Robert Johnson

Wiki Bio

Robert Johnson, born Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911 – August 16, 1938) is among the most famous of Delta blues musicians. His landmark recordings from 1936–1937 display a remarkable combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that have influenced generations of musicians. Johnson's shadowy, poorly documented life and death at age 27 have given rise to much legend. Considered by some to be the "Grandfather of Rock-and-Roll", his vocal phrasing, original songs, and guitar style have influenced a broad range of musicians, including John Fogerty, Bob Dylan, Johnny Winter, Jimi Hendrix, The Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin, The Allman Brothers Band, The Rolling Stones, Paul Butterfield, The White Stripes, The Black Keys, The Band, Neil Young, Warren Zevon, Jeff Beck, and Eric Clapton, who called Johnson "the most important blues musician who ever lived". He was also ranked fifth in Rolling Stone's list of 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. He is an inductee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Johnson's life is not well documented, and the variety of legends that have surrounded him for decades have made scholarship difficult. Serious research was not undertaken until the late 1960s and early 1970s, most notably by researchers Mack McCormack and Stephen LaVere. Most of the information on his life has come from the decades-old recollections of surviving family and associates. The two known images of Johnson were located in 1973, in the possession of the musician's half-sister Carrie Thompson, and were not widely published until the late 1980s.

Five significant dates from his career are documented: Monday, Thursday and Friday, November 23, 26, and 27, 1936 at a recording session in San Antonio, Texas. Seven months later, on Saturday and Sunday, June 19–20, 1937, he was in Dallas, Texas at another session. His death certificate was discovered in 1968, and lists the date and location of his death. Two marriage licenses for Johnson have also been located in county records offices. Other facts about him are less well established. Director Martin Scorsese says in his foreword to Alan Greenberg's filmscript Love In Vain: A Vision of Robert Johnson, "The thing about Robert Johnson was that he only existed on his records. He was pure legend."

Robert Johnson was born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi sometime around May 8, 1911, the 11th child of Julia Major Dodds, who had previously borne 10 children to her husband Charles Dodds. Born out of wedlock, Johnson did not take the Dodds name.

Twenty two-year-old Charles Dodds had married Julia Major in Hazlehurst, Mississippi—about 35 miles (56 km) south of Jackson—in 1889. Charles Dodds owned land and made wicker furniture; his family was well off until he was forced out of Hazlehurst around 1909 by a lynch mob following an argument with some of the more prosperous townsfolk. (There was a family legend that Dodds escaped from Hazlehurst dressed in women's clothing.) Over the next two years, Julia Dodds sent their children one at a time to live with their father in Memphis, where Charles Dodds had adopted the name of Charles Spencer. Julia stayed behind in Hazlehurst with two daughters, until she was evicted for nonpayment of taxes.

By that time she had given birth to a son, Robert, who was fathered by a field worker named Noah Johnson. Unwelcome in Charles Dodds' home, Julia Dodds became an itinerant field worker, picking cotton and living in camps as she moved among plantations. While she worked in the fields, her eight-year-old daughter took care of Johnson. Over the next ten years, Julia Dodds would make repeated attempts to reunite the family, but Charles Dodds never stopped resenting her infidelity. Although Charles Dodds would eventually accept Johnson, he never would forgive his wife for giving birth to him. While in his teens, Johnson learned who his father was, and it was at that time that he began calling himself Robert Johnson.

Around 1914, Robert Johnson moved in with Charles Dodds' family, which by that time included all of Dodds' children by Julia Dodds, as well as Dodds' mistress from Hazlehurst and their two children. Johnson would then spend the next several years in Memphis, and it was reportedly about this time that he began playing the guitar under his older half-brother's tutelage.

Johnson did not rejoin his mother until she had remarried several years later. By the end of the decade, he was back in the Mississippi Delta living with his mother and her new husband, Dusty Willis. Johnson and his stepfather, who had little tolerance for music, did not get along, and Johnson had to slip out of the house to join his musician friends.

It is not known whether Johnson attended school in the Delta during this time. Some later accounts say that he could neither read nor write, while others tell of his beautiful handwriting. In any case, everyone agrees that music was Johnson's first interest, and that he had his start playing the Jew's harp and harmonica in addition to guitar.

Johnson began travelling up and down the Delta, travelling by bus, hopping trains, and sometimes hitchhiking. According to Blues folklore, Robert Johnson was a young black man living on a plantation in rural Mississippi. Branded with a burning desire to become a great blues musician, he was instructed to take his guitar to a crossroad near Dockery’s plantation at midnight. There he was met by a large black man (the Devil) who took the guitar from Johnson, tuned the guitar so that he could play anything that he wanted, and handed it back to him in return for his soul. Within less than a year’s time, in exchange for his everlasting soul, Robert Johnson became the king of the Delta blues singers, able to play, sing, and create the greatest blues anyone had ever heard. The source of this legend is unclear, some of Johnson's associates, most notably Johnny Shines, say he fostered this story and image during his lifetime. However, people "in-the-know" often suggest that this story was originally started by the brother-in-law of fellow bluesman Tommy Johnson (no relation, though the two were born just 20 miles apart), and that only later in his life did Robert Johnson pass off the story as his own.

When Johnson arrived in a new town, he would play on street corners or in front of the local barbershop or a restaurant. Anything he earned was based on tips, not salary. He played what his audience asked for—not necessarily his own compositions, and not necessarily blues. With an ability to pick up tunes at first hearing, Johnson had no trouble giving his audiences what they wanted, and certain of his contemporaries, most notably Johnny Shines, later remarked on Johnson's interest in jazz and country. (Many giants of the blues, including Muddy Waters, were not averse to playing the hit songs of the day.) Johnson also had an uncanny ability to establish a rapport with his audience; in every town in which he stopped, Johnson would establish ties to the local community that would serve him well when he passed through again a month or a year later.

Fellow musician Johnny Shines was 17 when he met Johnson in 1933. He estimated that Johnson was maybe a year older than himself. In Samuel Charters' Robert Johnson, the author quotes Shines as saying:

"Robert was a very friendly person, even though he was sulky at times, you know. And I hung around Robert for quite a while. One evening he disappeared. He was kind of peculiar fellow. Robert'd be standing up playing some place, playing like nobody's business. At about that time it was a hustle with him as well as a pleasure. And money'd be coming from all directions. But Robert'd just pick up and walk off and leave you standing there playing. And you wouldn't see Robert no more maybe in two or three weeks.... So Robert and I, we began journeying off. I was just, matter of fact, tagging along."

During this time Johnson established what would be a relatively long-term relationship with Estella Coleman, a woman who was about fifteen years his elder and the mother of musician Robert Lockwood, Jr.. Johnson, however, reportedly also cultivated a woman to look after him each town he played in. Johnson supposedly asked homely young women living in the country with their families whether he could go home with them, and in most cases the answer was yes—until a boyfriend arrived or Johnson was ready to move on.

Around 1936, Johnson sought out H. C. Speir in Jackson, Mississippi, who ran a general store and doubled as a talent scout. Speir, who helped the careers of many blues players, put Johnson in touch with Ernie Oertle, who offered to record the young musician in San Antonio, Texas. At the recording session, held on November 23, 1936 in rooms at the landmark Gunter Hotel which Brunswick Records had set up as a temporary studio, Johnson reportedly performed facing the wall. This has been cited as evidence he was a shy man and reserved performer, a conclusion played up in the inaccurate liner notes of the 1961 album King of the Delta Blues Singers. Johnson probably was nervous and intimidated at his first time in a makeshift recording studio (a new and alien environment for the musician), but in truth he was probably focusing on the demands of his emotive performances. In addition, playing into the corner of a wall was a sound-enhancing technique that simulated the acoustical booths of better-equipped studios. In the ensuing three-day session, Johnson played 16 selections, and recorded alternate takes for most of these. When the recording session was over, Johnson presumably returned home with cash in his pocket; probably more money than he'd ever had at one time in his life.

Among the songs Johnson recorded in San Antonio were "Come On In My Kitchen", "Kind Hearted Woman Blues", "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom", and "Cross Road Blues". "Come on in My Kitchen" included the lines: "The woman I love took from my best friend/Some joker got lucky, stole her back again,/You better come on in my kitchen, it's going to be rainin' outdoors." In "Crossroad Blues", another of his songs, he sang: "I went to the crossroads, fell down on my knees./I went to the crossroads, fell down on my knees./I asked the Lord above, have mercy, save poor Bob if you please./Uumb, standing at the crossroads I tried to flag a ride./Standing at the crossroads I tried to flag a ride./Ain't nobody seem to know me, everybody pass me by."

When his records began appearing, Johnson made the rounds to his relatives and the various children he had fathered to bring them the records himself. The first songs to appear were "Terraplane Blues" and "Last Fair Deal Gone Down", probably the only recordings of his that he would live to hear. "Terraplane Blues" became a moderate regional hit, selling 5,000 copies.

In 1937, Johnson traveled to Dallas, Texas, for another recording session in a makeshift studio at the Brunswick Record Building, 508 Park Avenue. Eleven records from this session would be released within the following year. Among them were the three songs that would largely contribute to Johnson's posthumous fame: "Stones in My Passway", "Me and the Devil", and "Hellhound On My Trail". "Stones In My Passway" and "Me And The Devil" are both about betrayal, a recurrent theme in country blues. The terrifying "Hell Hound On My Trail"—utilising another common theme of fear of the Devil—is often considered to be the crowning achievement of blues-style music. Other themes in Johnson's music include impotence ("Dead Shrimp Blues" and "Phonograph Blues") and infidelity ("Terraplane Blues", "If I Had Possession Over Judgement Day" and "Love in Vain").

