HMR Project: History of Music & Modern Recording

Early Blues Musician Robert Johnson

Birth of the Blues: Robert Johnson

Robert Johnson

Robert Leroy Johnson was another of numerous Delta blues guitarists, supposedly born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, on May 8, 1911. Music and the spooky have had an intimate relationship for centuries. Johnson is particularly famous for selling his soul to the Devil in exchange for tuning his guitar, supposedly at the crossroads of US 61 and US 49 about 15 to 20 miles north of Clarksdale, MS, heart of the Delta blues and headquarters of contemporary blues vocalist, Watermelon Slim). Albeit Clarksdale is only perhaps eighty miles south of Memphis, Delta blues which are Mississippi blues along the river are distinguished in style from Memphis blues just across the border in Tennessee. As well, in more modern times famous Beale Street in Memphis is highly commercialized for nightlife and tourists while much smaller Clarksdale, by contrast, owns a broken down zeitgeist of blues as worn out dilapidation along with muddy water.

It seems that Johnson had left Mississippi for Arkansas in 1930, neither owning a guitar nor very good at playing one. Six months later (some say two years) he returned with a Gibson Kalamazoo and a fairly nice ability. As to the Devil, that rumor is thought to have gotten started with Son House and Peter Welding a couple years later, then let to float toward the development of various stories about it. Albeit Johnson wrote 'Cross Road Blues' not much later, complaining about not knowing whether to head east or west, he isn't known to have contributed to tales superstitious. The improvement in his abilities credited to the supernatural likely in fun were more probably the result of studying with guitar player, Ike Zimmerman. The blues genre is loaded with the jive of endless things to grieve about no matter how small. But a stray puff of lint, nay, Schrödinger's cat, or even worse, radiantly smiling, can be the blues.

Johnson made his first recordings on November 23, 1936, in San Antonio, TX, at the Gunter Hotel, Room 414: 'Kind Hearted Woman Blues', 'Terraplane Blues', 'Dead Shrimp Blues', 'I Believe I'll Dust My Broom', 'Ramblin' On My Mind', 'Come On In My Kitchen', 'Sweet Home Chicago', 'When You Got a Good Friend', 'Phonograph Blues'. Further sessions followed later that month. American Music doesn't have him recording again until June 19 and 20 in Dallas, Texas, among his last on the 20th such as 'Traveling Riverside Blues', 'Honeymoon Blues', 'Love in Vain Blues' and 'Milkcow's Calf Blues'. The Rolling Stones would do their famous cover of 'Love in Vain' in 1969 on their 'Let It Bleed' album.