Among the 27 songs selected for the Voyager Golden Record, "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" was chosen by NASA consultant Timothy Ferris because, according to Ferris, "Johnson's song concerns a situation he faced many times: nightfall with no place to sleep. Since humans appeared on Earth, the shroud of night has yet to fall without touching a man or woman in the same plight". Johnson's recording of "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" was also selected by the Library of Congress as a 2010 addition to the National Recording Registry, which selects recordings annually that are deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In 2017, the story of Blind Willie Johnson's inclusion on the Voyager probe was told in the multi-award-winning 2017 documentary series American Epic directed by Bernard MacMahon. The film was accompanied by a compilation album, American Epic: The Best of Blind Willie Johnson, featuring radically improved restorations of sixteen of Johnson's recordings. See also List of songs recorded by Blind Willie Johnson References External links 1897 births 1945 deaths American blues singers American blues guitarists American male guitarists American Protestants Blind musicians Columbia Records artists Country blues singers Gospel blues musicians People from Beaumont, Texas People from Marlin, Texas Slide guitarists Texas blues musicians 20th-century American guitarists Guitarists from Texas People from Bell County, Texas African-American guitarists 20th-century African-American male singers Deaths from malaria