Six of Johnson's blues songs mention the devil or some form of the supernatural. In "Me And The Devil" he began, "Early this morning when you knocked upon my door,/Early this morning, umb, when you knocked upon my door,/And I said, ' Hello, Satan, I believe it's time to go,'" before leading into "You may bury my body down by the highway side,/ You may bury my body, uumh, down by the highway side,/So my old evil spirit can get on a Greyhound bus and ride."

It has been suggested that the Devil in these songs does not solely refer to the Christian model of Satan, but equally to the African trickster god, Legba.

In the last year of his life, Johnson is believed to have traveled to St. Louis and possibly Illinois, and then to some states in the East. He spent some time in Memphis and traveled through the Mississippi Delta and Arkansas. By the time he died, at least six of his records had been released in the South as race records.

His death occurred on August 16, 1938, at the age of twenty-seven at a country crossroads near Greenwood, Mississippi. He had been playing for a few weeks at a country dance in a town about 15 miles (24 km) from Greenwood.

There are a number of accounts and theories regarding the events preceding Johnson's death. One of these is that one evening Johnson began flirting with a woman at a dance. One version of this rumor says she was the wife of the juke joint owner who unknowingly provided Johnson with a bottle of poisoned whiskey from her husband, while another suggests she was a married woman he had been secretly seeing. Researcher Mack McCormick claims to have interviewed Johnson's alleged poisoner in the 1970s, and obtained a tacit admission of guilt from the man. When Johnson was offered an open bottle of whiskey, his friend and fellow blues legend Sonny Boy Williamson knocked the bottle out of his hand, informing him that he should never drink from an offered bottle that has already been opened. Johnson allegedly said, "don't ever knock a bottle out of my hand". Soon after, he was offered another open bottle of whiskey and accepted it, and it was that bottle that was laced with strychnine. Johnson is reported to have started to feel ill into the evening after drinking from the bottle and had to be helped back to his room in the early morning hours. Over the next three days, his condition steadily worsened and witnesses reported that he died in a convulsive state of severe pain - symptoms which are consistent with strychnine poisoning. Strychnine was readily available at the time as it was a common pesticide, and although it is a very bitter-tasting substance it is extremely toxic, and a small quantity dissolved in a harsh-tasting solution such as whiskey could possibly have gone unnoticed, but (over a period of days due to the reduced dosage) still produced the symptoms and eventual death that Johnson experienced.

The precise location of his grave remains a source of ongoing controversy, and three different markers have been erected at supposed burial sites outside of Greenwood. Research in the 1980s and 1990s strongly suggests Johnson was buried in the graveyard of the Mount Zion Missionary Baptist church near Morgan City, Mississippi, not far from Greenwood, in an unmarked grave. A cenotaph memorial was placed at this location in 1990 paid for by Columbia Records and numerous smaller contributions made through the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund. More recent research by Stephen LaVere (including statements from Rosie Eskridge, the wife of the supposed gravedigger) indicates that the actual grave site is under a big pecan tree in the cemetery of the Little Zion Church north of Greenwood along Money Road. Sony Music has placed a marker at this site.

In 1938, Columbia Records producer John Hammond, who had heard Johnson's records, sought him out to book him for the first "From Spirituals to Swing" concert at Carnegie Hall in New York. On learning of Johnson's death, Hammond replaced him with Big Bill Broonzy, but still played two of Johnson's records from the stage. Robert Johnson has a son, Claude Johnson, and grandchildren who currently reside in a town near Hazlehurst, Mississippi.

Johnson's recordings have remained continuously available since John Hammond convinced Columbia Records to compile the first Johnson LP, King of the Delta Blues Singers, in 1961. A sequel LP, assembling the rest of what could be found of Johnson's recordings at that time, was issued in 1970. In the UK, both albums were issued as a two-LP set by Blue Diamond Records in 1985 under the same name, King of the Delta Blues Singers. An omnibus two-CD set (The Complete Recordings) was released in 1990 [Sony/Columbia Legacy 46222], containing all 41 known recordings of his 29 compositions.

A 1996 plastic jewel-case remaster of the Complete set [Sony/Columbia Legacy 64916] corrected fidelity and pitch problems from the cardboard-packaged box. The more recent CD re-releases of "King of the Delta Blues Singers" Volumes 1 & 2 improve the sound quality far more dramatically, but don't include 10 alternate takes (and two accidental introductions) found on Complete. Volume one includes a recently discovered alternate take of "Traveling Riverside Blues" which is not included on the Complete collection. This now brings the number of known Johnson recordings to forty-two.

Blues musician and historian Elijah Wald feels that Johnson's major influence is on rock—particularly on white rock. He has made the controversial appraisal that "As far as the evolution of black music goes, Robert Johnson was an extremely minor figure, and very little that happened in the decades following his death would have been affected if he had never played a note." Assessments such as Eric Clapton's of Johnson as "the most important blues musician who ever lived," says Wald, attempt to expand Johnson's reputation. Wald argues that Johnson, although well traveled and always admired in his performances, was little heard by the standards of his time and place, and his records even less so. ("Terraplane Blues", sometimes described as Johnson's only hit record, outsold his others but was still a minor success.) If one had asked black blues fans about Robert Johnson in the first twenty years after his death, writes Wald, "the response in the vast majority of cases would have been a puzzled 'Robert who?'" Musical associates such as Johnny Shines also stated that in live performances, Johnson often did not focus on his dark and complex original compositions, but instead pleased audiences by performing more well-known pop standards of the day.

After decades of obscurity, Johnson's influence was kick-started in 1961, when Columbia Records compiled the album King of the Delta Blues Singers from Johnson's recordings. This and bootleg recordings brought his work wide distribution, and a fan base grew around them which included future rock stars such as Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton. When Keith Richards was first introduced to Johnson's music by his band mate Brian Jones, he replied, "Who is the other guy playing with him?", not realizing it was all Johnson playing on one guitar. Clapton described Johnson's music as "the most powerful cry that I think you can find in the human voice." The song "Crossroads" by British psychedelic blues rock band Cream is a cover version of Johnson's "Cross Road Blues", about the legend of Johnson selling his soul to the Devil at the crossroads, although Johnson's original lyrics ("Standin' at the crossroads, tried to flag a ride") suggest he was merely hitchhiking rather than signing away his soul to Lucifer in exchange for being a great blues musician.

"Robert Johnson, to whom we all owed our existence, in some way."—Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin, on NPR's Fresh Air, recorded in 2004.

An important aspect of Johnson's singing, and indeed of all Delta Blues singing styles, and also of Chicago blues guitar playing, is the use of microtonality—his subtle inflections of pitch are part of the reason why his singing conveys such powerful emotion.

John P. Hammond (the son of the aforementioned John Hammond) produced a documentary in the early 1990s about Johnson's life in the Delta area.

In the summer of 2003, Rolling Stone magazine listed Johnson at number five in their list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.

Johnson's recorded work has become more widely heard since the Columbia double CD release, and some have opined that the recordings run too fast. Support for this comes from passages of Johnson's songs that some believe his guitar playing sound constrained, and some of his vocals sound odd and robotic. Thus the claim is that some (or all) of Johnson's songs were intentionally or accidentally sped up before or after the recording process. Speeding up recordings has been a common practice in the recording industry, as it tends to make things sound more energetic. However, there has been a definitive lack of proof as to whether or not the recordings have actually been sped up, and this may be a matter of subjective explanation.

Some claim that when Johnson's music is slowed down (one article even states slowed down 20%), Johnson's music sounds more "natural." The guitar sounds warmer, more full, and more in line with other recordings from the late 1930s. His voice becomes more expressive, although it loses some of Johnson's trademark emotional "whine." Conversely, when some songs are slowed down (5-10%), Johnson's guitar playing begins to sound sloppy, and he seems to make tempo mistakes that a professional player would not make at slower speeds, and so there seems to be a lack of clarity about whether the claim is that all or only some of the songs that have been sped up.

A supporting argument for the sped up view is that in many of Johnson's songs, he would be playing extremely high up on the neck of the guitar, and in some cases he is said to be playing higher than there are frets on the guitar. For example, the intro of "Walkin' Blues" sounds like it is played at the fifteenth fret of a guitar in standard tuning. The argument here is that acoustic guitars generally do not have that many frets. This would seem to indicate that the recordings are sped up, since it would be difficult or impossible for Johnson to play this high. However this view is mistaken, because most guitars made since 1910 have at least sixteen frets, and Johnson's Gibson L-1 had 18 frets. It is also quite possible that he tuned his guitar higher than concert pitch. For playing slide guitar, the extra tension from tuning sharp can be an advantage.
This theory also does not take into consideration aspects of how slide guitar is played. By using a slide, the strings do not use frets to make sound, the pitch of the sound is determined by where the slide is placed on the strings, and so a slide guitarist can play extremely high notes that are impossible to play with traditional fretting technique. "If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day" is an example.

The strongest argument against the position that his work was consistently either speeded or slowed is that it would have been impossible: it couldn't have happened at all of the original sessions due to equipment failure, since the sessions were months apart. And it couldn't have happened in some version of post-production, since the tracks were released over the course of years, and many of them were never released on 78 at all. So if there indeed are speed anomalies, they should be consistent only within one session or for a particular group of releases--and the proponents of the speed controversy are all claiming there is some consistent alteration.
There is also controversy over whether the original recording masters were transferred from "wax" onto analog tape before being digitally restored. If this were the case, the tape machine used could quite easily have been out of calibration, thus pitching up the notes and increasing the tempo.

There is a strong possibility that this speed controversy comes from an attempt to explain the tonally tinny, hyper-treble end product of a sub-standard studio recording from the 1930s.

