The soul for a guitar.
Even the life and skills of some great musicians have legends that would explain why they came to be in that chosen star firmament for a few. This is the case of one of the best guitarists in the world and blues singer Robert Johnson, whose legend speaks of a pact with the devil .
Robert LeRoy Johnson was born in 1911 in Hazlehurst, south of the state of Missisipi, born of a sporadic relationship, it took Robert years to know his real name. He was the eleventh brother of a black family in a very complicated time and place for someone of color.
The music began to appeal to him at an early age and began to play the harp and the harmonica and to miss school, and a vision problem was an excuse for him to abandon classes definitively and focus on music, in which was more mediocre, and in women, a passion that forced him to flee and change his name more than once before jealous husbands. In adolescence he began to play the guitar with identical little virtuosity ....
But in 1929 he found stability with Virginia Travis, with whom he married. She became pregnant and for the first time there was happiness in his life, but in April 1930, Virginia died in childbirth with the baby. She was 16 years old.
Robert's life took a turn and shoved his sadness in the blues, he began to travel following the great artists of the blues and playing with no success, until he decided to return to his hometown where a wealthy widow, Esther Lockwood, welcomed him and with her he had a son ...
It is in this period of time when his acquaintances begin to suspect, since Robert, who had never been a good musician, begins to play with a perfect performance and admiration of great figures of the time, who feel that playing so suddenly can not be anything other than the fruit of a pact with the devil...
Legend has it that Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil at the junction of current Highway 61 with 49 in Clarksdale (Missisipi), in exchange for playing blues better than anyone. He waited at the crossroads until midnight, with the guitar in his hand, until the devil returned it, and Robert's hands had only to slide down the mast to play the best blues in history.
Robert played all over the southern United States. He never stayed in the same place, as if he were constantly running away. The public claimed that it had something magical that captivated. He surprised the audience with his music and his guitar that sounded as if they were two, his voice that could change shapes, his eyes fixed that looked like possessed, was unable to stay in one place. The lyrics of the songs dealt with religious despair and inner demons, and two of their greatest successes referred to their supposed covenant. "Crossroad blues" speaks of a crossroads that many consider the place designated for the pact, and the lyrics of another of his hits, "Me and the devil blues," says: "Early in the morning, when you knock at I said Hello Satan, I believe it's time to go. "
In one of these concerts he was discovered by a musical promoter, and between November 1936 and June 1937, he recorded 29 songs, some with two shots, which together with two photographs, are the only testimony of his passing through this world. This material, along with some version, composes the eleven Lp's of his discography and that the house would publish little by little ...
One anecdote is that Robert made the recordings with his Gibson guitar half destroyed from which he never got separated from, and facing the wall. The directors of the studio ran the rumor that he did it so they could not to see his possessed eyes when singing, although some musicians attribute it to the acoustics that way was better. This and the fact that some acquaintances attributed to him extraordinary abilities, like for example, after an afternoon of talk, with the radio of background and Robert without paying attention to the music, was able to reproduce each song in order and note per note the day after.
His legend increased by leaps and bounds, and people came en mases to see him, attracted by his music and by the morbid of his personality, increasingly elusive that led him to play in semipenumbra so that people did not see his way of playing the guitar, or to disappear in the middle of a performance. His life went frantically from one place to another. He looked for a woman in every city, played in a local and disappeared, until on August 13, 1938, in Greenwood, South Carolina, the devil claimed his alleged debt.
Robert had the mistake of seducing the owner's wife where he played that night, the "Three Forks" and gave him an opened bottle of whiskey. Before Robert could drink, a musician who accompanied him took it off and broke it, warning him never to drink from an open bottle, but Robert became angry and they brought him another bottle also opened from which he drank. In the middle of the concert, Robert stopped singing, put his guitar aside and went outside. The three days that followed were delirious until he died poisoned by the strychnine that contained the bottle of whiskey on August 16, aged 27, the same as when other great legends of music such as Jim Morrison, Jimmy Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Kurt Cobain.
In "Me and the Devils blues" , he asked to be buried on the side of the road: "You may bury my body down the highway side," but there are three tombs that supposedly contain his remains. ...Legend, myth or reality, or perhaps some of the three, made Robert the best bluesman of music and is among the five best guitarists in history, (some of the other four have curiously made versions of his songs like Eric Clapton, or Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones who, after listening to Robert Johnson for the first time, immediately wanted to know who the other guitarist was. Richards could not believe it was a single person playing . ..Fifty years after his death, a reissue of all his recordings was a gold record and won a Grammy Award. Surely more than one musician would sell his soul for something similar.
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