Robert Johnson

View Poster

• Born: 8 May 1911
• Birthplace: Hazelhurst, Mississippi
• Died: 16 August 1938 (mysterious circumstances)
• Best Known As: Legendary blues guitarist of "Crossroads" fame

Name at birth: Robert Spencer

Robert Johnson was an influential Mississippi blues singer and songwriter who supposedly sold his soul to Satan "at the crossroads" in exchange for his remarkable talent on the guitar. Born and raised in Mississippi, he started playing blues guitar in the late 1920s. His wife and child died in childbirth around 1930 and he is said to have devoted himself to the guitar. Part of the crossroads story stems from a report that he dropped out of sight for a while in the early 1930s and returned a much-improved guitarist. In 1936-37 he recorded at least 29 songs in Texas (San Antonio and Dallas), then returned to Mississippi to play and sing in clubs and bars. His mysterious death at the age of 27 added to the legend: on the night of 13 August 1938 something happened to Johnson in a bar in Greenwood, Mississippi and he died three days later. Maybe he was stabbed, maybe he was poisoned or maybe the devil collected on his debt -- nobody knows for sure. In 1986 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an early influence, and his songs have been covered by several rock stars, including Eric Clapton and The Rolling Stones. His songs include "Crossroad Blues," "Me and the Devil Blues" and "Terraplane Blues."

In 1994 the U.S. Post Office issued a stamp in his honor... The story of his career was fictionalized in the 1986 film Crossroads... He's not the same Robert Johnson who founded Black Entertainment Television.

(1946–)

Chief executive officer, Black Entertainment Television

Nationality: American.

Born: April 8, 1946, in Hickory, Mississippi.

Education: University of Illinois, BA, 1968; Princeton University, MPA, 1972.

Family: Son of Archie (timber seller) and Edna (teacher) Johnson; married Sheila Crump; children: two.

Career: Corporation for Public Broadcasting, public affairs officer; National Urban League, Washington office, director of communication; Sterling Tucker, press aide; Walter E. Fauntroy, 1973, press secretary; National Cable Television Association, 1976, vice president for governmental relations; Black Entertainment Television, 1980–, chief executive officer; Charlotte Bobcats, 2002–, owner.

Awards: Image Award, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 1982; Trumpet Award, Turner Broadcasting, 1993; President's Award, National Cable Television Association, 1982; Pioneering Award, Capital Press Club, 1984; Business of the Year Award, Washington, D.C., Chamber of Commerce, 1985; Executive Leadership Council Award, 1992; Broadcasting & Cable, Hall of Fame Award, 1997; 20/20 Vision Award, Cablevision magazine.

Address: BET Holdings, 1232 31st Street NW, Washington, DC 20007; http://www.bet.com.

Robert L. Johnson founded Black Entertainment Television (BET), the first U.S. television network aimed at African American audiences. Starting in 1979 with a $15,000 loan, Johnson turned BET into one of the richest franchises in the cable industry. BET was the first company controlled by African Americans to sell shares on the New York Stock Exchange, and Johnson was the first African American majority owner of a sports franchise.

Beginning of a Media Entrepreneur

Johnson grew up in Freeport, Illinois, the ninth of 10 chil dren. His entrepreneurial spirit was honed when he was a child. At the age of 12, Johnson began a job delivering the Rockford Morning Star. He did not like getting up early. In aninterview with Erik Spanberg that appeared in The Business Journal Johnson said, "I realized if I want to make some money, I'd better work for myself" (March 28, 2003). Graduating from high school with honors in history, Johnson attended the University of Illinois on an academic scholarship. After earning his bachelor's degree Johnson enrolled at Princeton University to study toward his goal of becoming a U.S. ambassador. In response to an effort to attract minority students to careers in international relations, Johnson attended the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs with financial support from the Ford Foundation and the U.S. Foreign Service. He was graduated sixth in his class.

After completing his studies at Princeton, Johnson worked primarily in the field of communication media. He had jobs as a public affairs officer for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, director of communications for the Washington, D.C., office of the National Urban League, press aide to Sterling Tucker, the Washington, D.C., councilman, and press secretary to Walter E. Fauntroy, the congressional delegate from the District of Columbia.