Tributes

The Allman Brothers Band have covered in live performances "Drunken Hearted Boy" and others. Their guitarist, Dickey Betts, has covered "Come On In My Kitchen" on his most recent live album.

The Blues Brothers covered "Sweet Home Chicago" in their eponymous 1980 film The Blues Brothers. Rory Block released in 2006 an album consisting solely of covers of Johnson's songs, The Lady and Mr. Johnson. In addition, she had previously performed or recorded "Come on in My Kitchen", "Hellhound on My Trail", "If I Had Possession over Judgment Day", "Rambling on My Mind", "Walking Blues", "Cross Road Blues", "Kindhearted Man" (a reworking of "Kind Hearted Woman Blues"), "Terraplane Blues", "When You Got a Good Friend", "Me and the Devil Blues", "Stones in My Passway", "Last Fair Deal Gone Down" and "Traveling Riverside Blues". Eric Clapton released in 2004 an album consisting solely of covers of Johnson's songs, Me and Mr. Johnson, and in the following year released a DVD and CD combo entitled Sessions For Robert J. In addition, he had previously performed or recorded "I'm a Steady Rolling Man", "Malted Milk", "Walkin' Blues", "From Four until Late", "Crossroads", "If I Had Possession over Judgment Day", and "Ramblin' on My Mind". While playing with John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, he recorded "Ramblin' on My Mind". With Cream he recorded "Cross Road Blues" (reworked as "Crossroads") and "Four until Late". To quote "I have never found anthing more deeply soulful than Robert Johnson. His music remains the most powerful cry that I think you can find in a human voice, really." Delaney & Bonnie and Friends recorded "Come On in My Kitchen" on their 1970 album To Bonnie from Delaney. In addition, their live album On Tour with Eric Clapton (also 1970) includes the song "Tribute to Johnson", co-authored by Delaney Bramlett (as introduced on the album) about "Robert Johnson, one of our favorite singers". Bob Dylan ("Kind Hearted Woman Blues", "Milkcow's Calf Blues", "Rambling On My Mind", "I'm A Steady Rolling Man") Fleetwood Mac ("Hellhound On My Trail", "Kind Hearted Woman", "Preachin' Blues", "Dust My Broom", "Sweet Home Chicago") The Grateful Dead ("Walkin' Blues") "Deal," a Dead original by Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter, also hints lyrically at Johnson's "Last Fair Deal Gone Down". "Walkin' Blues" was also performed by Bob Weir solo and with his band Ratdog. Hot Tuna ("Walkin' Blues") The song was also performed in solo gigs by Jorma Kaukonen. Peter Green Splinter Group (all 29 songs) John P. Hammond ("32-20 Blues", "Milkcow's Calf Blues", "Traveling Riverside Blues", "Stones in My Passway", "Crossroads Blues", "Hellbound Blues" ("Hellhound On My Trail"), "Me and the Devil Blues", "Walking Blues", "Come on in My Kitchen", "Preaching Blues", "Sweet Home Chicago", "When You Got a Good Friend", "Judgment Day", "Rambling Blues") Keb' Mo ("Come on in My Kitchen", "Last Fair Deal Gone Down", "Kindhearted Woman Blues", "Love in Vain") Led Zeppelin ("Traveling Riverside Blues", "The Lemon Song") Zeppelin's version of Johnson's "Traveling Riverside Blues" consisted of an amalgamation of several Johnson songs (such as "Cross Road Blues" and "Kind Hearted Woman") as well as new material by the band. Furthermore, lyrics from Johnson's "Traveling Riverside Blues" were used by Zeppelin in "The Lemon Song". Robert Lockwood, Jr. ("32-20 Blues", "Stop Breakin’ Down Blues", "Little Queen of Spades", "I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom", "Ramblin’ on My Mind", "Love in Vain Blues", "Kind Hearted Woman Blues", "Walking Blues", "I’m a Steady Rollin’ Man", "Sweet Home Chicago") Phish "Alumni Blues", an early Phish original, was influenced by Johnson's "Walking Blues" and both songs share opening lyrics. "Crossroads Blues" was included in Phish's live repertoire from 1993–98. The Radiators have covered many songs in their 4200 known live performances. "Last Fair Deal Gone Down" and "Stop Breakin' Down Blues" are staples of their live shows (having been performed over 100 times each). Other songs that have been covered approximately a dozen times or less include "Come on in My Kitchen", "Cross Roads Blues", "Dead Shrimp Blues", "From Four until Late". "Hellhound on My Trail", "I'm a Steady Rollin' Man", "Love in Vain", "Me and the Devil Blues", "Ramblin' on My Mind", "Sweet Home Chicago'", "Walkin' Blues" "When You Got a Good Friend". Tim McGraw refers to Robert Johnson/Devil legend in the opening and closing lines in "How Bad Do you Want it" on the Live Like You Were Dying album . The Rolling Stones ("Love in Vain", "Stop Breaking Down") "You know, you think you're getting a handle on the blues, and then you hear Robert Johnson..."—Keith Richards The White Stripes covered "Stop Breaking Down Blues", dropping "Blues" in the title, on their self-titled debut album. They have also recorded "Stop Breaking Down Blues" as the B-side to their 2002 single, "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground". They have covered many Robert Johnson songs on stage, including "Stones in My Passway" and "If I Had Possession over Judgment Day". Widespread Panic played "Me and The Devil" on their 1988 debut album Space Wrangler; "Stop Breakin' Down Blues" appeared on the 2005 Live at Myrtle Beach release. They have also played "Crossroads" live. Lucinda Williams covered "Stop Breaking Down Blues" on her debut album Ramblin', also dropping the word "Blues" from the title. Cassandra Wilson, mostly known as a jazz singer, covered "They're Red Hot" on her blues-influenced album Belly Of The Sun, calling it "Hot Tamales". Johnny Winter ("Kind Hearted Woman", "Me and the Devil", "When You Got a Good Friend") Red Hot Chili Peppers ("They're Red Hot" appeared on Blood Sugar Sex Magik) Gov't Mule ("32/20 Blues" and "If I Had Possession over Judgment Day" ) Joe Bonamassa did a cover of "Walking Blues" in 2003 on his album Blues Deluxe. Steve Miller Band ("Come on in my Kitchen" appeared on The Joker) Paul Butterfield Blues Band covered "Walking Blues" on their debut album The Paul Butterfield Blues Band. The Gun Club covered "Preachin' Blues" on their album Fire of Love, but renamed the song "Preaching the blues". Jeff Martin of The Tea Party has long been a fan of the Blues and Robert Johnson in particular. The song "Sun Going Down" from Splendor Solis begins with a quote from "Me and the Devil" ("I woke up this morning, someone was knocking at my door. And I said hello sweet Satan, I believe it's time to go.") and the song "Black Snake Blues" from Exile and the Kingdom is a tribute to Johnson. The Mountain Goats ("Hellhound on My Trail" appeared on "Nothing for Juice")

Songs

Most of the collection, minus a few songs, are available on The Complete Recordings (1990, 1996)"32-20 Blues" (.32-.20 is a revolver or rifle cartridge) "Come on in My Kitchen" (two versions—only one appears on "Complete" collection. Both versions of the song appear on Snapper Music's 2007 Robert Johnson and the Last of the Great Mississippi Blues singers 6 CD set.) "Cross Roads Blues" (two versions) "Dead Shrimp Blues" "Drunken Hearted Man" (two versions) "From Four Till Late" "Hellhound on My Trail" (see also: Hellhound) "Honeymoon Blues" "I'm a Steady Rollin' Man" "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom" (sometimes called "I Believe My Time Ain't Long") "If I Had Possession over Judgment Day" "Kind Hearted Woman Blues" (two versions—only one appears on "Complete" collection.Both versions of the song appear on Snapper Music's 2007 Robert Johnson and the Last of the Great Mississippi Blues singers 6 CD set) "Last Fair Deal Gone Down" "Little Queen of Spades" (two versions) "Love in Vain" (two versions) "Malted Milk" (malted milk is a sweet beverage) "Me and the Devil Blues" (two versions) "Milk Cow's Calf Blues" (two versions) "Phonograph Blues" (two versions) "Preachin' Blues (Up Jumped The Devil)" "Rambling on My Mind" (two versions) "Stones in My Passway" "Stop Breakin' Down Blues" (two versions) "Sweet Home Chicago" "Terraplane Blues" "They're Red Hot" "Traveling Riverside Blues" (two versions—only one appears on The Complete Collection. Both versions of the song appear on Snapper Music's 2007 Robert Johnson and the Last of the Great Mississippi Blues Singers 6 CD set) "Walkin' Blues" "When You Got a Good Friend" (two versions)

A biography reassessed and revised upon the eve of the 60th anniversary of his death.

Eleven 78 rpm records were issued during Johnson's lifetime and one posthumously. They were just "race" records then--another casual attempt at trying to capitalize on the blues. Needless to say, they were enough to establish his identity wherever he went and afford him a degree of fame and fortune for the short time he lived after their release.

Including the material that never saw issuance on 78's, there are 29 compositions and alternate versions of nearly half of them. Including the recent discovery of a previously unknown alternate take of one of Johnson's recordings, a total of 42 recordings remain to this day--the only recordings of one of the true geniuses of American music, blues singer extraordinaire Robert Johnson.

For the people too young to have known him; for those not fortunate enough to have shared the same time and space as he; for those who knew of him during his lifetime, but never took the time or had the inclination to seek him out; and for those who did and failed, due to one cause or another, his records are all you will have. But in the minds of countless others, there remain the memories of a jook-joint musician--what he looked like, what he did when he played music, how he was crazy about women, and all the countless intangible aspects of meeting and seeing another human being. To most of them, however, he was just a rambling musician.

