McCormick was born in 1930 in
Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania. and
Lightnin' Hopkins. At the
1965 Newport Folk Festival, he assembled a group of former convicts who had never performed together, and after trying but failing to get
Bob Dylan to end his rehearsals with members of the
Paul Butterfield Blues Band, cut off Dylan's electricity supply, possibly giving rise to the apocryphal story that
Pete Seeger had attempted to cut the power with an axe during Dylan's debut performance with electric guitars and keyboards. and
Henry Thomas. He began research on Johnson in 1968, while working for the
Smithsonian Institution. McCormick intended to publish his research as a book,
Biography of a Phantom, and uncovered a huge amount of fresh material, including discovering Johnson's living relatives and previously unknown photos of the musician. but he was also frustrated by recurring bouts of
bipolar disorder. McCormick died on November 18, 2015, in
Houston,
Texas, ==Archives==