74 Facts About Robert Johnson

1.

Robert Leroy Johnson was an American blues musician and songwriter.

2.

Robert Johnson participated in only two recording sessions, one in San Antonio in 1936, and one in Dallas in 1937, that produced 29 distinct songs recorded by famed Country Music Hall of Fame producer Don Law.

3.

Robert Johnson's poorly documented life and death have given rise to much legend.

4.

Robert Johnson's music had a small, but influential, following during his life and in the two decades after his death.

5.

Musicologist Alan Lomax went to Mississippi in 1941 to record Robert Johnson, not knowing of his death.

6.

Law, who by then worked for Columbia Records, assembled a collection of Robert Johnson's recordings titled King of the Delta Blues Singers that was released by Columbia in 1961.

7.

Many of Robert Johnson's songs have been covered over the years, becoming hits for other artists, and his guitar licks and lyrics have been borrowed by many later musicians.

8.

McCormick believed that Robert Johnson himself accepted the phrase as a description of his resolve to abandon the settled life of a husband and farmer to become a full-time blues musician.

9.

Late in life, House remembered Robert Johnson as a "little boy" who was a competent harmonica player but an embarrassingly bad guitarist.

10.

When Robert Johnson next appeared in Robinsonville, he seemed to have miraculously acquired a guitar technique.

11.

Robert Johnson was asked whether he attributed Johnson's technique to this pact, and his equivocal answers have been taken as confirmation.

12.

In 1932, the couple settled for a while in Clarksdale, Mississippi, in the Delta, but Robert Johnson soon left for a career as a "walking" or itinerant musician, and Caletta died in early 1933.

13.

From 1932 until his death in 1938, Robert Johnson moved frequently between the cities of Memphis and Helena, and the smaller towns of the Mississippi Delta and neighboring regions of Mississippi and Arkansas.

14.

Robert Johnson did not marry again but formed some long-term relationships with women to whom he would return periodically.

15.

In each location, Robert Johnson's hosts were largely ignorant of his life elsewhere.

16.

Robert Johnson used different names in different places, employing at least eight distinct surnames.

17.

When Robert Johnson arrived in a new town, he would play for tips on street corners or in front of the local barbershop or a restaurant.

18.

Robert Johnson had an uncanny ability to establish a rapport with his audience; in every town in which he stopped, he would establish ties to the local community that would serve him well when he passed through again a month or a year later.

19.

Robert Johnson was a very friendly person, even though he was sulky at times, you know.

20.

Robert Johnson'd be standing up playing some place, playing like nobody's business.

21.

Robert Johnson reportedly cultivated a woman to look after him in each town he played in.

22.

Robert Johnson reputedly asked homely young women living in the country with their families whether he could go home with them, and in most cases, he was accepted, until a boyfriend arrived or Johnson was ready to move on.

23.

In 1941, Alan Lomax learned from Muddy Waters that Robert Johnson had performed in the area around Clarksdale, Mississippi.

24.

In Jackson, Mississippi, around 1936, Johnson sought out H C Speir, who ran a general store and acted as a talent scout.

25.

Robert Johnson recorded almost half of the 29 songs that make up his entire discography in Dallas and eleven records from this session were released within the following year.

26.

Robert Johnson did two takes of most of these songs, and recordings of those takes survived.

27.

In contrast to most Delta players, Robert Johnson had absorbed the idea of fitting a composed song into the three minutes of a 78-rpm side.

28.

Robert Johnson died on August 16,1938, at the age of 27, near Greenwood, Mississippi, of unknown causes.

29.

Almost 30 years later, Gayle Dean Wardlow, a Mississippi-based musicologist researching Robert Johnson's life, found Robert Johnson's death certificate, which listed only the date and location, with no official cause of death.

30.

Robert Johnson had been playing for a few weeks at a country dance in a town about 15 miles from Greenwood.

31.

When Robert Johnson took the bottle, Williamson knocked it out of his hand, admonishing him to never drink from a bottle that he had not personally seen opened.

32.

Robert Johnson is reported to have begun feeling ill the evening after and had to be helped back to his room in the early morning hours.

33.

Tom Graves, in his book Crossroads: The Life and Afterlife of Blues Legend Robert Johnson, relies on expert testimony from toxicologists to argue that strychnine has such a distinctive odor and taste that it cannot be disguised, even in strong liquor.

34.

However, Robert Johnson had been diagnosed with an ulcer and with esophageal varices, and the poison was sufficient to cause them to hemorrhage.

35.

Robert Johnson died after two days of severe abdominal pain, vomiting, and bleeding from the mouth.

36.

Robert Johnson stayed in the house with some of the negroes saying he wanted to pick cotton.

37.

