Robert Johnson had a short life but became a legend. In the course of a year, he went from being a novice guitarist who yearned to play with his heroes in Mississippi bars to being a virtuoso musician who mastered slide technique. Rumor has it that his talent was not the result of practice, but of a pact with the devil.
Robert Leroy Johnson was born on May 8, 1911, in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, where the African-American population was abused and exploited in cotton fields. Music was one of the few escapes from the slavery they were subjected to. Men and women composed cathartic melodies and modified the lyrics so that the slave owners wouldn’t know they were singing about them.
In that yearning for freedom and protest, the blues emerged, of which Robert Johnson would become one of the most important representatives.
From childhood, Robert loved music and rebelled against the racism with which whites subjected African-American people. He refused to work in the cotton fields, even if it meant being beaten and mistreated.
It is said that the blues was born in church, but it was actually the field that witnessed the origin of this music. Robert did not want to dedicate his life to the cotton fields; he wanted to sing, compose, and play the guitar. He did it occasionally, on weekends, along with other oppressed workers.
Of course, racist and Christian communities believed that the blues was “devil’s music.” In reality, the demonization of the blues came from the losses it represented for the church: men sang, drank, gambled, and ended up losing the little money they had.
If men didn’t go to church (because they were affected by a terrible hangover or because they didn’t have a penny to donate to the alms), it began to lose its profits.
Robert Johnson sought to make a living by traveling the highways of the United States, with his guitar as his work instrument. He had fallen in love with young Virginia Travis, only 16 years old, who became pregnant shortly after. She died in childbirth along with their child.
Robert Johnson and the Pact with the Devil
After the loss of his young wife, Robert was never the same. Before becoming a legend, rumors say that he was actually bad at music. He was a novice who yearned to play with Son House and Willie Brown in bars to make a living.
Every time he got on stage, however, he ended up booed. He left the bars humiliated, promising that someday he would be a great guitarist and would prove everyone wrong.
Robert disappeared for a little over a year, and when he returned to his homeland, he was already a virtuoso musician with incomparable talent.
How did he acquire that talent in such a short time? Probably with dedication and effort, but also with a little help from Satan. It is said that Johnson made a pact with the devil at a crossroads on Route 61, the Crossroads, where he exchanged his soul for musical talent.
Robert reappeared at a bar in Mississippi. He got on stage, started playing, and left the audience, even his heroes House and Brown, surprised. He was fast and virtuosic, nothing like the clumsy young man they had met a year earlier.
For Robert, being associated with the devil was an advantage. Not only was it rumored that the source of his talent was a satanic pact, but it was also believed that he was protected by the forces of Hoodoo, and he himself included “satanic” references in the lyrics of his songs.
The Crossroads Ritual
The process, according to the Hoodoo tradition in the southern United States, was relatively simple: it consisted of going to the same crossroads at the same time for several days until you met a spirit.
The person who performed the ritual had to carry the instrument they wanted to master (drummers would likely carry their drumsticks, bassists their bass guitar, and writers a pencil and paper, for example).
The spirit, which could be the devil himself, would appear to teach them how to use the object of their choice. Robert Johnson would have been asked for his guitar, and it would have been returned to him along with a magical talent for playing it.
Robert Johnson and Ike Zimmerman
It is said that Johnson obtained his talent through magic, but little is said about Ike Zimmerman: a guitarist who taught him the legendary slide technique. The two would meet in a cemetery at midnight to play guitar, as they believed it was in that gloomy atmosphere where ideas arose.
Robert Johnson died in 1938 at the age of 27 under mysterious circumstances. He was in a romantic relationship with a married woman named Beatrice Davis. Beatrice’s husband, Ralph, is said to have poisoned his drink with mothballs, which led to a slow and agonizing death.
The pact was already made and, despite his death, Johnson was already a legend. Today, he is remembered as one of the greatest guitarists of the 20th century and one of the most important musicians in history.
