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Robert Johnson (1911-1938)

"Standin' at the crossroads, tried to flag a ride..."

Robert Johnson, born Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911 – August 16, 1938) is among the most famous of Delta blues musicians. His landmark recordings from 1936–1937 display a remarkable combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that have influenced generations of musicians. Johnson's shadowy, poorly documented life and death at age 27 have given rise to much legend. Robert Johnson was born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi sometime around May 8, 1911, the 11th child of Julia Major Dodds, who had previously borne 10 children to her husband Charles Dodds. Born out of wedlock, Johnson did not take the Dodds name. Around 1914, Robert 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 then 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. 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. Johnson began travelling up and down the Delta, travelling by bus, hopping trains, and sometimes hitchhiking. When Johnson arrived in a new town, he would play on street corners or in front of the local barbershop or a restaurant. Anything he earned was based on tips, not salary. Fellow musician Johnny Shines was 17 when he met Johnson in 1933. He estimated that Johnson was maybe a year older than himself. During this time Johnson established what would be a relatively long-term relationship with Estella Coleman, a woman who was about fifteen years his elder and the mother of musician Robert Lockwood, Jr. Around 1936, Johnson sought out H. C. Speir in Jackson, Mississippi, who ran a general store and doubled as a talent scout. Speir, who helped the careers of many blues players, put Johnson in touch with Ernie Oertle, who offered to record the young musician in San Antonio, Texas. At the recording session, held on November 23, 1936 in rooms at the landmark Gunter Hotel which Brunswick Records had set up as a temporary studio, Johnson reportedly performed facing the wall. This has been cited as evidence he was a shy man and reserved performer. In 1937, Johnson traveled to Dallas, Texas, for another recording session in a makeshift studio at the Brunswick Record Building, 508 Park Avenue. Eleven records from this session would be released within the following year. In the last year of his life, Johnson is believed to have traveled to St. Louis and possibly Illinois, and then to some states in the East. He spent some time in Memphis and traveled through the Mississippi Delta and Arkansas. By the time he died, at least six of his records had been released in the South as race records. His death occurred on August 16, 1938, at the age of twenty-seven at a country crossroads near Greenwood, Mississippi. He had been playing for a few weeks at a country dance in a town about 15 miles (24 km) from Greenwood. There are a number of accounts and theories regarding the events preceding Johnson's death. The precise location of his grave remains a source of ongoing controversy, and three different markers have been erected at supposed burial sites outside of Greenwood. (source: wikipedia.org)

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