Robert Johnson is both a man and a myth. Well, at least his guitar talent
is. There are two stories surrounding this man; one which suggests that he met
the Devil himself at the nearby crossroads. The Devil grabbed his guitar, tuned
it and then handed it back to Robert. From that day on, his supernatural talent
with the guitar and his outstanding vocals were said to far exceed those of any
other blues musician. The more likely version of the story places Robert in Mississippi
where he was born in 1911 to the wife of a successful furniture maker and a
local man (who was not her husband) named Noah Johnson. In his spare time, he
taught himself how to play the harmonica and learned how to play guitar by
watching others, such as Son House, Charlie Patton and Willie Brown. Robert
Johnson married in 1929 and was ready to settle down when a year later he lost
both his wife and son during childbirth. Robert left town, traveling and
playing the blues where ever he could. When he returned home a few years later,
he ran into Son House and Willie Brown and was asked to sit in at a juke joint
dance in Banks, Mississippi. Once the gig was over, the two older musicians
only had one explanation for his sudden increase in talent: he must have sold
his soul to the Devil. Although Robert admitted being influenced by several
famous blues artists, he stated his biggest influence was a mysterious blues
artist name Zinneman. Robert made a habit of following Zinneman to the local
graveyard where he like to practice at night. No one is quite sure what he
learned from Zinneman during those late night sessions, but when he returned
home from Hazelhurst (Zinneman's origins), not only could he play and sing
anything from country to pop to polka, but he was also writing songs as well.
Some years later, at the age of 27, Robert was poisoned by the jealous husband
or boyfriend of a woman he had been flirting with earlier in the evening at a
dance he had been performing at.