In 1976 Johnson was named vice president of governmental relations for the National Cable Television Association, a trade organization that represents cable television companies. As a lobbyist Johnson escorted an aspiring cable entrepreneur, Ken Silverman, to the office of Claude Pepper, the congressman from Florida, who was an advocate for senior citizens. Silverman wanted Pepper's support for his idea of starting a cable channel for older Americans. Johnson realized this concept would work well for African Americans, an underserved market in communication and entertainment media. The programming would focus on African American entertainment, cultural themes, and lifestyles. Johnson approached John Malone, a board member of NCTA and the head of TCI, a cable operator, to invest in his idea. Malone agreed, and on January 25, 1980, BET made its debut on cable television.

The Rise of Bet

BET began operating a few hours a day. The content was primarily films from the 1940s and 1950s and blaxploitation films. With the advent of MTV, a cable television channel devoted to popular music, music videos had become ingrained into popular culture. In an effort to keep costs low Johnson took advantage of another void, the lack of African American artists appearing on MTV. Johnson formed relationships with record labels to promote on BET videos by rhythm and blues and hip-hop artists. The network also added infomercials, reruns of a gospel show, and African American college football and basketball games. For the first six years BET lost money, and Johnson sought new investors. He recruited Taft Broadcasting Company and Home Box Office. This move provided more money for the channel and increased BET air time to 24 hours a day. In the early 1990s BET turned its first profit.

Johnson established BET Holdings to serve as parent company and decided to offer public stock in BET. On October 30, 1991, BET Holdings became the first African American firm to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. In 1999, believing the stock to be undervalued, Johnson reversed the decision, making his company private again. BET continued its growth by expanding programming to include BET on Jazz, BET on Jazz International, BET movies, and BET Action pay-per-view. Building on brand identity outside of the cable industry, Johnson capitalized by launching African American publications such as YSB, Emerge, Heart & Soul, and Arabesque Books, a line of African American romance novels written by African American authors. Johnson also made a foray into the restaurant business by opening BET Soundstage and BET on Jazz, which were theme restaurants. In 2001 Johnson made an effort to become the only African American to own a major airline by becoming the owner of D.C. Air. His plans were halted when the U.S. Department of Justice threatened to sue to stop the deal over antitrust concerns.

New Ventures

In 2001 Johnson sold BET to Viacom. The deal was worth $3 billion and required that Johnson remain CEO for five more years. This move made Johnson the first African American billionaire in the United States. After selling BET, Johnson formed the RLJ Companies, where he began new ventures. Johnson purchased the National Basketball Association expansion franchise in North Carolina, the Charlotte Bobcats. He also developed hotels under L.J. Development; Leeward Islands Lottery Holdings Company, an online lottery company; Ortanique Restaurants; Wolverine Pizza; and Three Key Music, a jazz recording company.

Management Style

The success of BET stemmed from Johnson's vision to capitalize on cable programming to an underserved African American market. He also used African American talent by hiring executives, producers, and on-air performers. In an interview with Robert G. Miller in the Black Collegian, Johnson commented, "As an entrepreneur, sometimes you make it up as you go along. You have to have an unshaken belief in yourself, work harder than the next guy, and do whatever it takes with determination. You have to have an ability to engage people to believe in you, while being lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. You must be able to marshal the resources to achieve that vision. That means you have to find good people, support them, and have the steadfastness to stay in there" (October 8, 2001).

Sources for Further Information

Hughes, Alan, "Slam Dunk!," Black Enterprise, March 2003, pp. 94–99.

Jones, Joyce, "Betting on Black," Black Enterprise, January 2001, pp. 58–61.

Miller, Robert G., "A Business Titan: Redefining Black Entrepreneurial Success," Black Collegian, October 2000, pp. 140–143.

Pulley, Brett, The Billion Dollar BET: Robert Johnson and the Inside Story of Black Entertainment Television, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2004.

——, "The Cable Capitalist," Forbes, October 8, 2001, pp. 42–54.

Spanberg, Erik, "Taking Care of Business: Robert Johnson has a Long History of Seizing Every Opportunity to Build a Business Empire," The Business Journal, March 28, 2003, p. A4.

—Tiffeni J. Fontno

Of all the great blues musicians, Robert Johnson (1911-1938) was probably the most obscure. All that is known of him for certain is that he recorded 29 songs; he died young; and he was one of the greatest bluesmen of the Mississippi Delta.

There are only five dates in Johnson's life that can undeniably be used to assign him to a place in history: Monday, November 23; Thursday, November 26; and Friday, November 27, 1936, he was in San Antonio, Texas, at a recording session. Seven months later, on Saturday, June 19 and Sunday, June 20, 1937, he was in Dallas at another session. Everything else about his life is an attempt at reconstruction. As director Martin Scorsese says in his foreword to Alan Greenberg's play 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."

