Did The Father of The Blues Really Sell His Soul to The Devil?

And we continue with our American Stories. Up next, a story out of Mississippi, where we broadcast in Oxford, about an hour south of Memphis. And this story is about the King of the Delta Blues. We’re talking about Robert Johnson. Much of his life is shrouded in lore and mystery. Here to separate fact from fiction is Robert’s grandson. Let’s get into the story.

Robert Johnson, born May 8, 1911, in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, which is a town in Copiah County, Mississippi, and his mother’s name was Miss Julia Dobbs. Julia had about five kids; Robert was the youngest, and she was married to a guy named Charlie Dobbs. Charlie Dobbs was not Robert’s dad. Okay. Charlie Dobbs was a man that got in trouble in Hazlehurst because, you know, the racial tension and everything, and Mister Charlie was, he was one of those that, “I’m okay, I’m gonna do what I do.” And so he had to get out of town because he wanted to do what he wanted to do, and he left Julia and the kids there. Well, while they were there, a man by the name of Noah Johnson started, you know, calling them courtship. Noah Johnson is Robert’s biological father. Okay. And the family, she took the family from Hazlehurst, moved to the Delta area, and, you know, it was considered to be a sharecropper. And from sunup to sundown, you were working in the fields for a little or no money. You were living on them on the land, on plantations. But they still were plantations, even though slavery was always her plantation, and they had what they called a commissary. The way they would pay people for working in the fields was, it was real slick. He would let them come and buy food from the commissary that they didn’t work for all that long. So, are you doing and feeding them? You weren’t really paying them anything. Now, his mother was messing with. She had another guy. By then, she was pretty promiscuous when it came to relations. And, uh, the man that she was with at that time tried to get my granddaddy to work in the fields, you know, from a kid on up to his teenage years. He refused, and the man used to beat on my granddad and whooping, trying to make him work. So Robert took up and left. He didn’t want to live the type of life from there. He was a rambler, you know. He were one of his songs, you know, “A Rambling Man Blues,” you know, “Traveling Riverside Blues.”

I mean, he was.

He was always on the go, you know, living from home to home and not not seeing a stable family.

He would get on, jump at, you know, the boxcars.

And on the train, “Hey, jumping, jump in! Hey, go the town!” He jump off from the town, you know, right there in the town. “I’m back on and go, keep it up.” That’s how you travel, really, a lot in the Delta, you know. I mean, he was. But they would say, “footloose and fancy free.”

Okay.

He talked about different relationships, having affairs, you know. He said he had women’s in Vicksburg, clean on into Tennessee. “I got clean into Tennessee.” Must have had one in Friar Point, Mississippi, up in the Delta, he said. “But if Friar Point rider jumps all over it, but my fride fine ride or not.”

Hobs O money out all them women. So, he had women, and it was ever.

Old every Mississippi zip code women. And he talked about those towns in those cities, really, towns.

They were less little towns on Highway 61.

That was a route, Highway 61, from Vicksburg on up to Memphis.

Little towns.

He had women, so that he was just kind of bounding with the man, you know, the instincts of being a man. Yeah, and he got to a point where he didn’t really value a woman’s worth, but he didn’t want to beach like that. He even got married. You know, he got married, and his wife got pregnant. They were in their teens, early teens, really. That was before he came to Hazlehurst, and, you know, he said, “I want to live a normal life.” He tried it. Okay. So he met the name Virginia Travis. He married her, got pregnant and everything, and during the childbirth, she died, of course, and the child died as well. You know, while she was gone to her grandmother’s home to have birth, your birth to the child. Robert picked up the guitar again, said, “Okay, while she, you know, she’s gone there, I can kind of pick up my old habit again,” you know. So he started playing the guitar and everything, going to different towns, and he had it planning where he was going to be right in town by the time she was getting ready to give birth. And when he got there, her and the baby had died, and her parents, her family blamed Robert Johnson for both deaths, said, “If you weren’t playing this old devil’s music, then Virginia and that baby would still be alive.”

And there you go.

Again, pressure, depression, torment, because not only did my wife and child die, but y’all blaming me because I’m singing the blues. There go drinking and womenizing again. I mean, it was just a cycle. And every time he was trying to break that cycle, something. Even with my grandmother. He asked for my grandmother’s hand in marriage, asked her dad, “You know, I would like to marry Virgin Maid.” That was my grandmother, named Virgin Maid, and my great-granddad said, “Nope, no daughter, mine’s gonna marry anybody that’s saying the devil music.” They go again. I wanted to be with my dad, wanted to spend time with my dad. My dad, I don’t remember seeing his dad two times, both towns. He would come to my great-granddaddy at home who raised my dad, and he would try to come in to see the boy, and my great-granddaddy said, “Nope, as far as you can go,” you know. But he, my dad, looking out the window, and he’s saying his dad give his granddad money.

