Robert Johnson

Did You Know?

• Johnson's first recorded song, 'Kind Hearted Woman Blues,' resembled the style of Chicago or St. Louis more than the prevailing Delta style of the time.
• The slide guitar work on 'Ramblin' on My Mind' is pure Delta, but the train imitation on the bridge is more like minstrel show or vaudeville music.
• It is likely Johnson had congenital syphilis, which may have contributed to his death, though no formal autopsy was done.

Life and career

Robert Leroy Johnson was born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, possibly on May 8, 1911, to Julia Major Dodds and Noah Johnson. Julia was married to Charles Dodds, a landowner and furniture maker who had been forced to leave Hazlehurst by a lynch mob. Julia took the baby Robert to Memphis, where he lived with Charles Dodds (who had changed his name to Charles Spencer) for the next eight or nine years. In Memphis he attended the Carnes Avenue Colored School, receiving lessons in arithmetic, reading, language, music, geography, and physical exercise, and there he acquired his love for the blues and popular music.

Around 1919–1920 he rejoined his mother after she married sharecropper Will 'Dusty' Willis. They settled on a plantation in Lucas Township, Crittenden County, Arkansas, then moved to Commerce in the Mississippi Delta near Tunica and Robinsonville, living on the Abbay & Leatherman Plantation. Residents remembered him as 'Little Robert Dusty,' but he was registered at Tunica's Indian Creek School as Robert Spencer. The 1920 census lists him as Robert Spencer, living in Lucas, Arkansas, with Will and Julia Willis.

A school friend recalled that as a youth Johnson already played harmonica and jaw harp and was absent for long periods, possibly living and studying in Memphis.

Devil legend

A popular legend holds that Johnson made a deal with the Devil at a crossroads in exchange for his musical ability, mirroring the Faust story. According to one version, as a young man on a Mississippi plantation he wanted to become a great blues musician and was told to take his guitar to a crossroad near Dockery Plantation at midnight. There a large being (the Devil) took the guitar, tuned it, played a few songs, and returned it, giving Johnson mastery of the instrument in exchange for his soul.

This story was originally associated with Delta blues musician Tommy Johnson, who first claimed to have sold his soul to the devil at a crossroads for guitar mastery. The legend was developed over time and chronicled by Gayle Dean Wardlow, Edward Komara, and Elijah Wald, who sees it as largely dating from Johnson's rediscovery by white fans more than two decades after his death. Son House once told the story to Pete Welding as an explanation of Johnson's rapid guitar mastery, though other interviewers failed to elicit confirmation from House, and two full years passed between House's observation of Johnson as a novice and then a master.

Further details, including that Johnson received his gift from a large black man at a crossroads, were absorbed from retellings by Greil Marcus and Robert Palmer. Published evidence, including a chapter in Tom Graves's biography Crossroads, suggests the crossroads detail originated in the Tommy Johnson story, collected from his associate Ishman Bracey and his brother Ledell in the 1960s.

Legacy

Producer John Hammond was an early advocate of Johnson's music. Writing as Henry Johnson in the New Masses in March 1937, he described Johnson as 'the greatest Negro blues singer who has cropped up in recent years.' The following year Hammond sought Johnson for a December 1938 From Spirituals to Swing concert in New York, unaware that Johnson had died in August. Instead, Hammond played two recordings, 'Walkin' Blues' and 'Preachin' Blues (Up Jumped the Devil),' and praised Johnson from the stage.

Music historian Ted Gioia noted that Hammond used his influence at this event to advocate for the late Delta bluesman. In 1939 Columbia issued a final single pairing 'Preachin' Blues' with 'Love in Vain.' In 1940 musicologist Alan Lomax included nine of Johnson's songs on a 'List of American Folk Songs on Commercial Records' for a U.S. government conference, with notations ranging from 'elaborate sex symbolism' to 'traces of voodoo.' In 1942 commentary on Johnson's 'Terraplane Blues' and 'Last Fair Deal Gone Down' appeared in The Jazz Record Book, describing his vocals as 'imaginative' and 'thrilling' and his guitar playing as 'exciting as almost anything in the folk blues field.'

Rudi Blesh's 1946 book Shining Trumpets reviewed 'Hellhound on My Trail,' noting Johnson's 'personal and creative way' with harmony. A 1949 Detroit Free Press review compared John Lee Hooker's debut to Johnson's work, citing similar disregard for familiar scale and harmony patterns.

Problems of biography

Until the 2019 publication of Bruce Conforth and Gayle Dean Wardlow's biography Up Jumped the Devil, little of Johnson's early life was known. Two marriage licenses have been located, giving different birth dates; Conforth and Wardlow suggest Johnson lied about his age to obtain a license. Carrie Thompson claimed her mother, also Robert's mother, remembered his birth date as May 8, 1911. He was not listed among his mother's children in the 1910 census, supporting a 1911 birthdate.

The 1920 census gives his age as 7, suggesting 1912 or 1913, but his Indian Creek School attendance record lists him as 14. Five career dates are documented: November 23, 26, and 27, 1936, in San Antonio, and June 19 and 20, 1937, in Dallas. His death certificate, found in 1968, lists only the date and location. A fuller account emerged in the 1960s from Son House, Johnny Shines, David 'Honeyboy' Edwards, and Robert Jr. Lockwood.

Don Law's 1961 sleeve notes for King of the Delta Blues Singers represented Johnson as very young and extraordinarily shy.