Beginnings

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

Twenty two-year-old Charles Dodds had married Julia Major in Hazlehurst, Mississippi - about 35 miles from 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 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 Nonah 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, 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, 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 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 re-married 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. Eventually he decided to run away.

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 gotten his start playing the jew's harp and harmonica.

Bluesman

By 1930, Johnson had married and become serious about playing the guitar. During the time that he was married, he lived with his sister and her husband. But his wife died in childbirth at the age of 16. By some accounts, Johnson briefly moved back with his mother and stepfather, where he encountered the same problems that he had found intolerable when he was growing up and soon left. In 1931, he married for a second time. By then, his fellow musicians were beginning to take note of his precocity on the guitar.

Johnson began traveling up and down the Delta, travelling by bus, hopping trains, and sometimes hitchhiking. When he arrived in a new town, he would play 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. Anything he earned was based on tips, not salary. With an ability to pick up tunes at first hearing, Johnson had no trouble giving his audiences what they wanted. Also working in his favor was an ability to establish instant rapport with his audiences. In every town he stopped, Johnson would establish ties to the local community that would serve him in good stead 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 [a] 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 becoming 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 a woman who was about 15 years older than himself - the mother of future musician Robert Jr. Lockwood. But Johnson reportedly also had someone - a woman - to look after him in all of the towns he played in. Johnson would reportedly ask young women living in the country with their families whether he could go home with them, and in most cases the answer was yes. At least until their husbands came home or Johnson was ready to move on.

Recording Sessions

Around 1936, Johnson met H. C. Spier in Jackson, Mississippi, who ran a music store and doubled as a talent scout. Spier put Johnson in touch with Ernie Oertle, who offered to record the young musician in San Antonio, Texas. At the recording session, Johnson was too shy to perform in front of the musicians in the studio, so played facing the wall. In the ensuing three-day session, Johnson played 16 selections. When the recording session was over, Johnson presumably returned home with several hundred dollars in his pocket - probably more money than he had ever had at one time.

Among the songs Johnson recorded in San Antonio were "Come On In My Kitchen," "Kind Hearted Woman," and "Cross Roads 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 "Cross Roads Blues," another of his great 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.

In 1937, Johnson traveled to Dallas, Texas, for another recording session. 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 Heart," "Me And The Devil," and "Hell Hound On My Trail." "Stones In My Heart" and "Me And The Devil" are both about betrayal and making a pact with the devil. The terrifying "Hell Hound On My Trail" is often considered to be the crowning achievement of blues-style music.

Interestingly, 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."

Death at the Crossroads

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

His death came on August 16, 1938, at the approximate age of 26 at a little country crossroads near Greenwood, Mississippi. He had been playing for several weeks at a country dance in a town about 15 miles from Greenwood when, by some accounts, he was given poisoned whiskey at the dance by the husband of a woman he had been seeing.

Johnson was buried in the graveyard of a small church near Morgan City, Mississippi, not far from Greenwood, in an unmarked grave. His life would be short but his music would serve as the root source for an entire generation of blues and rock and roll musicians.

Among the Mississippi Delta bluesmen believed to have exerted the strongest influences on Johnson's music are Charley Patton, Willie Brown, Howlin' Wolf, Tommy Johnson, and Son House. Peter Guralnick, in Searching for Robert Johnson, quotes Son House, "We'd all play for the Saturday night balls, and there'd be this little boy standing around. That was Robert Johnson. He was just a little boy then. He blew harmonica and he was pretty good with that, but he wanted to play guitar."

Books

Charters, Samuel, Robert Johnson, Oak Publications, 1973.

Greenberg, Alan, Love In Vain: A Vision of Robert Johnson, DaCapo Press, 1994.

Guralnick, Peter, Searching for Robert Johnson, E.P. Dutton, 1989.

singer; guitarist; composer

Personal Information

Born May 8, 1911, near Hazlehurst, MS; son of Julia Majors Dodds and Noah Johnson (a plantation worker); died of probable poisoning, August 16, 1938, near Greenwood, MS; believed buried in an unmarked grave at Mt. Zion Church, near Morgan City, MS; new evidence indicates burial site as Payne Chapel Memorial Baptist Church, near Quito, MS; married twice.