He just the little boy for me, you know.

That happened twice. Other than that, he wasn’t. He was kept away from his son. His daughter and wife died, everybody blaming him. And so that’s, I mean, just just mormented him, really, and the life changes that he went through and the struggles, that’s really is what led him to want to pick up the guitar. He would go and, uh, peeping in the juke joints and seeing us a guy named Charlie Patton and Willie Brown and other guys playing in old juke joints, and he took a liking to the guitar. And, uh, Robert, you know, he would go in there when they, when they take a break, he go in there, pick the guitar up and try to play it and everything, and and just be the hold of tune. I’m talking about this: the artist will say, “Look, guys, which out! Please get that guitar from that man!” They kicked him out, said, “Look, boy, give me that guitar!”

Get out of it!

“All he’s doing is just noise in the people! Get that guitar!” Brother Proper said, “Okay, I’m gonna show y’all over, show you,” and he left. And he was determined. From that point on, he was determined that he was gonna learn how.

To play that guitar.

Legend has it that Robert Johnson learned how to play the guitar going to the crossroads in the Delta, meeting up with the devil that would say, “I would give you this talent if you would give me your soul. You will become famous. I need your soul.” So he’s supposed have made a deal with the devil to sell his soul, but in all actuality, the truth that the myth is, you cannot make a deal with the devil to say your soul because you don’t own your soul.

When we come back, more of Robert Johnson’s story, as told by Stephen Johnson, his grandson, here on Our American Stories. And we return to Our American Stories and the final portion of our story on blues legend Robert Johnson. When we last left off, Stephen Johnson was telling us about his grandfather’s trip to the crossroads where he supposedly sold his soul to the devil to learn how to play the guitar.

That’s not the real story, though.

Let’s return to Stephen Johnson.

The truth is, you cannot make a deal with the devil to sell your soul because you don’t own your soul.

And now, being the preacher that I am…

The Bible said, “All souls belong to God, and the soul that sins shall die.” So what that tells me is that we have choices in life that we have to make, whether they be good or bad, and those choices will be what we have to answer to when we sit on that, on their seat, on that judgment seat. It’s not that our soul don’t belong to us.

We don’t. We don’t own it. Okay? So he couldn’t say something.

And then on now, uh, the song—if you will listen to that song, if people pay attention to it—”Crowsroad Blue” said,

“Cut one.”

“I went down to the crossroads, fell down on my knee.” And again, “I went down to the crossroads, fell down

on my knee.” Ad a lot about “the Big, the Lord, to say, ‘Poor Bob, if you please.'”

That’s totally contradicted to what the myth says about them selling the soul. Robbo’s at a crossroads in his life. He was seeking to do right. He wanted to be, you know, wanted to be saved, wanted do something different lif a different type of life on. He didn’t want to be the woman I, alcoholic, drinking, you know, man that he was.

You know.

So that’s the crossroads that I believe he went to. And only God knows, you know, how that ended up. But people rather believe the myth because of them going from zero to one hundred, past one hundred in two to three years.

And then the truth that actually happened.

Yeah, when the time, from 1930 to about 1932, Robert left to Delta, okay, and came back to Hazlehurst, Mississippi, searching for Noah Johnson, his biological father. And then, searching for his biological father, he connected with a blues artist named Ike Zimmerman about five miles south of Hayzas in a little town called Boar Regard. In that time, Ike was known as one of the best blues players in the Southern area. He actually started hanging out with Ike, and he started living with him. And, I mean, he was at Ike’s home so frequently. Ike’s daughter said, “Yet, they actually… ‘Dad, Dad, is he…’ They called him R.L. Robert Lee Roy Johnson is R.L., our brother. He’s at the house just as much as they would.” He was sleeping on the floor. He followed Alike, followed alike. And then there would be times when, during that time, I mentoring, there was a cemetery right across the street from Ike’s home, and Ike and Rober would go out there night. That’s what they would go out of cemetery at night, sit on these stone graves, facing each other, lick forlick, you know. And Ike was telling him, “Okay, Robert, you can sound just as terrible as you want to. Nobody’s gonna say nothing to you out here. They’re not gonna kick you out here if I get kicked out cemetary.” And so they, they, you know, they, he continued to mentor and teaching, you know, showing, and they would go to different juke joints in the Kapye County area. This happened for like two years in a row, you know, just two years straight. So Robin said, “Okay, I think I got this down that.” So he went back to the depths. He saw some of them, same guys.

