Did bluesman Robert Johnson really sell his soul to the devil?

Today that the blues is no longer popular popular music, Robert Johnson is still a superstar among fans and all musicians who have kept the blue soul. For them Johnson is a king… who did not necessarily win his crown and his talent by chance. It was all a little too beautiful, too high, too hot to be honest…

Robert Leroy Johnson was born in 1911 in Haslehurst, Mississippi. Forced to flee with his family from a conspiracy of white farmers, he grew up in Memphis. Always with his harmonica and his guitar, he starts playing what the pastors call “the music of the devil” because, on Sundays, the men go less and less to church, and more and more to the juke joint, the hut-café reserved for blacks, which at the end of the week constitutes the only alternative to family and religion, and where the bluesmen set the pace.

Robert Johnson and 1936

STANDING AT THE CROSSROAD

Then Robert Johnson disappeared for a year. Which isn’t difficult, considering he was already spending his time disappearing from town to town. “He was famous in one place for two weeks, and then he was gone,” as one of his friends said. In any case, this time, no one has heard from him for a year. It would be precisely during this period that he would have gone alone “at the crossroad”. And it wouldn’t really have been a crossroads like any other, since he would have been specifically advised to go here and at the very precise hour of midnight. There, a black creature was waiting for him: it was the devil himself who asked Johnson to lend him his guitar. The demon would then have offered to grant it personally in exchange for the soul of the guitarist. Johnson didn’t have much to lose, other than that already very bewildered soul… So once the deal was sealed, the devil would have done his part of the deal, played a few tunes and then returned Johnson his guitar. It’s a story we tell; it’s even the story that everyone has been telling since then, although we cannot guarantee the reader that it is 100% true.

When he entered a juke point once more, both the audience and the other musicians were flabbergasted: Johnson had become the best guitarist in the region. He was going to burn 29 songs on 3 78 rpm discs. Eleven of them were also released on single discs, played in jukeboxes in the Delta and the South. Everywhere, women fell into his arms. Johnson sings “Cross road blues”, which doesn’t have particularly demonic lyrics, but whose flames will last until the guitar of Eric Clapton. Johnson invents all the chords and rhythms of rock’n’roll, which he launches for example in his “Sweet Home Chicago” which others who sold their souls to the devil for much more, such as the Blues Brothers, would later market. for a much larger sum of money than he won. The Rolling Stones do not have sympathies for the devil for nothing: they also stole several songs from Johnson, including “Love in Vain”. The explosive “Dust my Broom” by Ike and Tina Turner? Guess who recorded it first?

Certainly, for a modern ear, the old nasal recordings of Johnson are less pleasant to listen to than the contemporary versions. But, every major rock and blues artist has spoken out regarding the insane prowess of Robert Johnson, and no one quite understands how he crafted it all, both the basics of modern music, but also his singular interpretation: sometimes you have the impression that there are two guitars to play, a rhythm and a solo, but it is Johnson who does all that alone. The rhythms are also disturbing, because he makes them constantly evolve. In the same song, sometimes it’s slower, and sometimes faster, and that’s not by chance… it’s his way of expressing himself. His tearful voice is also one of the most perfect examples of the beginnings of the Delta blues: this music was not made, initially, to laugh while slapping on the knees… it was there to express the blues that we had to blade.

These successes did not seem natural to his contemporaries. Of course, Johnson might very well have indulged in a voodoo cult, although it’s fairly unlikely. But, if his most famous compositions do not mention demoneries, Robert Johnson nevertheless later had fun with this reputation which made him famous. In “Hellhound on my trail” he claims to try to stay far ahead of the “Hellhound” following him. And in “Me and the Devil Blues” he sings: “Early this morning when you knocked on my door and I said ‘Hello Satan, I think it’s time to go’…

Its success surprised…. But not his death on August 16, 1938. Nobody worried regarding it. It was mentioned for the first time by a musicologist who found the death certificate nearly thirty years following the disappearance of the artist, without the cause of death being mentioned: even today we do not know what which carried away Robert Johnson at the age of 27.

One might say that the protection sealed by Johnson during his pact with the devil had not been very effective. In 1998, however, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled that a retired trucker named Claud Johnson was indeed the singer’s natural son. The court awarded him the tidy sum of 1 million dollars in royalties. So, Robert Johnson had certainly died poor but, if a pact with the devil there was… perhaps he was finally kept!

If one day you find yourself alone at midnight,

At a crossroads in the southern United States…

Think of our friend’s soul

Of course, many cities in the Delta today claim to have THE crossroads where Robert Johnson would have changed his life. There is a Robert Johnson Museum in Crystal Springs, Mississippi: www.robertjohnsonbluesfoundation.org

Some great covers of Robert Johnson’s standards:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEmvBdRLg4k

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