Robert Johnson was buried in a homemade coffin furnished by the county.

38.

The exact location of Robert Johnson's grave is officially unknown; three different markers have been erected at possible sites in church cemeteries outside Greenwood.

39.

One of the legends often told says that Robert Johnson was instructed to take his guitar to a crossroad near Dockery Plantation at midnight.

40.

The Devil played a few songs and then returned the guitar to Robert Johnson, giving him mastery of the instrument.

41.

In exchange for his soul, Robert Johnson was able to create the blues for which he became famous.

42.

Robert Johnson spent about a year living with and learning from Zimmerman, who ultimately accompanied Robert Johnson back to the Delta to look after him.

43.

Residents of Rosedale, Mississippi, claim Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil at the intersection of Highways 1 and 8 in their town, while the 1986 movie Crossroads was filmed in Beulah, Mississippi.

44.

Robert Johnson is considered a master of the blues, particularly of the Delta blues style.

45.

Robert Johnson's first recorded song, "Kind Hearted Woman Blues", in contrast to the prevailing Delta style of the time, more resembled the style of Chicago or St Louis, with "a full-fledged, abundantly varied musical arrangement".

46.

Unusual for a Delta player of the time, a recording exhibits what Robert Johnson could do entirely outside of a blues style.

47.

Robert Johnson's tortured soul vocals and anxiety-ridden guitar playing aren't found in the cotton-field blues of his contemporaries.

48.

An important aspect of Robert Johnson's singing was his use of microtonality.

49.

When Robert Johnson started singing, he seemed like a guy who could have sprung from the head of Zeus in full armor.

50.

Robert Johnson mastered the guitar, being considered today one of the all-time greats on the instrument.

51.

Robert Johnson fused approaches specific to Delta blues to those from the broader music world.

52.

Robert Johnson did record versions of "Preaching the Blues" and "Walking Blues" in the older bluesman's vocal and guitar style.

53.

Robert Johnson's last recording, "Milkcow's Calf Blues" is his most direct tribute to Kokomo Arnold, who wrote "Milkcow Blues" and influenced Robert Johnson's vocal style.

54.

Robert Johnson croons the lyrics in a manner reminiscent of Lonnie Johnson, and his guitar style is more that of a ragtime-influenced player like Blind Blake.

55.

Lonnie Robert Johnson's influence is even clearer in two other departures from the usual Delta style: "Malted Milk" and "Drunken Hearted Man".

56.

Robert Johnson noted the "personal and creative way" Johnson approached the song's harmony.

57.

Robert Johnson is mentioned as one of the Delta artists who was a strong influence on blues singers in post-war styles.

58.

Sometimes called "the trademark Reed shuffle", it is the figure Robert Johnson used updated for electric guitar.

59.

Several of Robert Johnson's songs became blues standards, which is used to describe blues songs that have been widely performed and recorded over a period of time and are seen as having a lasting quality.

60.

The thing about Robert Johnson was that he only existed on his records.

61.

Two marriage licenses for Robert Johnson have been located in county records offices.

62.

The ages given in these certificates point to different birth dates, but Conforth and Wardlow suggest that Robert Johnson lied about his age in order to obtain a marriage license.

63.

Carrie Thompson claimed that her mother, who was Robert Johnson's mother, remembered his birth date as May8,1911.

64.

Robert Johnson was not listed among his mother's children in the 1910 census giving further credence to a 1911 birthdate.

65.

Robert Johnson's records were admired by record collectors from the time of their first release, and efforts were made to discover his biography, with virtually no success.

66.

Law added to the mystique surrounding Robert Johnson, representing him as very young and extraordinarily shy.

67.

The documentary film The Search for Robert Johnson contains accounts by McCormick and Wardlow of what informants have told them: long interviews of David "Honeyboy" Edwards and Johnny Shines and short interviews of surviving friends and family.

68.

However, three images of Robert Johnson were located in 1972 and 1973, in the possession of his half-sister Carrie Thompson.

69.

Further, both David "Honeyboy" Edwards and Robert Johnson Lockwood failed to identify either man in the photo.

70.

Finally, Gibson claimed the photo was from 1933 to 1934 while it is known that Robert Johnson did not meet Shines until early 1937.

71.

The effect of the judgment was to allow Claud Robert Johnson to receive over $1 million in royalties.

72.

Claud Robert Johnson died, aged 83, on June 30,2015, leaving six children.

73.

Eleven 78-rpm records by Robert Johnson were released by Vocalion Records in 1937 and 1938, with additional pressings by ARC budget labels.

74.

The Complete Recordings, a two-disc set, released on August 28,1990, contains almost everything Robert Johnson recorded, with all 29 recordings, and 12 alternate takes.