Robert Johnson (1911–1938)
Robert Johnson was born May 8, 1911, in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, and moved with his mother to Robinsonville, a small but thriving northern Mississippi cotton community some twenty miles south of Memphis. A consummate musician, Johnson's talent was so awe-inspiring that myths grew up around him, particularly one about selling his soul to the devil at a crossroads at midnight in return for worldly success.
In Johnson's early teens, the harmonica was his main instrument. He took up the guitar during the late 1920s. He made a rack for his harp out of baling wire and string and was soon picking out appropriate accompaniments for his harp and voice. Willie Brown, a musician of some renown and ability, tried to show Johnson some things, and it was through Willie that Johnson met Charlie Patton.
Johnson farmed for a while, but both his sixteen-year-old wife, Virginia, and their baby died in childbirth in April 1930. Less than two months later, close to the first of June, Son House came to live in Robinsonville at the request of Willie Brown. House, a precarious combination of bluesman and preacher, brought with him a kind of music whose intensity was shared with no one, not even Patton. It was raw, direct emotion, and Johnson followed House and Brown wherever they went. Son House's influence can be clearly heard in Johnson's recordings of 1936 and 1937.
The country was deep in the Depression at that time, but central Mississippi was fortunate to have the federal government building highways in an attempt to provide work and an injection of cash into the economy. The Saturday-night juke joints of the road gangs and lumber camps became Johnson's stage, and bluesman Ike Zinneman became his coach and mentor. Johnson also found out that women could provide almost everything else for him.
If he was going to be in any one place for a while, he developed a technique of female selection that generally kept him well fed and cared for. As soon as he hit town, he'd find a homely woman. A few kind words and he knew he'd have a warm smile and a place to stay anytime, though his womanizing more than once got him in a scrape.
He traveled up and down the river playing in levee camps, for road gangs, and in juke joints, visiting family and friends in Robinsonville and Memphis. He even roamed as far afield as Canada and New York in later years, but he always came home to Helena, Arkansas, one of the most musically active towns in the Delta.
Johnson was protective about his guitar playing and was acutely aware of other musicians “ripping off” his “stuff.” If someone was eyeing him too closely, he would get up in the middle of a song, make a feeble excuse, and disappear for months. It all seemed very quirky, although recent research has suggested that he may have been guarding a very personal method of tuning his guitar.
Out of necessity, he developed the ability to play almost anything requested of him. In addition to the blues for which he was known, he had a repertoire that included pop tunes, hillbilly tunes, polkas, square dances, sentimental songs, and ballads. Among the more common pieces he played were “Yes, Sir, That's My Baby,” “My Blue Heaven,” and “Tumbling Tumbleweeds.”
All the great musicians of the era came through Helena. Sonny Boy Williamson, Robert Nighthawk, Honeyboy Edwards, Howlin' Wolf, and countless others performed in area nightclubs and hot spots. Pretty soon the word would go out that Robert Johnson was going to be at such-and-such a place, and the people would come. They knew they'd have a good time and hear some fine music.
It was said he could hear a piece of music just once and be able to play it. He could be deep in conversation with a group of people and hear something — never stop talking — and later be able to play it and sing it perfectly. This talent amazed some very fine musicians, and they never understood how he did it.
Enter Ernie
Ernie Oertle was the American Record Company salesman and informal talent scout for the mid-South in the late 1930s, and after an audition, Oertle decided to take Johnson to San Antonio, Texas, to record.
Johnson's first session in November 1936 yielded the song for which he is most widely remembered: “Terraplane Blues.” It was his best seller and a fair-sized hit for Vocalion Records. He was invited back to Texas to cut some more sides the following June, but nothing sold as well as “Terraplane.” Although six of Johnson's eleven records were still in the Vocalion catalog by December 1938, he wasn't called back that spring or even the following summer. Vocalion released one final 78 in February 1939, but that was probably due to a great deal of interest in him by John Hammond.
Johnson's Last Job
Sometime in August 1938, Johnson left Helena and swung through Rob-insonville to see his people before playing a gig down in the Delta. As ever, he had become friends with a local woman — who unfortunately happened to be the wife of the man who ran the juke house at the intersection of Highways 82 and 49E, which the locals often referred to as “Three Forks.” It was here that Johnson played his last job.
On August 13, 1938, Three Forks offered the talents of Robert Johnson and singer and harmonica player Sonny Boy Williamson. There was a great deal of music and dancing that Saturday night, as both men sang and played their own brand of Delta blues. Williamson noticed the attraction Johnson displayed for the lady of the house, as well as the marked tension in the room. He recognized a potentially explosive situation when he saw one.
Robert Johnson often played a Gibson L-1 with a pin bridge and a round (as opposed to F-shaped) sound hole. Gibson built its reputation on the arch-tops — or F holes — but began to introduce flat tops after 1926.
During a break in the music, Johnson and Williamson were standing together when someone brought Johnson an open half-pint of whiskey. As he was about to drink from it, Williamson knocked it out of his hand, and it broke on the ground. He advised Johnson to never drink from an open bottle. But Johnson was angry and told Williamson to never knock whiskey out of his hand.
When a second open bottle was brought to Johnson, Williamson could do no more than stand by and watch. Back on the stand, it wasn't too long before Johnson could no longer sing. Williamson took up the slack for him with his voice and harmonica, but Johnson stopped short in the middle of a number and got up and went outside. Before the night was over he displayed definite signs of poisoning. It seems the houseman's jealousy had finally gotten the best of him and he had laced Johnson's whisky with strychnine. Ironically, Johnson survived the poisoning but contracted pneumonia. He died on Tuesday, August 16. He was twenty-seven years old.
He was buried in the graveyard of the Little Zion Church just north of Greenwood, Mississippi. Eleven 78rpm records were issued during Johnson's lifetime and one posthumously. Including the material that never saw issuance on 78s, there are a total of forty-two recordings — the only recordings of one of the true geniuses of American music.