He was rambling so fast, in fact, that he rarely gave anyone more than a glimpse at his shining star. Indeed, he hardly received more than a casual, passing glance, and was seen at the time by only a few of his musical associates and even fewer aficionados to be the consummate artist he was.

Moreover, only his family and a handful of childhood friends knew anything of significance about him, and most of those who survive have only recently come to realize his seminal importance in the world of today's popular music.

To his half-sister, Carrie Spencer, he was the baby brother who got caught in the upheaval that her family underwent so many years ago. They became very close over the years, and upon his death, "Mama and them didn't want to tell me about Robert bein' poisoned. They knew it'd hurt me so. But by them not tellin' me and lettin' him be buried by the county, why, you know that hurt me even more."

To his late stepfather, Dusty Willis, he was no good...because he wouldn't get behind that mule in the mornin', plow behind him all day long, all week long, all year long, all for nothing--to be told at the end of the year, if you did well, that you only owed the bossman $300 on next year's crop!
To his friend R.L. Windum, he was the schoolboy with whom he used to blow harmonica and who grew up to be a fine and famous guitar player: "Robert come back here every year, wantin' me to go with him, but I never went; just never followed that life."

To Willie Brown, he was the little boy to whom he showed the rudiments of guitar--how to make chords, when to change, how to play anything he wanted.

To Son House, he was the little boy who could play harp pretty good and would slip off from home to hear him and Willie Brown. When the youngster tried to play the older musician's guitar, Son scolded him, "Don't do that, Robert. You drive people nuts. You can't play nothin'." Years later, Son could only stand off and blink.

To Ike Zinnerman, he was the fellow who used to stay away from his wife all weekend to learn the guitar and the blues and songs Ike played.

To Robert Lockwood, Jr., he was the man who lived with his mother. "Before Robert come along, I always wanted to be a piano player, but he got me offa that and onto the guitar. He was such an inspiration to me-he took time with me and showed me things, and he didn't do that with nobody--I never thought about the piano again."

To Johnny Shines, he was a living idol; someone he tagged along behind and from whom he tried to learn about music and the guitar. "When I first heard him play. I felt then that I had to learn to play like him. Here was somebody that was doin' the things that I felt like was right and naturally I was quite inspired by it."

To Don Law, he was the shy, young bluesman he recorded in Texas in the 1930s who "had never been off the plantation on which he was born!" Law's other recollections of Johnson are equally distorted, inaccurate, and misleading.

But to John Hammond, champion of black music and talent scout par excellence, he was the greatest primitive blues singer of all time. "When I was selecting talent for my first Spirituals to Swing Concert, I sent for Robert Johnson. I wanted black music to make an impression on a white audience and we got the finest exponents of blues, jazz and gospel music that we could find. Can you imagine how famous Robert Johnson would be today had he been able to make it?"

And to the world at large, however unaware it might be, Robert Johnson is the most influential bluesman of all time and the person most responsible for the shape popular music has taken in the last six decades!

Charles and Harriet Dodds and Gabriel and Lucinda Brown Majors were all born into slavery--Mr. Dodds in North Carolina, all the others in Mississippi. Their children, Charles Dodds, Jr. and Julia Ann Majors, were married in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, in February 1889.

Charlie Dodds, Jr. became a successful and well-respected, land-owning farmer, carpenter, and wicker furniture maker, and he and his wife raised six daughters and a son. Illness put an early end to the lives of two of the daughters, and Charlie's mistress, Serena, gave birth to two sons before a personal vendetta by the prominent Marchetti Brothers forced Dodds to flee Mississippi and take up residence in Memphis around 1907 under the assumed name of Spencer.

After his successful, yet clandestine departure, he sent for Serena and her sons, as well as some of Julia's children, and they all joined the new "Mr. 'C. D.' Spencer" in Memphis and began a new life. Julia and two daughters remained in Hazlehurst, but the Marchetti's soon uprooted them from their house and displaced them from their land.

In the meantime, Robert Johnson was born May 8, 1911, in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, to Julia Dodds and Noah Johnson, the man whom she favored in Mr. Dodds' absence. However, little Robert didn't stay in Hazlehurst long. Still a babe-in-arms, his mother took him and his baby sister, Carrie, and signed on with a Delta labor supplier. After a couple of very hard and unsettling seasons in migrant labor camps, they all were living in Memphis with, and as, the family of Charles Spencer.

It was a full house at the Spencers' in 1914. Charlie had a wife and a mistress and children by both of them, in addition to Robert. And although no friction between the two women is recalled, Julia decided to leave her children and make her own way elsewhere.

And so, Memphis became Robert's home for the next couple of years. He lived with the Spencers in their Handwerker Hill residence until around 1918, when it became apparent that he needed more supervision than they were capable of giving him. He was a strong-willed child; his obedience was waning and Mr. Spencer eventually decided that he would do better under his mother's care.

He took the Spencer name with him to Robinsonville, a small but thriving northern Mississippi cotton community some 20 miles south of Memphis. He lived there with his mother and new stepfather, Willie "Dusty" Willis, a hardworking little dark fellow whom Julia had married in October of 1916, and the two of them raised him to manhood.

In his early teens, Robert Spencer took an interest in music. His initial attraction to the jew's harp was soon supplanted by the harmonica, which became his main instrument for the next few years. He and his pal, R. L. Windum, traded verses of songs and accompanied each other on harps until they were both young men.

As a teenager, Robert was told of his real father and began introducing himself as a Johnson, although he retained the Spencer name through the mid-1920s while he received the rudiments of an education at the Indian Creek School at Commerce, Mississippi, also known as the Abbay & Leatherman plantation, on which the Willis' were living.

Not being a zealous student, problems with his eyesight afforded Robert an excuse to quit school. It was a malady that plagued him over the years. His half-sister Carrie had bought his first glasses for him in the early 1920s in Helena, Arkansas, but he didn't wear them much. In later years, many of his associates would recall that he had "one bad eye." Reportedly, a small cataract afflicted him from time to time, but later disappeared.

The guitar became an interest during the late 1920s. He made a rack for his harp out of baling wire and string and was soon picking out appropriate accompaniments for his harp and voice. Leroy Carr's 1928 "How Long-How Long Blues" in recalled as being one of his favorite songs at that time.

As in the case with any aspiring musician, he looked to the closest source for information and help. Willie Brown, a musician of some renown and abilities, lived in Robinsonville in those days, and he tried to help and show Robert all he could. The then omnipresent and now ultra-legendary Charlie Patton regularly visited Robinsonville, playing "jook" houses, sometimes in the company of Brown, and between the two of them, Robert got all the help and inspiration he could handle.

Robert's private life got serious about this time as well. A good looking boy, he had very little trouble making himself popular with the girls. In fact, he had more trouble keeping his hands off them, his arms from around them, and himself away from them. Eventually, it would be his downfall, but for the time being, most of the ladies were single. One particular one, however, caught his eye, and he asked her to be his wife.

Even though Robert was playing music a great deal at this time--mainly the popular recorded blues of the day--and learning even more from Brown, Patton, Myles Robson, Ernest "Whiskey Red" Brown, and other locals, he was reluctant to consider himself anything but a farmer when he married Virginia Travis in Penton, Mississippi, in February, 1929. They began their life together sharing a home with Robert's older half-sister Bessie and her husband, Granville Hines, on the Kline plantation just east of Robinsonville.

Virginia became pregnant in the summer of 1929, and Robert was not only a proud expectant father, but, naturally, a protective one as well. During a ride through the country in Granville's old car, Robert is humorously recalled warning Granville when he took a bad spot in the road just a little too fast for Virginia's comfort, "Man, be careful! My wife's percolatin."

Robert's pride was short-lived, however. Whatever hopes and dreams he may have had for his wife and family-to-be were all dashed in one fell swoop. Both Virginia and the baby died in childbirth in April 1930. She was 16 years old!

If anything soothed Robert's wounds, it may have been his music. Less than two months later, close to the first of June, Son House came to live in Robinsonville at the request of Willie Brown, with whom, along with Charlie Patton and Louise Johnson, he had traveled to Grafton, Wisconsin, and recorded for Paramount Records.

House, a precarious combination of bluesman and preacher, brought with him an intensity in his music that was shared with no one, not even Patton. It was the rawest, most direct pure emotion Robert had ever heard, and he followed House and Brown wherever they went. There were four jook joints in and around Robinsonville in those days, and against his folks' wishes, Robert would find out at which one they were going to be and slip off from home to take it all in. He had been able to play some of Brown's music for some time, especially "The Jinx Blues," but now he had someone even more to his liking to study. Son's impressions upon the youngster became permanently etched in his musical mind and style. They could still be distinctly discerned by 1936 and 1937, when he recorded, and mark much of his finest, most powerful work.

Before too long, though, Robert realized that if he ever wanted to be anything other than a sharecropper, he needed to get himself and his music together. With that in mind, when wanderlust took hold of him, he decided to leave home to try and locate his real father. All he had to go on was his birthplace, the small, lush town some 210 miles to the south whence his mother had brought him in a bundle.

Hazlehurst, Mississippi, named after the chief engineer of the Illinois Central Railroad, George H. Hazlehurst, was to provide Robert, in addition to a good living for the next couple of years, an ideal proving ground for his talents.

The whole country was deep in the Depression at that time, but Hazlehurst, as well as the whole of central Mississippi, was fortunate to have the WPA building highways through its territories, not only providing work for all that wanted it, but some cash money on which to have a good time come Saturday night.

The jook joints of the road gangs and lumber camps set the stage for Robert, and bluesman Ike Zinnerman became his coach and mentor. By then, Robert had found out that women would provide everything else for him and in Martinsville, a lumber camp a few miles south of Hazlehurst, he singled out a kind and loving woman more than ten years his senior, who had been married twice before and had three small children.

