Robert Johnson and the Devil
By: Dark Waters
Robert Leroy Johnson was born most likely in Hazelhurst MS, in 1911 (same year as my Nana). Perhaps he was born under an auspicious star, perhaps not. No matter what may have been in the air the night Little Robert Dusty was born, he grew up to be one of the most renowned and gifted blues singers, songwriters and guitar players the world has ever known. Sadly, his life was brief and his career as a transient or “itinerant” musician, rambling across the deep South was largely without commercial success. Nearly 100% of his recognition was of a posthumous nature. Johnson was among the musicians inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame during its first ceremony in 1986, nearly 50 years after his death.
It must be noted however that in spite of his near mythical musical prowess, Johnson the man was shrouded in a Faustian veil of mystery and legend that’s nearly as impenetrable today as it was when he died in 1938 at the age of 27. That makes him literally the original member of “The 27 Club," whose esteemed and tragic membership includes Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and others.
Robert Johnson is reported to have been a less than mediocre guitar player who, nearly overnight seemed to have learned to play good enough to make angels cry. The legend that surrounds him to this day is that one night, young Robert went to the Crossroads of Routes 61 and 49 in Clarksdale, Mississippi and was approached by the Devil disguised as a large, black man. The man, larger and blacker than life, silently reached out for Robert’s guitar and when Robert handed it over, the man tuned it to perfection, played a few tunes and offered it back to him. As Robert took the perfectly tuned instrument an unspoken deal was struck…he had traded his eternal soul for legendary skill as a guitar-playing blues man.
Johnson’s entire, abbreviated life is pretty shadowy but we do know that his stepfather, Charles Spencer had been run out of Mississippi after a run in with local white men. Robert seems to have been the product of an extramarital affair between his mother, Julia and Noah Johnson. When Robert was a toddler, his mother sent him to Memphis to live with his stepfather.
Memphis seems to be where he got bit by the musical bug. Even as a schoolboy, he who would become the King of the Delta Blues was already renowned for his talent on the harmonica; however, he was described by those who knew him in his younger years as a horribly inept guitar player.
It seems as if Johnson didn’t set out to be a blues musician. He chose a bride and married Virginia Travis in 1929 and attempted to live the life of a farmer. After his teenaged wife died in childbirth, Robert started to lean away from a “normal” life and delved deeper into music. Two years later, his second wife, Caletta Craft is also said to have died in childbirth. After the loss of Caletta, Robert became a full-time itinerant blues man; he moved from town to town, playing music on street corners for coins by day and playing in juke joints by night, making temporary relationships with his fans — no letting anyone get too close.
Musicians who played with Johnson in his early years gave credence to the legend that he sold his sold to the Devil partly on account of the fact that, as a young man, Johnson was under the tutelage of Ike Zinnernan, a Hazelhurst native who stated that he learned to play the guitar by playing in the graveyard at night.
Johnson’s mysterious nature only added to the myth. His counterparts told how he disappeared for several months then came back on the scene having gained a seemingly supernatural mastery of the guitar. Throughout his time traveling through the South, he would walk off right in the middle of a gig and disappear for days or even weeks only to come back as if he’d never left.
In 1936 he penned one of his most famous songs, “Cross Road Blues” in which he hints about his run-in with Old Scratch and the famed Crossroads.
One August night in 1938 near the town of Greenwood, MS, Johnson had a brief altercation with a man at a country dance. One version of the story says that a jealous husband of a woman smitten by Johnson offered the blues legend a poisoned bottle of alcohol. He suffered for three days and died in severe pain on August 16th.
No one is certain of the cause of Robert Johnson’s death, or of his burial place. There are three headstones marking possible resting places for the King of the Delta Blues. Only Johnson knows the absolute truth; Johnson, and the Devil who came for his due. One thing is for certain, there was never before, nor will there ever be, a more singular or mysterious talent like that of Robert Johnson.