Career

Itinerant blues singer and guitarist, recording artist, composer. Traveled throughout the South, and as far north as Detroit and Chicago, playing in small clubs--juke joints--and at informal gatherings. Disappeared in 1930 and is believed to have stayed in southern Mississippi for about two years; returned to the northern part of the state with a guitar and uncanny musical prowess. Recorded 16 songs, including "Kind Hearted Woman," "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom," "Sweet Home Chicago," and "Terraplane Blues," for the American Record Company (ARC), November, 1936; recorded 13 songs for ARC, June, 1937.

Life's Work

More than half a century after his death, Robert Johnson, the legendary Mississippi Delta blues singer, remains an enigma. A provocative and influential figure in the blues field, Johnson revealed his remarkable musical skills around the age of 20 in 1931. He completed only two recording sessions--one in 1936 and the other in 1937--prior to his untimely death in 1938. Very little was known about Johnson when his first album was released in 1961. By the time Columbia Records released Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings in 1990, slightly more information had come to light, but the mystery endures.

Like that of other early Delta blues singers, the music of Robert Johnson arose from an oral tradition that began with a mixture of field hollers, chants, fiddle tunes, and religious music and ended up as the blues. The Mississippi Delta--two hundred miles of fertile lowlands stretching from Memphis, Tennessee in the north to Vicksburg, Mississippi in the south--was one of the primary locales in which the blues originated and developed. Johnson's sound is critically recognized as the culmination of the Delta blues tradition, as exemplified by other Delta blues artists such as Charley Patton, Son House, and Skip James. Typically, Delta blues are sung by a single artist playing an acoustic guitar, often using a bottleneck or similar instrument on the frets to achieve a distinctive sound. The next generation of musicians--and those who outlived Johnson--may have grown up in the Delta, but most left it as adults to go north and sing the city blues of Chicago. Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, two prominent Chicago bluesmen, have their roots in the Delta: both knew Robert Johnson and were heavily influenced by him.

Knowledge of Johnson, like that of his music, has come largely through recollections of musicians and others who knew him. Two of the best sources of information have been legendary Delta singer Son House, himself Johnson's elder, and Johnny Shines, a contemporary who met Johnson in 1935 and traveled with him for a while. Additional information has been uncovered by researchers, who have helped to establish Johnson's birth date as May 8, 1911. Some of the circumstances of Johnson's death remain particularly unclear; there is even a dispute over the true site of his unmarked grave.

Fortunately, the recordings remain, and the 1990 issuance of Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings has refocused attention on the life and artistry of this legendary bluesman. Johnson's posthumous fame and influence on younger musicians stems largely from the power of his recordings. He is said to have been heavily influenced by early blues artists like Skip James, who was recorded in 1931, around the same time that Johnson amazed his elders with his mastery of the guitar. James's eerie, distinctive style is reflected throughout Johnson's recordings, most notably in "32-20 Blues," which he adapted from James's "22-20 Blues."

Johnson first came to the attention of modern musicians, notably the rock generation of the 1960s, with the release of King of the Delta Blues Singers in 1961. Due to the country blues revival of the time, older musicians who had sung as young men in the 1930s began to enjoy a second career and renewed popularity among hip, new audiences. Johnson's album contained selections from his 1936 and 1937 recording sessions, some of which had not been previously released. Revealing the artist's tremendous talent on vocals and guitar as well as his uncommon flair for lyrical composition, the album challenged younger rock musicians and showed them what the blues were all about. King of the Delta Blues Singers proved so popular that it was reissued in 1969; a second album followed in 1970. Bob Dylan has written that Johnson was one of two musicians--the other being Woodie Guthrie--who most influenced him. Among the Robert Johnson songs covered by rock musicians in the 1960s and later were "Love in Vain" and "Stop Breakin' Down"--recorded by the Rolling Stones--and "Crossroad Blues"--recorded by Eric Clapton with Cream.

Many of Johnson's compositions had also become blues standards by the 1960s, thanks to Chicago blues artists Waters and Elmore James. In 1951 Elmore James recorded Johnson's "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom," making it a national hit. "Sweet Home Chicago," another Johnson composition, has been played and recorded by countless Chicago bluesmen. As a traveling musician who had crisscrossed the Delta region many times and gone as far north as Detroit and Chicago in the previous six years, Johnson had ample opportunity to refine his lyrics, judging their popularity and impact by his audiences' reactions. Johnson played to a variety of gatherings, from Saturday night juke joint crowds to friendly groups gathered for outdoor picnics. As Johnny Shines recalled, Robert Johnson was a rambling man who was ready to hop a freight at the drop of a hat. "He was a natural rambler," Shines told Pete Welding, as recorded in the Down Beat Music Yearbook. "His home was where his hat was, and even then lots of times he didn't know where that was. We used to travel all over ... used to catch freights everywhere. Played for dances, in taverns, on sidewalks."