Robert and Calletta "Callie" Craft were married at the Copiah County courthouse in May 1931 and kept their marriage a secret from everyone. She idolized Robert, fussed over him, cooked for him, worked for him, treated him like a king, even served him his breakfast in bed! She trusted him away from her, too, and had no qualms about him staying all night at Zinnerman's to learn what he could about music.

Ike Zinnerman was born in Grady, Alabama, in the early years of the century and had always told his wife that he had learned to play guitar in a graveyard at midnight while sitting atop tombstones. In any event, he could really play the blues and Robert knew it--he attached himself to Ike for the next couple of years and kept the older man up late into the night learning what he could about the guitar and the blues Ike played on it.

When he wasn't at home with Callie or with Ike, Robert, on a slim chance, might be found working, picking cotton, but more often than not, he would be sitting alone and to himself going over what Ike had been teaching him. He began keeping a little book to write his songs in and he'd go off into the nearby woods and sing and pick the blues to himself. He'd play the same tune over and over until he got it just like he wanted it and thought it should be.

On Saturdays, he'd practice his lessons by performing for the public on the steps of the courthouse during the day and at any number of local jook joints from Saturday evening about dark, sometimes until late Sunday night. At first he and Ike played together, and occasionally he might have played with local favorites, Tommy Johnson and his brothers (no kin) from nearby Crystal Springs, but as time went by, and he became more confident of his own abilities, he played more by himself.

He worked the little country suppers that were regularly held at Martinsville and neighboring Beauregard and Galatin. Occasionally he'd hitchhike out east to Georgetown or up to Jackson to play with Johnny Temple and his friends, but he usually stayed around home. In later years, he was content to be at home wherever he was, but at that time, home was where his wife was.

Callie loved to dance and she frequently went with him on his playing jobs. Sometimes she'd sit on his knee while he played a number or two, but usually his legs and feet were too busy keeping time. He'd flail his legs up and down and back and forth at the same time and his feet would get a terrific rhythm going in accompaniment to his music. When somebody else played, though, Robert might dance. He liked to tap dance and his agility is still recalled with a certain respect.

But respect wasn't something Robert received in abundance. Upon becoming a professional musician, his respectability, in the eyes of those who had to put in many hours' work in the heat of the sun every day, was replaced by a mild contempt. He wasn't a rough-and-tumble guy. Robert Johnson was a small man, small boned. He had long delicate fingers, beautiful hands, enviably wavy hair, and appeared a good deal younger than he acted. Physically, he wasn't the type of man who commanded much respect. In addition, it eventually became clear that he wanted more out of life than most others could think of for themselves and, of course, more than he alone could provide for himself. To attain his ends, he allowed himself to be kept by an older woman, who no one knew was his wife, while always sporting nice clothes and well-shined shoes. Occasionally, he would go to church, but Sundays usually found him wearing off Saturday night getting ready for Sunday's fun. All told, what respect Robert did receive was due to his abilities as a blues player and singer. He was good at that and everyone knew it--everyone from the good-time, Saturday-night-every-night people to the wide-eyed youngster and the hero-worshiping kid. And despite all the social marks against him, Robert developed quite a local following around Hazlehurst and was known to everyone as simply "R.L.".

He told everyone that asked that the initials stood for Robert Lonnie, the latter like another, more famous musician named Johnson. That was only half right--his mother had named him Robert Leroy. (She liked the name Leroy and also gave it to her other son, Charles Melvin Leroy Dodds, Robert's older half-brother.) But he liked the way Lonnie played and he liked associating himself with him--an affinity which was distinctly displayed many years later in two of his own recordings.

This extended sojourn to southern Mississippi in the early 1930s was a very important stage in Robert Johnson's life. During his stay in Copiah County, whether he was successful in locating his father or not, he developed the personal traits that marked him as the man he was to be the rest of his life. Most importantly though, his musical talent flowered and bloomed in Hazlehurst, and when he thought he was ready for more exciting territory, he packed up Callie and the kids and slipped away to the Delta, unbeknownst to her family and friends.

Mrs. Johnson, despite her full body and well-roundedness, was not a strong, healthy woman. Her efforts to maintain her small family eventually got the best of her in Clarksdale. Evidently, her breakdown got the best of Robert, too, for when she called home to Hazlehurst for her family to retrieve her, it was in desperation--Robert had deserted her. Callie died a few years later and though Robert returned to Copiah County in later years, neither she nor her family ever saw him again.

A trip home was in order, and Robinsonville was made to stand up and take notice of Robert. Son House and Willie Brown were very surprised at his musical development since he'd been gone, and they openly acknowledged his improvements with acceptance and praise. They had to--both they and their audiences were acutely aware that Robert had been able to surpass them, both in abilities and appeal.

He'd returned to Robinsonville to see his mother and kin as well as to show himself off to Willie and Son, and he stayed around for a couple of months playing on the street corners and in the jook joints. He would continue to return and stay a few months at a time, but it would never be his home again. Robinsonville was a farming community, and he was finally no farmer. He had to move on--on to something more in line with what he had in mind for himself--more in keeping with what he thought about himself.

One of the most wide-open, musically active towns in the Delta in those days was on the Arkansas riverside, and it became Robert's home base for the rest of his short life. Although he traveled up and down the river playing in levee camps, for road gangs, and in the jook joints of the surrounding countryside, visiting family and friends in Robinsonville and Memphis, and even as far afield as Canada and New York in later years, he took the little town of Helena, Arkansas, to be his own.

All the great musicians of the era came through Helena. "Sonny Boy Williamson" (the latter, then known as Little Boy Blue), "Robert Nighthawk", Elmore James, "Honeyboy" Edwards, "Howlin' Wolf", "Hacksaw" Harney, Calvin Frazier, Peter "Memphis Slim" Chatman, Johnny Shines, and countless others performed in Helena's and West Helena's many night clubs and hot spots. Robert had his chance to meet and play with them all--an he did--and left his mark on most of them, too.

There was one special young fellow to whom Robert took a liking, undoubtedly as a result of his living with the boy's mother. (Estella Coleman was good to Robert. She loved him and cared for him. Robert more than repaid her kindness and became a mentor to her son.) He was named Robert, too, and wasn't much younger than him. Although named Robert Lockwood, Jr. after his real father, he was soon known as "Robert, Jr.", after his "stepdaddy", Robert Johnson.

The youngster displayed a natural aptitude for music even before he met Johnson, but it began to take definite shape under his tutelage. Johnson showed much of what he knew to the younger man and over the next four or five years imparted to him, so that it would become his own, many of the characteristics of the Johnson style.

While basing himself in Helena with Stella and Robert, Jr., Johnson played all over the Mississippi and Arkansas Delta- -Clarksdale, Rosedale, Friars Point, Lula, Coahoma, Midnight, Inverness, Moorhead, Itta Bena, Tchula, Drew, Jonestown, Yazoo City, Hollandale, Greenville, Leland, Shaw, Gunnison, Beulah, Lobdell, Lamont, Winterville; and Tunica, Robinsonville, Clack, and Walls in the northern Delta as well as Marianna, Hughes, Brickeys, Marvell, Arkansas and some little places that didn't even have names! The word would go out that Robert Johnson was going to be at such and such a place and the people would come. They knew they'd have a good time and hear some fine music if they went where he was. From all reports, they were right.

Robert Johnson was protective about his style of playing music and was acutely aware of overly watchful eyes. He wouldn't show aspiring musicians how to play his songs--that was his business and his living. If he was asked how he played something, he might say, "Just like you", and be through with it. If someone was eyeing him too closely for his comfort, he might get up in the middle of a song, make some feeble excuse to leave the room, and be gone for months. This reported practice of protection and disappearance all seemed very quirky until research undertaken in the early 1990's has revealed that Johnson may have been guarding a method of tuning his guitar that he wanted no others to discover, not even his own student.

In any event, and for whatever reason, Robert Johnson became a stone traveler. He developed a penchant for it. Awake or asleep, anytime of the day or night, he was ready to go anywhere, even back the way he'd just come. Traveling was, in and of itself, the main thing.

Moving around the way he did and playing in so many different places to so many different people all the time, he had to, out of necessity, be able to play almost anything which was requested of him. In addition to the blues for which he was known, he developed a very well-rounded repertoire that included all the pop tunes of the day and yesterday, hillbilly tunes, polkas, square dances, sentimental songs, and ballads. Among the more common pieces he played were, "Yes, Sir, That's My Baby," "My Blue Heaven," and "Tumbling Tumbleweeds"!

In having to learn the many kinds of music which he had to play, Robert developed a very unusual talent. He could hear a piece just once over the radio or phonograph or from someone in person and be able to play it. He could be deep in conversation with a group of people and hear something--never stop talking--and later be able to play it and sing it perfectly. It amazed some very fine musicians, and they never understood how he did it. Johnny Shines reported that Robert never had to practice, by the time he got ready to play something he already knew it.

Robert came in contact with a great many people in his travels and they all helped to spread his fame. Naturally, at least half of them were women, and most of them were crazy about him. The other half, the men, would go crazy if their women liked him too much. Robert was pretty hard on "working girls"--they were too tough for him, too--but if he was going to be in any one place for a while, he developed a technique of female selection that generally kept him out of trouble and well fed and cared for, to boot.

As soon as he hit town, he'd find the homeliest woman he could. A few kind words and he knew he'd have a place to stay anytime. His reasons were threefold: 1. She probably wouldn't have a man. 2. No one was likely to be after her or upset if he was with her. 3. Just a little attention would bring him nearly anything he wanted. Accordingly, Robert could be the nicest guy in the world to the ugliest witch in town.

