Robert Johnson

Influencer Series:

Robert Johnson, hand-drawn portrait of the artist, with his Kalamazoo KG-14 acoustic guitar, circa 1935, age 24.

He was an American Delta blues singer-songwriter and musician. There are only three known photographs of him.

His landmark recordings in 1936 and 1937 display a combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that has influenced later generations of musicians.
Songs like, “Sweet Home Chicago”, “Cross Road Blues”, “Hellbound On My Trail” and “Love In Vain”, have been lauded by Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac and Bob Dylan as the biggest influence to them and the Delta Blues genre.

One Faustian myth says that one night, he sold his soul to the devil at the local crossroads in Clarksdale, Mississippi to achieve mastery of the guitar, Delta Blues and success.

As an itinerant performer who played mostly on street corners, in juke joints, and at Saturday night dances, Johnson had little commercial success or public recognition in his lifetime.

Johnson’s first recording session was held on November 23, 1936, in room 414 of the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio, Texas which Brunswick Records had set up to be a temporary recording studio.
In the ensuing three-day session, Johnson played 16 selections. He reportedly performed facing the room corner. The slide guitarist Ry Cooder speculates that Johnson played facing a corner to enhance the sound of the guitar, a technique he calls “corner loading”.

Johnson recorded these songs a decade and a half before the advent of rock and roll to which he had so much influence.

Johnson died on August 16, 1938, at the age of 27, near Greenwood, Mississippi, of unknown causes.
According to one account, Johnson was murdered by the jealous husband of a woman with whom he had flirted, with a bottle of poisoned whiskey.

Johnson was inducted into the first Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame ceremony in 1986.

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