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Few guitarists have been as influential as the legendary Delta Bluesman, Robert Johnson. His recordings have inspired fellow blues musicians such as Muddy Waters, song-writing genius Bob Dylan, formative rock gods The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin, guitarists Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton (who labelled Johnson “the most important Blues musician who ever lived”) - who in turn have influenced subsequent generations of musicians.
However, rumours swirled about Johnson’s involvement with the occult even before his premature death – aged just 27 – in 1938. His seemingly instantaneous mastery of the Blues gave rise to legends that he had made a deal with the Devil, who had given Johnson his skills in return for his everlasting soul. Tales circulated of the young black musician from Mississippi who had taken his guitar to a crossroad near Dockery’s plantation at midnight, and met there with a large man who took the guitar and tuned it, and gave Johnson mastery of the instrument in a Faustian bargain.
Within a year of this fabled meeting, Johnson was recognised as one of the greatest Delta Blues musicians…but within two more years, he had met his end – and, we suppose, delivered on his side of the contract.
Johnson’s song titles provide a vivid reflection of his occult ties. “Hellhound on my Trail”, “Me and the Devil Blues”, and the narrative of “Crossroad Blues” (“Went down to the crossroads, bent down on my knees”) all add colour to the myths surrounding this seminal musician. But as Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh point out in their book The Elixir and the Stone, these allusions to the occult world are a fundamental part of the Blues, not least due to its origins in the music of Voodoo:
Quote
The people abducted from their villages on the African coast and
forcibly transported across the Atlantic were bereft of everything,
except, in some cases, members of their family;
and they were generally separated
from these soon after arrival in the New
World. Of their former lives, most slaves retained nothing save
their religious faith. This faith was largely animistic, revolving
around the shamanistic invocation of a multitude of nature deities
not unlike those of pre-Christian pagan Europe. Drums, dance,
rhythmic incantation and sometimes drugs would be employed to
induce a state of trance, or ‘possession’ by spiritual entities…
Blues music is suffused with with voodoo imagery and allusions…
Such images and allusions constitute a lexicon of their own – the
kind of ‘coded’ lexicon devised by any oppressed or persecuted
people to communicate freely without incurring the wrath of those
who wield power over them. Thus, for example, blues music will
allude frequently, in a sexually raunchy but otherwise ostensibly
innocent context, to the ‘mojo’, a talismanic voodoo fetish. There
are also references to ‘John the Conqueror’, a plant talisman used
by the ‘root doctor’, a voodoo priest or shaman who became known
as the ‘hoochie-coochie man’…
forcibly transported across the Atlantic were bereft of everything,
except, in some cases, members of their family;
and they were generally separated
from these soon after arrival in the New
World. Of their former lives, most slaves retained nothing save
their religious faith. This faith was largely animistic, revolving
around the shamanistic invocation of a multitude of nature deities
not unlike those of pre-Christian pagan Europe. Drums, dance,
rhythmic incantation and sometimes drugs would be employed to
induce a state of trance, or ‘possession’ by spiritual entities…
Blues music is suffused with with voodoo imagery and allusions…
Such images and allusions constitute a lexicon of their own – the
kind of ‘coded’ lexicon devised by any oppressed or persecuted
people to communicate freely without incurring the wrath of those
who wield power over them. Thus, for example, blues music will
allude frequently, in a sexually raunchy but otherwise ostensibly
innocent context, to the ‘mojo’, a talismanic voodoo fetish. There
are also references to ‘John the Conqueror’, a plant talisman used
by the ‘root doctor’, a voodoo priest or shaman who became known
as the ‘hoochie-coochie man’…
The Robert Johnson ‘crossroads’ legend is now firmly entrenched in the public consciousness, in the wake of its exposition in the Coen Brothers’ lauded film O Brother Where Art Thou?, and the paranormal-flavoured television show Supernatural. But the myth did not originate with Johnson – folklorist Harry Middleton Hart recorded many tales in the 1930s of banjo players, violinists, and card sharps selling their souls at the crossroads, along with guitarists and one accordionist, and the theme first appeared in Blues music with Clara Smith’s 1924 track “Done Sold My Soul To The Devil (And My Heart’s Done Turned To Stone)”. In fact, the same legend was attached to Bluesman Tommy Johnson (no relation) around a decade previous to Robert Johnson’s success. Again, this mythos has its roots in rites of Voodoo, as Baigent and Leigh describe:
Quote
One of the most significantly resonant and portentously evocative of voodoo images is that of the crossroads. In voodoo, the crossroads symbolizes the gate which affords access to the invisible world, the world of gods and spirits. This gate must be approached with the appropriate prayers and requests for supernatural aid. In consequence, all voodoo rituals and ceremonies commence with a salutation to the god who guards the crossroads; and to pass the crossroads is to enter into voodoo initiation.
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