He never stopped loving all the women, though, and out having fun, he might put his arm around anybody's old lady. More than once it got him in a scrape that, being small and no scrapper to begin with, somebody else would have to help him finish.

He had developed a taste for booze, gambling, and an occasional smoke, too, and although he never became habitual with any of them, he did drink to excess more than a few times. He couldn't handle his liquor at all, and when he did drink too much, he would often talk loud, curse his maker, and get in fights, but he was never a sloppy or messy drunk!

Sober, Robert Johnson frequently became a pensive man. Often he could be found sitting alone in a deep study. Over the years, his behavior became progressively moody and erratic, but a drink or two, especially if he had purchased them for himself and a few friends, transformed him into the life of the party.

By the middle 1930's Robert Johnson had been a professional musician for quite a few years. He was very well known all through the Delta areas and had followings in southern Mississippi and eastern Tennessee, too. He had wanted to make records for some years, as his mentors Willie Brown, Son House, and Charlie Patton had done. He wanted to join the ranks of the musicians to whom he had listened and from whom he learned off phonograph records, Kokomo Arnold, Leroy Carr, Skip James, Lonnie Johnson, and others. And so he made contact with the one fellow in Mississippi that he knew would know how he should go about it.

H. C. Speir ran a music store in Jackson, Mississippi, and had an informal studio for making records for personal use on the premises. He was also employed from time to time as a talent scout by various record companies. Paramount recorded a great many people upon his recommendation and he was known in the industry as the possessor of an acute ability to be able to determine on what black people would spend their money. During the times when hardly anybody knew what anyone would buy, this was a great and useful talent, and Speir was constantly in demand for his advice and services.

By the time Robert Johnson was ready to record, Speir had just concluded a deal with the American Record Company that left him rather embittered. His agreement with them included a payment schedule based on the number of sides released, and of the 178 sides he helped them cut in Jackson and Hattiesburg, Mississippi, ARC chose to issue a mere 40! Speir was so discouraged about it that when Robert contacted him and auditioned for him at his music store, all he was willing to do was take his name and pass it along to someone who might do him some good.

Ernie Oertle was the ARC salesman and informal talent scout for the mid-South in the late 1930s, and surprisingly, it was to him that Speir gave Johnson's name and address. After an audition, Oertle decided to take Johnson to San Antonio to record.

Robert's first session in November 1936 yielded the song for which he is most widely remembered, "Terraplane Blues." It was his best seller and a fair-sized hit for Vocalion Records. He was recalled to Texas to cut some more sides the following June, but although Don Law was able to get some very decent material from him--in fact, some of his best--nothing sold as well as "Terraplane." Although six of Johnson's eleven records were still in the Vocalion catalog by December 1938, he wasn't recalled that spring nor even the following summer. Vocalion did release one final 78 in February 1939, but that was probably due to a great deal of interest in him by John Hammond.

The recordings, especially "Terraplane," provided Robert additional fame, and through personal appearances, an increased fortune. He was able to go nearly anywhere and find an eager, expectant crowd. He soon found out that this was true not only in his own area of concentration, but around the country as well.

Robert left Helena with Johnny Shines and Calvin Frazier, who really had to leave--he had killed a couple of men in Arkansas--and they struck out on a trip that lasted about four months. They took Highway 51 north to Chicago through St. Louis, where they met many of the city's famous bluesmen--Peetie Wheatstraw, Henry Townsend, Roosevelt Sykes, Teddy Darby, and others--and Decatur, Illinois, where they played for a square dance.

In Detroit, their next stop, they hooked up with a broadcasting preacher and appeared with him on radio as well as in his personal appearances, both there and in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. Calvin stayed in Detroit, where he settled and later recorded for the Library of Congress in 1938, clearly displaying his musical affinity with Johnson, who, with Shines in tow, visited the East Coast briefly, playing in New York and New Jersey. Their return through St. Louis and Memphis reinforced newly-made friendships and renewed old ones, while the whole trip served to spread Johnson's name considerably and widen his audience as well as his own awareness and personal horizons.

During this excursion with Shines, Robert displayed a certain uneasiness with his traveling companion. Frequently he would slip away from him, and Shines would have to guess which way he went and try to catch up with him. It was an uncomfortable feeling for Shines, but he knew of no one better to follow and learn from, so he stuck with it to Memphis.

Urban life presented no great challenge to Robert--he'd feigned urbanity for many years by that time--and he took St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, and New York in easy stride. His musical approach was altered a bit--he began playing with a small combo. He used a pianist and a drummer in a Belzoni jook joint--the drummer had "Robert Johnson" painted in black letters across his bass drum--before a large crowd of people, a good many of them musicians. And he was able to play anything people wanted, he began to concentrate less and less on the blues. He may have gotten away from it almost entirely had it not been for some divine intervention.

It seems so ironic that for all of Johnson's efforts to make himself known to the world through his music, better himself, and upgrade the status quo, at least for himself, he should be heard so distinctly by the one person that had his ear open, pocketbook ready and the power and ability at his beck and call to assist him. And it's even more ironic--indeed, tragic--that it was never to be.

Sometime in June or July of 1938, Robert left Helena and swung through Robinsonville to see his people before taking up a playing offer he had further down in the Delta. There was a jook joint out from Greenwood at the intersection of Highways 82 and 49E, a little place the locals referred to as "Three Forks", "Three Corners" or "Three Points". It was here that Robert played his last job. During the time that he was there, he became friends with a woman on whom another had already staked his claim.

It was a dangerous occupation being a musician in those days: Musicians hated you if you played better than them. Women hated you if you cast your eye on anyone else. And the men hated you if the women loved you. A great musician had to be careful, especially if he didn't care to whose woman he was talkin'. And, by then, Robert was notorious for that.

Robert Johnson had been in the Greenwood locale for at least a couple of weeks, sharing Saturday night plays with "Honeyboy" Edwards, who lived in Greenwood. Robert had made friends with a local woman, who happened to be the wife of the man who ran the jookhouse at "Three Forks". She would come into Greenwood on Mondays, ostensibly to see her sister, but, in fact, to spend time with him.

On one Saturday night of in July, 1938, there was the added attraction of "Sonny Boy Williamson". He wore a belt of harps around his waist in those days, and he was a familiar and popular rambling songster. "Honeyboy" wasn't to arrive until after 10:30 p.m.. By that time, Robert and Sonny were through for the evening. Sonny Boy had left, and never again would Robert perform his great blues!

Musician Houston Stackhouse was not there, but having been close to Robert at one time, he was curious about Robert's death. He was also close to Sonny Boy and so, over a period of time, he was able to obtain a more complete picture of the events of that fateful evening. The tale Stackhouse received from Sonny was verified to the best of knowledge by "Honeyboy", and so it is that we know how Robert Johnson met his fate.

There was a great deal of music and dancing that night, what with a great Delta guitarist and an exemplary harmonicist in attendance, both of whom sang and played their own brand of Delta blues. One can imagine that there was a great deal of good-natured musical rivalry going on, too, but as the evening progressed, a different, less good-natured form of rivalry reared its ugly head.

From all reports, Robert, as he was wont to do, began displaying his attraction to the lady he had been seeing during his time in the locale. He may not have known, nor probably would it have mattered to him, that she was the houseman's wife.

Sonny Boy had been keeping an eye on the evening's proceedings. He had noticed both the attraction Robert displayed for the lady, as well as the marked tension on the countenances of certain persons in the house. He knew that it was a potentially explosive predicament. He was ready.

And so, during a break in the music, Robert and Sonny Boy were standing together when someone brought Robert an open half-pint of whiskey. As Robert was about to drink from it, Sonny Boy knocked it out of his hand and it broke against the ground. Sonny admonished him, "Man, don't never take a drink from a open bottle. You don't know what could be in it." Robert, in turn, retorted, "Man, don't never knock a bottle of whisky outta my hand." And so it was. When a second open bottle was brought to Johnson. Sonny could only stand by, watch, and hope.
It wasn't too long after Robert returned to his guitar that he soon could no longer sing. Sonny took up the slack for him with his voice and harmonica, but after a bit, Robert stopped short in the middle of a number and got up and went outside. He was sick and before the night was over, he was displaying definite signs of poisoning; he was out of his mind. It seems the houseman's jealousy finally got the best of him and someone laced Robert's whisky with strychnine. It got the best of Robert, too!

He was young and virile enough to withstand the poisoning, though, and he made it through the next couple of weeks. Eventually, he was removed from his room in the "Baptist Town" section of Greenwood to a private home on the "Star of the West" plantation, where he received round-the-clock attention... but it was already too late. He lay deathly ill and in his weakened condition, he apparently contracted pneumonia (for which there was no cure prior to 1946), and succumbed on Tuesday, August 16, 1938.

In late 1938, John Hammond began recruiting talent for his first From Spirituals to Swing concert. He called Don Law in Dallas and asked him if he could round up Robert Johnson and get him to New York for his presentation at Carnegie Hall. Hammond thought Johnson the greatest of all the country blues guys and wanted him to fill one of the opening slots in his show. Law could hardly believe his ears. He told Hammond he was making a big mistake. Johnson was so shy that he would freeze up in front of an audience. But Hammond replied that if Law would just get in touch with him, he would take care of the rest. Law got the word to Oertle, who set out to locate Johnson.

It had been more than a year since Oertle had been in contact with him, and it took some digging before he learned the bitter truth and got it back to Law--Johnson had died recently under uncertain circumstances. In truth, Robert Johnson had been poisoned for getting too close to somebody else's woman one time too many.

Robert Johnson was buried in a wooden coffin that was furnished by the county. His mother, brother-in-law, and later his half-sister Carrie all visited his grave in, as recent research indicates, the graveyard of the Little Zion Church just north of Greenwood, Mississippi. That particular stretch of county road, which eventually delivers the traveler to the hamlet of Money, Mississippi, is commonly referred to as, "the Money road".

