Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911
– August 16, 1938) was a blues singer, songwriter and musician. His landmark
recordings in 1936 and 1937 display a combination of singing, guitar skills,
and songwriting talent that has influenced later generations of musicians.
Johnson's poorly documented life and death have given rise to much legend. The
one most closely associated with his life is that he sold his soul to the devil
at a local crossroads to achieve musical success. He is now recognized as a
master of the blues, particularly as a progenitor of the Delta blues style.
As an itinerant performer who
played mostly on street corners, in juke joints, and at Saturday night dances,
Johnson had little commercial success or public recognition in his lifetime.
He participated in only two
recording sessions, one in San Antonio in 1936, and one in Dallas in 1937, that
produced 29 distinct songs recorded by famed Country Music Hall of Fame
producer Don Law.
Other than these recordings, very
little was known of him during his life outside of the small musical circuit in
the Mississippi Delta where he spent most of his life; much of his story has
been reconstructed after his death by researchers.
His music had a small, but
influential, following during his life and in the two decades after his death.
Musicians such as Bob Dylan,
Keith Richards, and Robert Plant have cited both Johnson's lyricism and
musicianship as key influences on their own work. Many of Johnson's songs have
been covered over the years, becoming hits for other artists, and his guitar
licks and lyrics have been borrowed and re-purposed by many later musicians.
According to legend, as a young
man living on a plantation in rural Mississippi, Johnson had a tremendous
desire to become a great blues musician. He was instructed to take his guitar
to a crossroad near Dockery Plantation at midnight. There he was met by a large
black man (the Devil) who took the guitar and tuned it. The Devil played a few
songs and then returned the guitar to Johnson, giving him mastery of the
instrument. This story of a deal with the Devil at the crossroads mirrors the
legend of Faust. In exchange for his soul, Johnson was able to create the blues
for which he became famous.
This legend was developed over
time and has been chronicled by Gayle Dean Wardlow, Edward Komara and Elijah
Wald, who sees the legend as largely dating from Johnson's rediscovery by white
fans more than two decades after his death.
Further details were absorbed
from the imaginative retellings. Most significantly, the detail was added that
Johnson received his gift from a large black man at a crossroads. There is
dispute as to how and when the crossroads detail was attached to the Robert
Johnson story.
Recent research by the blues
scholar Bruce Conforth makes the story clearer. Johnson and Ike Zimmerman did
practice in a graveyard at night, because it was quiet, and no one would
disturb them.
While Dockery, Hazlehurst and
Beauregard have each been claimed as the locations of the mythical crossroads,
there are also tourist attractions claiming to be "The Crossroads" in
both Clarksdale and Memphis.
Residents of Rosedale,
Mississippi, claim Johnson sold his soul to the devil at the intersection of
Highways 1 and 8 in their town, while the 1986 movie Crossroads was filmed in
Beulah, Mississippi. The blues historian Steve Cheseborough wrote that it may
be impossible to discover the exact location of the mythical crossroads,
because "Robert Johnson was a rambling guy".
Some scholars have argued that
the devil in these songs may refer not only to the Christian figure of Satan
but also to the African trickster god Legba, himself associated with
crossroads. Folklorist Harry M. Hyatt wrote that, during his research in the
South from 1935 to 1939, when African-Americans born in the 19th or early 20th
century said they or anyone else had "sold their soul to the devil at the
crossroads," they had a different meaning in mind. Hyatt claimed there was
evidence indicating African religious retentions surrounding Legba and the
making of a "deal" (not selling the soul in the same sense as in the
Faustian tradition cited by Graves) with the so-called devil at the crossroads.
The Blues and the Blues singer
has really special powers over women, especially. It is said that the Blues
singer could possess women and have any woman they wanted. And so when Robert
Johnson came back, having left his community as an apparently mediocre
musician, with a clear genius in his guitar style and lyrics, people said he
must have sold his soul to the devil. And that fits in with this old African
association with the crossroads where you find wisdom: you go down to the
crossroads to learn, and in his case to learn in a Faustian pact, with the
devil. You sell your soul to become the greatest musician in history.