While these types of playing conditions provided Johnson with a means of refining his songs, it was the discipline of the three-minute 78 rpm record that drove him to hone them into a more commercial form. He crafted his songs with a self-conscious artistry; he sang of women, drinking, traveling, and the devil. His lyrics contain haunting metaphors and vivid personifications. Rather than joining interchangeable "floating verses," as many other Delta bluesmen did, Johnson made each song a statement, with intentionally developed themes. As Greil Marcus noted in the New York Times, Johnson's songs have "an immediacy which is unmatched in the blues, and an impulse toward drama." Johnson recorded 29 songs for the American Record Company (ARC), which eventually became part of the Columbia Broadcasting System. His complete canon of recordings includes 29 masters, plus 12 surviving alternate takes, all recorded at two ARC sessions held in San Antonio and Dallas, Texas.

Johnson got started in the business the way many other Delta musicians did--by auditioning. H. C. Speir was a white ARC talent scout who ran a music store in Jackson, Mississippi. He had been acting as a talent scout for seven years and was responsible for getting blues artists Patton, House, Skip James, Tommy Johnson, and others into the recording studio. Speir passed Robert Johnson on to Ernie Oertle, another ARC talent scout and salesman in the mid-South, who offered to take him to San Antonio to record in November of 1936.

Johnson's first session in San Antonio lasted three days. Sixteen songs were recorded in the Gunter Hotel, where ARC had set up equipment to record a number of musical acts, ranging from the Chuck Wagon Gang to groups of Mexican musicians. "Kind Hearted Woman" was the first song recorded. Also captured in San Antonio were "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom" and "Sweet Home Chicago," both of which became post-war blues standards. "Terraplane Blues," known for its metaphoric lyrics, became a regional hit and Johnson's signature song. Most of the selections were released on Vocalion 78s, but three songs and several interesting alternate takes remained unissued until they appeared on the Columbia albums. About six months later, in June of 1937, Johnson was called back to record. The two-day session took place in a Dallas warehouse where, once again, ARC had set up its recording equipment to capture many different acts. This time 13 songs were recorded and 10 were released during the following year.

While Johnson's professional recording career can be measured in months, his musical legacy has survived more than 50 years. Critics have written a great deal about his genius, his unusual vocal style, his innovative guitar work, and the sensibility of his lyrics. As Peter Guralnick wrote in Searching for Robert Johnson, "There is no end of quoting and no end of reading into the lyrics, but unlike other equally eloquent blues, this is not random folk art, hit or miss, but rather carefully selected and honed detail, carefully considered and achieved effect."

Robert Johnson's life and music have had a "carefully considered and achieved effect" on his contemporaries, as well as on subsequent generations of musicians. During his life, Johnson was the subject of considerable controversy and inspired frequent conjecture; when he was murdered in 1938, at least three versions of the tragedy were given credibility--that he was stabbed to death by a jealous husband, stabbed by a woman, or poisoned by parties unknown. Subsequent research, based on eyewitness accounts, indicates that he was poisoned by a jealous husband.

In August of 1938 Johnson and Honeyboy Edwards were playing at a house party in Three Forks, near Greenwood, Mississippi. Johnson had apparently become too familiar with the companion of the man who had hired him to play. The outraged man allegedly laced Johnson's whiskey with poison. Johnson died three days later. Welding, quoting Shines's account in the Down Beat Music Yearbook, related that the story had changed by the time it reached Shines, who had left Johnson to live with his own family in Memphis: he had heard that Johnson was "poisoned by one of those women who really didn't care for him at all. And Robert was almost always surrounded by that kind.... Seems like they just sought him out.... And I heard that it was something to do with the black arts. Before he died, it was said, Robert was crawling along the ground on all fours, barking and snapping like a mad beast. That's what the poison done to him."

