Robert Johnson was the man who croaked and started a club we still talk about to today. It is said he sold his soul to the devil for guitar skills to please the lord, but how much of this lore do we actually know? Before recording the 29 tracks that people still hail as the authentic blues today, he was just a shitty young performer begging for stage time. He was frequently booed off stage and had a growing reputation as a failed musician.
Really theres two sides to this coin: the lore and the reality. The lore says that in the 1920s, Robert Johnson disappeared for seven months without a trace and came back a master of the guitar.
Across a wide-open Southern field, Johnson started walking. Wandering town to town, he found himself at a crossroads, the intersection of Highway 61 and 49. It was dark, quiet and almost midnight. Robert had heard the stories. He laid down his guitar, knelt, and bowed his head as if praying. Robert played his guitar down and kneeled next to it, bowing his head as if he was praying to something. Mist filled the field. From the shadows, a tall man with a wide-brimmed hat approached and reached for the instrument. Robert nervously passed it over. The stranger tuned the strings to pitches Robert had never heard, hitting tones that shouldn’t exist. When he handed the guitar back, the boy who couldn’t hold a tune was gone. Robert never missed another note again. He played with a new, haunting style, it sounded like two men playing at once, one rhythm and one soul.
That is the lore. Believe what you want, but the anchor of this story is Ike Zimmerman. Ike was an established bluesman who took Robert in during that seven-month absence. They spent their time playing in the middle of graveyards and fields from sunup to sundown. The truth? The man just practiced relentlessly. People couldn’t fathom that level of mastery, so they blamed the devil. It is the same story with Led Zeppelin; they didn’t sell their souls, they were just a really good band. People fear what they cannot achieve, and while the lore is gritty, it takes away from the raw, obsessive talent of the man.
Unfortunately, not everyone was a fan of Robert’s newfound confidence. After flirting with a married woman Robert was killed by poisoned whiskey.