Robert Johnson's Blues Trail marker in Hazelhurst, MS   
(photo by C. Lester)


        
The only known pictures of Robert Johnson

Robert Leroy Johnson

        Robert Johnson was an American Delta blues musician. His recordings from the years 1936–1937 are considered by many to be among the finest examples of Delta blues music ever recorded. Johnson's mysterious life and death at age 27 have also prompted many legends.  Adding to his mystique is the fact that there are only 2 known photos of Johnson known to exist. Johnson's songs, vocals and guitar playing have influenced a broad range of musicians, including Muddy Waters, Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton. Clapton has called Johnson "the most important blues singer that ever lived".  In 1986 Johnson was among the first musicians to be inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s "early influence" category. He was also ranked fifth in Rolling Stone’s list of 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.

        Robert Johnson was born in Hazelhurst, MS, probably on May 8, 1911 or 1912, to Julia Major Dodds (born October, 1874) and Noah Johnson (born December, 1884). Julia was married to Charles Dodds (born February, 1865), a relatively prosperous landowner and furniture maker with whom she had children. Dodds had been forced by a lynch mob to leave Hazlehurst following a dispute with white landowners. Julia herself left Hazlehurst with baby Robert, but after some two years sent him to live in Memphis with Dodds, who had changed his name to Charles Spencer. Around 1919, Robert rejoined his mother in the area around Tunica and Robinsonville, MS. Julia's new husband was known as Dusty Willis, who was 24 years younger than she, and Robert was remembered by some informants as "Little Robert Dusty". However, he was registered at the Indian Creek School in Tunica as Robert Spencer. He is listed as Robert Spencer in the 1920 census with Will and Julia Willis in Lucas, Arkansas, where they lived a short time. Robert was at school in 1924 and 1927 and the quality of his signature on his marriage certificate suggests that he studied continuously and was relatively well educated for a boy of his background. One school friend, Willie Coffee, has been discovered and filmed. He recalls that Robert was already noted for playing the harmonica and jaw harp. After school, Robert adopted the surname of his natural father, signing himself as Robert Johnson on the certificate of his marriage to sixteen-year-old Virginia Travis in February 1929. She died shortly after in childbirth. Around this time, the noted blues musician Son House moved to Robinsonville where his musical partner Willie Brown resided. Late in life, House remembered Johnson as a young man who had followed him around and tried very unsuccessfully to copy him. He then left the Robinsonville area, later reappearing after a few months with a miraculous guitar technique. His boast seems to be credible; Johnson later recorded versions of "Preaching the Blues" and "Walking Blues" in House's vocal and guitar style.  When House moved to Robinsonville in 1930, Johnson was a young adult, already married and widowed. The following year, he was living near Hazelhurst, where he married for the second time. From this base Johnson began travelling up and down the Delta as an itinerant musician.

        According to a legend known to modern blues fans, 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 Plantation at midnight. There he was met by a large black man, said to be the Devil who took the guitar from Johnson and tuned it. After tuning the guitar, the Devil played a few songs and then returned it to Johnson, giving him mastery of the guitar. This, in effect, sold Johnson's soul; and in exchange Robert Johnson became able to play, sing and create the greatest blues anyone had ever heard.

        When Johnson arrived in a new town, he would play for tips on street corners or in front of the local barbershop or a restaurant. 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 to hear and he 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 and has said "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 in 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 was put in touch with Ernie Oertle, who offered to record the young musician in San Antonio, TX. Among the songs Johnson recorded in San Antonio were "Come on in My Kitchen," "I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom," and "Cross Road Blues." " 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, TX, for another recording session. Eleven records from this session would be released within the following year, including "Stones In My Passway", "Me And The Devil" and "Hellhound on My Trail".

        In the last year of his life, Johnson is believed to have traveled to St. Louis and possibly Illinois.  He also 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.  Johnson died on August 16, 1938, at the age of 27, near Greenwood, MS. He had been playing for a few weeks in a town near Greenwood. There are a number of accounts and theories regarding the events preceding his 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, and that she was unaware that the bottle of whiskey she gave to Johnson had been poisoned by her husband; in another version, she was a married^. Johnson is reported to have begun feeling ill 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, according to witnesses, his condition steadily worsened until he died. 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, MS not far from Greenwood, in an unmarked grave. More recent research (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. Robert Johnson has a son, Claude Johnson, and grandchildren who currently reside near Hazelhurst, MS.

Blues Trail Marker for Big Walter Horton in Horn Lake, MS
(photo by C. Lester)

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