Hammond, by the way, got Big Bill Broonzy.

Article from Los Angeles Times

Inside the pink brick estate he built with a blues fortune, 72- year-old Claud Johnson cannot shake the habits he formed when he was a poor man.

Three years after moving in, he still has more rooms than he has furniture. Creamy wall-to-wall stretches across the second floor, which is mostly empty. To tell the truth, he's not sure if his wife, Miss Ernestine, has ever gone up there.

He keeps his finicky 25-year-old Mack gravel truck parked nearby, where he can keep an eye on it through the living room window. He drove the truck, by his own estimate, one and a quarter million miles. Even as plants poke up around its chassis, it seems the truck -- not the blues or the house -- is the thing that matters to him.

After Claud won his court battle in 1998 and was recognized as the son of blues music legend Robert Johnson, his lawyer handed him a six-figure cashier's check and begged him to quit hauling gravel. Claud kept hauling gravel for five months.

"After 29 years, it just gets in your blood," said Claud, whose smile reveals glinting gold dental work. "I wake up some mornings, I want to get on that truck."

Late in life, surrounded by the wealth of a stranger, Claud has begun to consider a parent he never knew.

Robert Johnson was a blues guitarist, singer and songwriter. Disgusted with fieldwork, he left his sharecropping family around 1930 and took to the highway, recording, in his unearthly voice, 29 songs.

Johnson's music was so good, other men said, that his talent could not be natural: Delta legend has it that one day at a backcountry crossroad, Johnson waited for the devil to come by. After that, Johnson could play any song he wanted, but he had surrendered his soul.

Johnson was just 27 when he died in August 1938 -- poisoned, most people believe, by a jealous husband in a Greenwood, Miss., juke joint. He was so poor and unloved, it is said, that his body was dumped into the ground without a coffin, and to this day, no one is entirely sure where he's buried. But the brooding songs he wrote and recorded have been discovered and rediscovered by the generations that came after him.

People in Greenwood have become accustomed to the Japanese tourists who come looking for Johnson's grave. Just this year, Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Eric Clapton released "Me and Mr. Johnson," a CD devoted entirely to Johnson's blues.

In the midst of all this celebrity is Claud Johnson, who did not know until he was almost 40 that his father had recorded music.

Claud is that rare thing, said blues historian Gayle Dean Wardlow: an ordinary man who was drawn into a legend.

"He's just a little old country boy from Crystal Springs, Miss.," said Wardlow. "It's almost like, I guess, one of those Shakespearean things. He got pulled into it, totally."

Since 1974, Robert Johnson's songbook had been in the hands of a California record producer and blues archivist, Stephen LaVere, who sought out the musician's half-sister, Carrie Thompson, and promised to split the profits evenly.

Over the next decade, that bargain dissolved into a catfight. LaVere was pressuring bands like Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones to pay to use the music. Thompson, meanwhile, had turned against LaVere, and attempted to sever the contract.

Then, in 1990, Sony put out a boxed set of Johnson's music, expecting it to appeal to a narrow audience of blues connoisseurs. It won a Grammy and sold more than 500,000 copies.
When word got out that Robert Johnson's estate could be worth millions, putative heirs appeared by the dozen.

Willis Brumfield, the estate's executor, began getting calls at odd hours from people who claimed they were Johnson's long-lost twin brother or daughter, he said.

"They had some idea it was a fortune of money," Brumfield said, "and it was."

Out of this cacophony emerged Claud Johnson.

A few people already knew who he was. In 1970, a Texas cultural historian named Mack McCormick had traveled to Crystal Springs to search for Robert Johnson's relatives, and found himself face to face with a twinkly old woman, who, he recalls, "just burbled over. She said, 'My boy is his baby.' " Blues buffs passed the information among themselves -- a son! But Claud continued with his quiet life.

The estate eventually grew to $1.3 million. But Robert Johnson's executors found that they had no clearly established heir. Thompson, the half-sister, had died in 1983, and her half-sister and son were still wrangling with LaVere over the licensing rights. LaVere recalled mentioning Claud to the executors.

Not long after that, Claud received a summons in the heirship case. "I didn't know what to do with the letter," Claud said. He decided to hire a lawyer.

When Claud retained the services of Jim Kitchens, a prominent Jackson trial lawyer and former district attorney, they were already friends of 30 years' standing, from the days when Claud dropped off deliveries for Kitchens' family store in Crystal Springs. Kitchens bought barbecue at Claud's pit, and Miss Ernestine treated him, Kitchens said, "like one of her own kids."

In Kitchens' office, an overhead fan revolves lazily and a picture of Elvis Presley is propped against an upright piano.

"He [Claud] walked in one day and said, 'Jim, do you know who Robert Johnson was?'

"I said, 'Sure I do,' " Kitchens recalled.
"He said, 'How do you know that?'
"I said, 'I listen to public radio.'
"He said, 'That was my daddy.' "
"I said, 'What?'
He said, 'That was my daddy.'
"I said, 'Who else knows this?'
"He said, 'Well, there's my momma.' "

*

Among the dirt farms of southern Mississippi, where Claud was raised, there were two kinds of people: those who listened to the blues and those who did not. Claud knew early in life that he was the second kind.

Born out of wedlock to 17-year-old Virgie Mae Smith, he was mostly raised by Virgie Mae's father, a preacher and sharecropper, in a house where music was slapped back like the creeping fingertips of the devil.

If the blues came on the radio, a hand flew to the radio and switched it off. Once, Claud's uncle bought him a guitar, but his grandfather told him to put it down immediately.

His grandparents told him his father was Robert Johnson, a blues singer. Robert Johnson had given Virgie Mae a small amount of money after learning of Claud's birth -- $20 or $30 -- but showed little interest in the boy after that. Around his fifth birthday, Claud watched from the doorway of his grandparents' house as they talked to a grown man in a light-colored shirt and black pants.

"They stood on the porch. They made him stand in the yard," he said. "They talked to him a few minutes and then he went away."

Pulled out of school every year to work in the fields, Claud dropped out for good in the sixth grade and found satisfaction in work, long hours of it, sometimes at two or three jobs. He sold barbecue from a pit beside his house, worked at gas stations and a car dealership; his wife waited tables at a local diner.

Claud saved enough to buy his own gravel truck -- a machine so crotchety that he carried a tangle of cables and four extra batteries in order to start it, Kitchens remembers. Often Claud drove it for 18 hours a day. In this way, he and Ernestine put five children through college.
His grandparents' stern influence had served him as a rudder, steadying him throughout his life, he said.

"It learned me something about life, growing up that way," he said.

Then, in his 60s, the heirship case opened a view into a second Mississippi: a place where, in moments of glamour, young people ducked the narrow rules of sharecropping life.

In testimony, Claud's 79-year-old mother and her friends would describe the dark clubs where the field workers gathered, laughing, in the half-light of evening.

They described his father: a man known for slipping out without saying goodbye, for traveling under aliases, for sleeping in boxcars and emerging with pants that looked like they had just been steam- ironed.

They described performances where Robert Johnson sat alone with a guitar and held them all still. They described what happened when he met up with 17-year-old Virgie Mae Smith on her way to school.

In the end, the crucial testimony came from Virgie Mae's closest friend, Eula Mae Williams, an 80-year-old midwife with pure white hair, who recalled an evening walk she took with her fiance and Virgie Mae and Robert Johnson.

To the shock of the assembled lawyers, who had to pause during questioning because they were laughing so hard, she described how both couples made love standing up in the pine forest, watching each other the whole time.

She was questioned by Victor McTeer, an attorney from Greenville who was representing Carrie Thompson's relatives as they contested Claud's claim to the estate.

Q: Well, let me, let me share something with you, because I'm really curious about this. Maybe I have a more limited experience. But you're saying to me that you were watching them make love?
A: M-hm.
Q: While you were making love?
A: M-hm.
Q: You don't think that's at all odd?
A: Say what?
Q: Have you ever done that before or since?
A: Yes.
Q: Watch other people make love?
A: Yes, I have done it before. Yes, I've done it after I married. Yes.
Q: You watched other people make love?
A: Yes, sir. Yes, sir.
Q: Other than ... other than Mr. Johnson and Virgie Cain [her married name].
A: Right.
Q: Really?
A: You haven't?
Q: No. Really haven't.
A: I'm sorry for you.

*

Today, in the working-class neighborhood where he raised his children, Claud lives in a grand house on 47 acres of property, with a long, curving driveway.

His victory stands out in the annals of Mississippi probate law.

For an illegitimate child to prove the paternity of a long-dead man is a daunting legal challenge. It took 10 years, two trips to the Mississippi Supreme Court and two trips to the U.S. Supreme Court to settle the question. Claud's mother died in 1998, months before he received the money.
In a way, the most remarkable thing is that anyone in Mississippi is holding Robert Johnson's wealth at all.

The first two or three generations of blues musicians saw their music diffuse into American culture, but most of them died without securing rights to their composition. If their relatives received anything later, it was tiny. The strip of Mississippi that gave rise to the blues remains one of the poorest places in America.

"If it's not unique, it's close to unique," said Thomas Freeland, a Mississippi attorney and blues historian.

When the San Francisco-based band the Grateful Dead recorded songs by the North Carolina blues musician Elizabeth Cotton, Freeland said, "the story is, [she] bought a dishwasher with the royalties."

Inside the pink brick gates to their land, the Johnsons live somewhat awkwardly with the wealth they inherited. On a recent afternoon, Miss Ernestine was sitting in the garage, listening to a religious program on the car radio. Claud looked critically at his vast lawn, irritated by the task of mowing it.