Get out of there!

“Boy, you just noise and the people!” Rober said, “Just let me give me the guitar! Let me show you what I’m working with!” You got the guitar, and they say he started playing it. They said, “Somehow, mile dropped!” Hey, Willie Brown mouth dropped! Anybody heard it, and the people just stunning. It was like, “Is this Rhala? Is this the same guy that couldn’t do nothing?” “Okay, Robert. Now, hey, ‘You learned how to play this day too quick?’ Where did you? How did you? You had to do something!” Robin, “You went to the… you went to… Soldo sold the devil, learned how to play that guitar!” Now, I don’t know if he played with that, you know. And it’s my belief that he said, “Okay, believe what you want to be. Hey, that’s what you want to think, think it.” But I know, you know, he knew where, he knew where his talent came from.

You know.

Driven. Granddaddy was driven to learn how to play that good time. So talent come from all working dedication, not from selling this old. He put those hours in, and they paid off. He ended up going to Dallas, and he recalled those 29 songs: “We Done Own Chicago,” “Dust My Broom,” “I,” “Tomorroland the Red Hot.” When I first heard that song, I was like six years old, seven years old, and I remember like it was yesterday, ’cause I’m watching cartoon, right? And Tom and Jerr are chasing out each other, and that song, “Hot Tamula in.”

“The Red Hot.” Yeah, we got them.

Say up, I mean. And they come to find out when I got to be a teenager that,

My granddaddy was singing it.

And “Sweet On Chicago” are my two favorite because of the history behind it. I called “Sweet On Chicago” the Blues’ national anthem. You know, he said the stammach. I’m saying, “Wow, my granddaddy!”

We were actually blessed to our talk with two guys that actually played with my granddad: Honey Boy Edward and Mister Lockwood, Robert Lockwood Junior. Mister Honey Boy told me that my granddad, other than liking his whiskey and women, he loved to play the guitar, a lot of time with his back turned to the audience because he didn’t want them to pick up what he was doing. It sounded like you’re playing two or three different guitar. It’s the same time. And Lockwood said the same thing. But he said, “Steve, a lot of folks said, ‘I think that your granddaddy walked around broke.'” “He’s the only man that I knew back then would walk around like with $100 in his pocket at a time, and back then that was a lot of money.” He said, “We’ll keep money in his pocket.” And it was very particular about his look. I’m talking about, he beat the sharpest man in town, although they try to portray him as being all broken, just trying to scrap. How do you get to Canada and not have anything, you know what I’m saying? But music started getting out, and they were having an event of at Connegie Hall called “from the Gospel to Swing,” and the guy there putting on the event, John Hemmersenior, he heard about Robert, and he sent his son down to Mississippi to look for Robert. When he got here, Robert had passed about a week or two before they found me. But John Hemmersin was so intrigued by Robert music. They played on the phonograph, and the people just, I mean, they were just like, he was, just like he was gonna stay beforeman. That was a real big moment in history to me, that you consider his music so good, you’ll play it on the phonogram, and people would still be applauding it.

But what we found out was,

While Robert Johnson and Honey Boy Edward was performing at a juke joint right outside of Greenwood, and, uh, a juke joint owner.

Robert was having an affair with his wife.

Right before Robert Johnson got ready to do his first set, they brought him a ‘job whiskey’ that was open.

So Honeyboy said he slapped…

He told him, told my dad and the family that, say, “Mister Claude, I slapped that whisk out your daddy’s hand,” he said. He looked at me. He said, “Boy, as long as you lived on, you never slapped no good whisk ouyt in my hand like that!” And he said, “Rober, you don’t drink from an open container like that! Man, you don’t know what’s going on!” You just let me do. “Don’t you about that?” Okay. Time went on. Became another ‘job.’ Miss said he got ready, slept, and say, “My granddaddy gave me that.” Look, “I wish he was slept it!” This got my ‘nd’. So he ended up drinking it, and it was laced. They had ‘parson’ in it. They said that during that night he was just howling.

You know.

The ‘parson’ wasn’t the thing that killed him.

Immune system shut down, and he contracted pneumonia, and that’s what happened. He died from pneumonia. But one of the things that amazes me about it was, when they found his body, they found a ‘notebod it,’ and that note read, “King Jesus, King of Jerusalem, I know my redeemer liveth, and He shall call my soul from the grave.”

Again.

That, that just spelled the myth to me, because to me, he was saying, “I know my redeemer lived, and I’ve accepted him as my safe.”

You know. So the ‘mythus’ squashed.

Okay, the story of death, love, and sin, here on Our American Stories.