Founding Father: Robert Johnson

When writing about Robert Johnson, king of the Delta blues singers, it's hard to avoid 'seemed,' 'likely' and 'it's said,' for we know little of the man and much of the legend. That legend depicts a shadowy, itinerant minstrel on the Mississippi back roads who sang spooky blues songs and played guitar like no one else. But it seems likely (and there I go) that Johnson's life was more than merely that.

Johnson was born this week in 1911 near Hazlehurst, Mississippi. As a young man, he is said to have traveled to a Mississippi crossroads at midnight, where he traded his soul to the devil in exchange for his extraordinary musical talent. Johnson himself is said to have claimed this actually happened, and six of his songs do indeed mention the devil, although the legend has been greatly embellished over the years. It's more likely that he learned guitar from an older player named Ike Zimmerman.

Johnson's style was indeed unique: On hearing a Johnson record for the first time, Keith Richards is said to have asked, "Who's that playing with him?" Johnson was able to make a single acoustic one guitar sound like two. Next to 'selling his soul,' Johnson is best known for the manner of his death. He is said to have died in 1938 after being given a drink of poisoned whiskey by the jealous husband of a woman he had been seeing. That legend, too, has likely been embellished. He was poisoned, but he seems to have recovered a at least somewhat, only to develop pneumonia while he was still in a weakened condition and die a couple of weeks later. Three locations are claimed as the site of his grave.

Johnson released but 11 records during his lifetime, all in 1936 and 1937. Since his death, other recordings have been uncovered, but all we have of Johnson are 42 recordings of 29 different songs. On that small body of work rests one of the most fabled reputations in American musical history. Four of his songs earned their way onto the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame's list of 500 songs that shaped rock 'n' roll:

-Cross Road Blues later turned into Crossroads by Cream.

-Sweet Home Chicago most famously recorded by the Blues Brothers but adopted by Chicago blues fanatics everywhere as an anthem.

-Love in Vain recorded by the Rolling Stones

-Hellhound on My Trail whose dark imagery has inspired not only blues performers but doomy rock bands, too.

On the strength of these recordings (and other songs, such as Come on in My Kitchen and Traveling Riverside Blues), Johnson placed fifth on Rolling Stone's list of greatest guitarists, one notch behind his leading acolyte, Eric Clapton. But as Elijah Wald notes in his book Escaping the Delta, we have Johnson's famous songs because a record label chose to record them, in the hope they would sell. As a working musician in the juke joints of the rural South, Johnson would have had to play whatever an audience might ask for: not merely blues tunes, but country songs, pop hits, and even show tunes or hymns now and then. None of that ever made it onto a record, but such music was surely as much a part of Johnson's working repertoire as Stones in My Passway or Stop Breaking Down Blues.

Everything Johnson left behind can be heard on The Complete Recordings, the landmark 1990 box set. It was updated in 1998 and 2004 under the title King of the Delta Blues Singers (volumes 1 and 2). Together, that set removes the alternate takes found on the box set. The second disc includes a previously unreleased version of Traveling Riverside Blues.

If you're looking for something cheaper, the Johnson disc released in conjunction with Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues, the 2003 PBS documentary series, is a decent introduction, too. It's out of print, but used copies abound.