Shines's reference to "the black arts" evokes another myth about Johnson: namely, that he sold his soul to the devil in order to achieve mastery over the guitar. The myth grew in response to an absence of solid information about how he had learned to play the guitar so well. As a teenager Johnson had a reputation among older musicians, like House and Willie Brown, for being a pest who would grab their instruments and try to play them. House had to tell him, "You shouldn't do that, Robert. You're worrying the people.... You can't play, and you're just keeping up a lot of noise with it." As House recalled for Welding in the Down Beat Music Yearbook, Johnson ran away from home for about two years when his stepfather wanted him to work in the fields with him. More reliable sources attribute Johnson's 1930 departure and extended absence from northern Mississippi to the death of his first wife and his subsequent remarriage. At any rate, upon his return, Johnson had his own guitar. Robert Jr. Lockwood and a subsequently discovered photograph confirm that Johnson's guitar of choice was a Gibson Kalamazoo. Johnson demonstrated such a great ability after returning home that House believed he had "sold his soul to the devil in exchange for learning to play like that." More likely, the guitarist's prowess was the fruit of guitar teacher Ike Zinnerman's labor.

Although Johnson never confirmed the otherworldly story, another Delta blues musician, Tommy Johnson, once told his brother the same tale about going down to the crossroads to meet the devil at midnight. Folk researchers draw a parallel between the devil in the story and the African Yoruba god, Legba, the trickster, whose favorite haunt was a crossroads. It seems Johnson knew the life he sang about: his songs are rife with devil imagery, and some of his actions while performing were apparently a bit peculiar. It has been said, for instance, that he would often turn his back when he felt the eyes of another musician were watching him too closely--as if he needed to hide the secret to his extraordinary talent. All of which adds to the myth, but takes nothing away from the music of the shadowy blues artist who came to be known as the "King of the Delta Blues Singers."

Works

Selective Discography

• King of the Delta Blues Singers, Columbia, 1961.
• King of the Delta Blues Singers: Volume 2, Columbia, 1970.
• Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings, Columbia, 1990.

Further Reading

Books

• Charters, Samuel, The Bluesmen, Oak Publications, 1967.
• Guralnick, Peter, Searching for Robert Johnson, Dutton, 1989.
• Marcus, Greil, Mystery Train, Dutton, 1975.
• Palmer, Robert, Deep Blues, Viking, 1981.

Periodicals

• American Visions, June 1988.
• Chicago Tribune, January 5, 1990.
• Down Beat Music Yearbook, 1966.
• Esquire, October 1990.
• Living Blues, No. 94, 1990.
• Musician, January 1991.
• Nation, October 8, 1990.
• New York Times, November 22, 1970.
• Record Research, No. 43, May 1963.
• Rolling Stone, October 18, 1990.
• Wilson Library Bulletin, November 1975.
• Additional information provided by Robert Johnson historian Stephen C.
• LaVere.

— David Bianco

For more information on Robert Johnson, visit Britannica.com.

(fl. ca. 1918)

Direct voice medium of Stockton-on-Tees, England. Her powers developed after a sitting with Mrs. Thomas Everitt. Her principal control claimed to be David Duguid, the former trance painting medium of Glasgow.

A sitter at a séance held March 5, 1918, reported in Light as follows: "I have never had two sittings alike with Mrs. Johnson. They are marked each time by some different characteristic. On this occasion, before each new speaker used the trumpet, I saw a faintly-luminous figure moving about. Then, again, all the voices were louder than is usual in ordinary conversation, so much so, that Mrs. Johnson on more than one occasion asked the male speakers to moderate their tone; otherwise neighbours and pedestrians outside might be attracted by the unusual noise. Most of our spirit visitors remained throughout the sitting, and verbally called our attention to the fact. This was the best direct-voice sitting which, so far, it has been my good fortune to attend."

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle remarked on Johnson's remarkable power with direct voice phenomena, commenting on the nonreligious atmosphere of her sittings with humorous spirit communicators.

See Robert Johnson Lyrics

• Born: May 08, 1911, Hazlehurst, MS
• Died: August 16, 1938, Greenwood, MS
• Active: '30s
• Genres: Blues
• Instrument: Slide Guitar, Guitar (Acoustic), Vocals
• Representative Albums: "King of the Delta Blues," "King of the Delta Blues Singers, Vol. 2," "King of the Delta Blues Singers"
• Representative Songs: "Cross Road Blues," "Love in Vain," "Come on in My Kitchen"

Biography

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. ~ Cub Koda, All Music Guide

Masters Buy this CD	Steady Rollin' Man Buy this CD	Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues: Robert Johnson Buy this CD	Search for Robert Johnsnon Buy this CD	Up Jumped the Devil Buy this CD
Love in Vain Buy this CD	All Time Blues Classics Buy this CD	Complete Recordings, Vol. 2 Buy this CD	Mississippi Blues, Vol. 4 Buy this CD	Complete Recordings [Jewel Case] Buy this CD

Show More Albums Show Fewer Albums

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)