Robert johnson biography devil went down

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Townsend, Henry Townsend ; Greensmith, Bill A Blues Life. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press. Wald, Elijah New York City: Amistad. Chasin' that Devil Music: Searching for the Blues. Wilson, Jim January 22, The Detroit Free Press. External links [ edit ]. Up Jumped the Devil is the product of 50 years of research. Conforth and Wardlow conducted interviews with people throughout Mississippi for decades.

They combed county and state census records, filings, and licenses. They dug through the archives and annals to find whatever they could about Robert Johnson. At the time, most of Mississippi was rural and especially in the Black community, records were often sparse or done haphazardly. This makes retracing the steps of a wandering musician very difficult.

And most Bluesmen were itinerant wanderers. So how exactly was Johnson so good? Record keeping during that era in the Deep South was inconsistent at best, and those who claimed to have known Johnson have given conflicting accounts of the events of his life. But even as more facts of his life have been painstakingly pieced together, there is one legend about the blues singer that simply refuses to die.

But do not tell that to the citizens of Rosedale, Mississippi, because they claim that their own crossroad, between Highway 1 and 8, is the one in question. The most popular theory is that Johnson was poisoned by the angry husband of a woman that he had flirted with, but nothing is known for certain. While other, more modern songs may use technology to aid in their attempt to chill the soul, Johnson needed only his voice and his guitar.

His best songs are spine tingling, seemingly possessed with an otherworldly atmosphere of mystery and suffering. Even after decades of scholarly research, where exactly Johnson was buried, or who buried him are contested facts. Johnson took out his instrument, a regular six-string guitar fitted with an extra seventh string, something neither House nor Brown had seen before.

But that wasn't the only new thing. Johnson had acquired an insane skill level and unusual technique, strumming a series of rapid-fire chords that made the guitar sound almost like a piano — a piano with three hands playing it. How could this kid, who was lousy enough to get kicked off the stage in Robinsonville, return just a year later as the most talented blues guitarist in the Delta?

To the stunned crowd in Banks, Mississippi, there was only one explanation — Johnson had made a deal with the devil. To God-fearing black folks living in the s Deep South, the blues was clearly "the devil's music. So it would've made perfect sense that Johnson's unearthly talent was bestowed by Satan. In fact, Johnson wasn't the first blues musician who reportedly honed his skills with help from the Prince of Darkness.

An earlier robert johnson biography devil went down hero named Tommy Johnson — who is not related to Robert Johnson, but grew up in the same Mississippi county — was rumored to have gone down to the crossroads and had his guitar tuned by the devil himself. A biography of Tommy Johnson includes an interview with his brother who says Tommy personally told him the story of this meeting.

When the same soul-selling story was told of Robert Johnson, he did little to dispel the rumor. In fact, he may have cultivated the devilish connection. Steven Johnson — singer, a preacher and vice president of the Robert Johnson Blues Foundation — has a far more earthly explanation for how his grandfather Robert transformed seemingly overnight from an awkward amateur into the guitar-playing genius who has inspired generations of world-famous musicians, including Bob Dylan, Keith Richards and Eric Clapton.

No, he practiced. And he practiced twice as hard as everybody else. By Steven's calculation, his grandfather's mysterious absence from the Delta music scene stretched for closer to three years, not just one.