Inside, a small decorative Bible sat on a coffee table, resting on a lacy pillow. A large framed poster of Robert Johnson hung on the wall. Claud listens to his father's blues recordings sometimes now, although he prefers gospel.

He doesn't have much to say about the windfall he received -- money, he said, does not mean too much to him.

"I was excited when I found out there was going to be a little bit of money in it," he said. "I was a little excited. And then that went away."

What remains is a quiet resentment toward Robert Johnson's other relatives, whose lawyers for years argued that he was not the musician's son. Claud has never met any of them, but the challenge, he says, has offended him.

"I've always known all my life who I was and whose son I was," he said. "Never got angry over it. Like I said, my grandparents they always told me Robert Johnson was my father."
Already, he was a solitary, careful man.

Claud, a church deacon, has had such a lifelong fear of poisoning he did not eat at his mother-in-law's house for two years after his wedding.

Even at home, if he gets up from a meal leaving a half-drunk glass of water, he will not touch it on his return.

"I'm just curious that way," he said, with a slow smile. "It just sticks in the back of my mind what happened to him."

With all these people talking to him about Robert Johnson's music, too, he's had occasion to wonder about a few things.

He remembers the guitar being lifted from his hands that time long ago. He says that he has a nice singing voice.

One after another, people from outside Mississippi have come to Claud to tell him the effect Robert Johnson had on their lives: Magical, haunting, almost godlike.

He wonders what it would have been like if his father had stuck around.

And he wonders, from time to time, if, in that alternate version of his life, he would have played the blues.

AllMusic

Biography by Cub Koda

If the blues has a truly mythic figure, one whose story hangs over the music the way a Charlie Parker does over jazz or a Hank Williams does over country, it's Robert Johnson, certainly the most celebrated figure in the history of the blues. Of course, his legend is immensely fortified by the fact that Johnson also left behind a small legacy of recordings that are considered the emotional apex of the music itself. These recordings have not only entered the realm of blues standards ("Love in Vain," "Crossroads," "Sweet Home Chicago," "Stop Breaking Down"), but were adapted by rock & roll artists as diverse as the Rolling Stones, Steve Miller, Led Zeppelin, and Eric Clapton. While there are historical naysayers who would be more comfortable downplaying his skills and achievements (most of whom have never made a convincing case as where the source of his apocalyptic visions emanates from), Robert Johnson remains a potent force to be reckoned with. As a singer, a composer, and as a guitarist of considerable skills, he produced some of the genre's best music and the ultimate blues legend to deal with. Doomed, haunted, driven by demons, a tormented genius dead at an early age, all of these add up to making him a character of mythology who — if he hadn't actually existed — would have to be created by some biographer's overactive romantic imagination.

The legend of his life — which by now, even folks who don't know anything about the blues can cite to you chapter and verse — goes something like this: Robert Johnson was a young black man living on a plantation in rural Mississippi. Branded with a burning desire to become great blues musician, he was instructed to take his guitar to a crossroad near Dockery's plantation at midnight. There he was met by a large black man (the Devil) who took the guitar from Johnson, tuned it, and handed it back to him. Within less than a year's time, in exchange for his everlasting soul, Robert Johnson became the king of the Delta blues singers, able to play, sing, and create the greatest blues anyone had ever heard.

As success came with live performances and phonograph recordings, Johnson remained tormented, constantly haunted by nightmares of hellhounds on his trail, his pain and mental anguish finding release only in the writing and performing of his music. Just as he was to be brought to Carnegie Hall to perform in John Hammond's first Spirituals to Swing concert, the news had come from Mississippi; Robert Johnson was dead, poisoned by a jealous girlfriend while playing a jook joint. Those who were there swear he was last seen alive foaming at the mouth, crawling around on all fours, hissing and snapping at onlookers like a mad dog. His dying words (either spoken or written on a piece of scrap paper) were, "I pray that my redeemer will come and take me from my grave." He was buried in a pine box in an unmarked grave, his deal with the Devil at an end.

Of course, Johnson's influences in the real world were far more disparate than the legend suggests, no matter how many times it's been retold or embellished. As a teenage plantation worker, Johnson fooled with a harmonica a little bit, but seemingly had no major musical skills to speak of. Every attempt to sit in with local titans of the stature of Son House, Charley Patton, Willie Brown, and others brought howls of derision from the older bluesmen. Son House: "We'd all play for the Saturday night balls, and there'd be this little boy hanging around. That was Robert Johnson. He blew a harmonica then, and he was pretty good at that, but he wanted to play a guitar. He'd sit at our feet and play during the breaks and such another racket you'd never heard." He married young and left Robinsonville, wandering the Delta and using Hazelhurst as base, determined to become a full-time professional musician after his first wife died during childbirth. Johnson returned to Robinsonville a few years later and he encountered House and Willie Brown at a juke joint in Banks, MS; according to House, "When he finished all our mouths were standing open. I said, 'Well, ain't that fast! He's gone now!'" To a man, there was only one explanation as how Johnson had gotten that good, that fast; he had sold his soul to the Devil.

But Johnson's skills were acquired in a far more conventional manner, born more of a concentrated Christian work ethic than a Faustian bargain with old Scratch. He idolized the Delta recording star Lonnie Johnson — sometimes introducing himself to newcomers as "Robert Lonnie, one of the Johnson brothers" — and the music of Scrapper Blackwell, Skip James, and Kokomo Arnold were all inspirational elements that he drew his unique style from. His slide style certainly came from hours of watching local stars like Charley Patton and Son House, among others. Perhaps the biggest influence, however, came from an unrecorded bluesman named Ike Zinneman. We'll never really know what Zinneman's music sounded like (we do know from various reports that he liked to practice late at night in the local graveyard, sitting on tombstones while he strummed away) or how much of his personal muse he imparted to Johnson, if any. What is known is that after a year or so under Zinneman's tutelage, Johnson returned with an encyclopedic knowledge of his instrument, an ability to sing and play in a multiplicity of styles, and a very carefully worked-out approach to song construction, keeping his original lyrics with him in a personal digest. As an itinerant musician, playing at country suppers as well as on the street, his audience demanded someone who could play and sing everything from blues pieces to the pop and hillbilly tunes of the day. Johnson's talents could cover all of that and more. His most enduring contribution, the boogie bass line played on the bottom strings of the guitar (adapted from piano players), has become part-and-parcel of the sound most people associate with down-home blues. It is a sound so very much of a part of the music's fabric that the listener cannot imagine the styles of Jimmy Reed, Elmore James, Eddie Taylor, Lightnin' Slim, Hound Dog Taylor, or a hundred lesser lights existing without that essential component part. As his playing partner Johnny Shines put it, "Some of the things that Robert did with the guitar affected the way everybody played. He'd do rundowns and turnbacks. He'd do repeats. None of this was being done. In the early '30s, boogie on the guitar was rare, something to be heard. Because of Robert, people learned to complement theirselves, carrying their own bass as their own lead with this one instrument." While his music can certainly be put in context as part of a definable tradition, what he did with it and where he took it was another matter entirely.

Although Robert Johnson never recorded near as much as Lonnie Johnson, Charley Patton, or Blind Lemon Jefferson, he certainly traveled more than all of them put together. After his first recordings came out and "Terraplane Blues" became his signature tune (a so-called "race" record selling over three or four-thousand copies back in the early to mid-'30s was considered a hit), Johnson hit the road, playing anywhere and everywhere he could. Instilled with a seemingly unquenchable desire to experience new places and things, his wandering nature took him up and down the Delta and as far a field as St. Louis, Chicago, and Detroit (where he performed over the radio on the Elder Moten Hour), places Son House and Charley Patton had only seen in the movies, if that. But the end came at a Saturday-night dance at a juke joint in Three Forks, MS, in August of 1938. Playing with Honeyboy Edwards and Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller), Johnson was given a jug of moonshine whiskey laced with either poison or lye, presumably by the husband of a woman the singer had made advances toward. He continued playing into the night until he was too sick to continue, then brought back to a boarding house in Greenwood, some 15 miles away. He lay sick for several days, successfully sweating the poison out of his system, but caught pneumonia as a result and died on August 16th. The legend was just beginning.

In the mid-'60s, Columbia Records released King of the Delta Blues Singers, the first compilation of Johnson's music and one of the earliest collections of pure country blues. Rife with liner notes full of romantic speculation, little in the way of hard information and a painting standing for a picture, this for years was the world's sole introduction to the music and the legend, doing much to promote both. A second volume — collecting up the other master takes and issuing a few of the alternates — was released in the '70s, giving fans a first-hand listen to music that had been only circulated through bootleg tapes and albums or cover versions by English rock stars. Finally in 1990 — after years of litigation — a complete two-CD box set was released with every scrap of Johnson material known to exist plus the holy grail of the blues; the publishing of the only two known photographs of the man himself. Columbia's parent company, Sony, was hoping that sales would maybe hit 20,000. The box set went on to sell over a million units, the first blues recordings ever to do so.

In the intervening years since the release of the box set, Johnson's name and likeness has become a cottage growth merchandising industry. Posters, postcards, t-shirts, guitar picks, strings, straps, and polishing cloths — all bearing either his likeness or signature (taken from his second marriage certificate) — have become available, making him the ultimate blues commodity with his image being reproduced for profit far more than any contemporary bluesman, dead or alive. Although the man himself (and his contemporaries) could never have imagined it in a million years, the music and the legend both live on.

References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Johnson_%28musician%29

http://www.deltahaze.com/johnson/

http://www.robertjohnsonbluesfoundation.org/latimes.html

http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7EMUSIC/blues/crb.html

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:ajfuxql5ldhe~T1

Discography

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:ajfuxql5ldhe~T21

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