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And we continue with our American stories. Up next, a story out of Mississippi, where we broadcast in Oxford, about an hour south of Memphis. And this story is about the king of the Delta Blues. We're talking about Robert Johnson. Much of his life is shrouded in lore and mystery.
Here to separate fact from fiction is Robert's grandson. Let's get into the story. Mm-hmm. Robert Johnson was born May the 8th, 1911, in Hazelhurst, Mississippi, which is a town in Capaya County, Mississippi. And his mother name was Miss Julia Dobbs.
Jula had about five kids. Robert was the youngest. And um She was married. to a guy named Charlie Dobbs. Charlie Dobbs was not Robert's dead.
Okay. Charlie Dobbs was a man that got in trouble. And hey, Hearst. Because, you know, the racial tension and everything and Mr. Charlie was uh he was one of those that I'm okay, I'm gonna do what I do.
And so he had to get out of town because he wanted to do what he wanted to do. And he left Julie and the key is there.
Well, while they were there, a man by the name of Noah Johnson Start, you know, calling them. Courtship. Noah Johnson is robbers. biological father.
Okay. And the family, she took the family from Hazhers. moved to the Delta area and You know what it's uh considered to be a sharecropper. And uh From sunup to sundown, you will work in the fields. For little or no money, you were living on land, on plantations, where they still were plantations.
Even though slavery was over, it was still a plantation. and they had what they called a commissary. The way they would pay people for working in the fields was to It was real slate. They let them come and buy food from the commissary that they had worked for all along.
So, all you're doing is feeding them. You weren't really paying them anything.
Now his mother was messing with she had another guy by the end. She was pretty promiscuous when it came to relations. In a The man that she was with at that time tried to get my granddaddy to work in the fields, you know, from a kid on up to his teenage year. He refused and The man used to beat on my granddad and whoop and trying to make him...
So Robert took up and left. You don't want to live that type of life. From there he It was a rambler. You know. He can remember one of his songs, you know.
I'm a rambling man, blues, yo. Traveling Riverside Blues. I mean, he was always on the go, you know. Living from home to home and not seeing. a stable family.
You wouldn't. get on, jump the box cars on the train. Hey, ain't nothing out on the infinite. Yeah. Jump and jump in and he get a town, he jumps out from town, you know, right there in the town.
I'm back on and go keep doing that's how he travel really a lot in the delta. You know? I mean, he was They will stay foot loose and fancy free.
Okay. We talk about Different relationship, having affairs. You know, he said he had women's in Vicksburg, clean on into Tennessee. I got women in Vicksburg, clean on into Tennessee. Must have had one in Friar Point, Mississippi, up in the delta.
He said, but his fry point rider jumps all over him. But my fry point rider now hops all over me. Out all them women.
So he had women in Mississippi Zipco, he had women. And he talked about those towns and those cities, really towns, they were less little towns on Highway 61. That was a route. I was 61 from Vicksburg. On up to Memphis.
Little towns he had women.
So that was just kind of bounding with the man, you know, the instincts of being a man. Yeah. And it got to a point where he didn't really Value a wama's worth. But he didn't want to be like that. He even got married.
You know, he got married and his wife got pregnant. They were in their teens, early teens, really. That was before he came to Hazehurst and He said, I want to live a normal life. He tried it.
Okay, so he met the lady named Virginia Travis. He married her. Got pregnant and everything and During childbirth, she died, of course, and the child died as well. You know, while she was going to her grandmother's home to have birth. Give birth to a child.
Robert picked up the guitar again and said, okay, watch Yeah. I can kind of pick up my old habit again. you know.
So he started playing the guitar and everything, going to different towns. And he had it planned where he was going to be right in town by the time she was getting ready to give birth. And when he got there, Her and the baby had died. And her parents, her family. blame Robert Johnson for both deaths.
Say if you weren't playing this old devil's music. then Virginia and that baby will still be alive. And there you go again. Pressure. Depression.
torment because not only did my wife and child die, But y'all are blaming me because I'm singing the blues. There go the drinking, the womenizing again. I mean It was just a cycle. And every time he was trying to break that cycle, Something where even with my with my grandmother. He asked for my grandmother's hand in marriage.
Asked her dad, you know, I would like to marry Virgin Maid. That was my grandmother's name, Virgin Maid. And my great-granddad said, nope. No daughter of mine is gonna marry anybody that sang the devil music. There you go again.
Wanting to be with my dad, wanting to spend time with my dad. My dad, I only remember seeing his dad two times. Hmm. Both towns. He would come to my great-granddad at home who raised my dad, and he would try to come in to see the boy.
And my great-granddaddy said, nope. Or as you can go. You know, but he my dad looking out the window And he's seeing his dad give his granddad money. It is the little boy for me. No, and that happened twice.
Well than that, he wasn't, he was kept away from his son. The daughter and wife died Everybody blaming him. And so that's I mean, just it just Tormented him really, and the life changes that he went through, the struggles. That really is what led him to want to pick up the guitar.
Okay. He would go and uh peeping in the juke joints and Seeing us a guy named uh Charlie Patton and Willie Brown and other guys playing in those juke joints. And he took a liking to the guitar. And he would go in there when they take a break. He'd go in there pick the guitar up and try to play it and everything and And just be kind of whole attune.
I'm talking about just. The artist will say, look guys, would y'all please get that good top on that man? Yeah. What? They kicked him out.
Say, look, boy, give me that good time. Get out of here. All he's doing is just noising the people. Don't really. Get that good job from it.
Proper say, okay, I'm going to show y'all. I would tell you. And he left and he was determined. From that point on, he was determined that he was going to learn how to play that guitar. Legend has it that Robert Johnson.
learn how to play the guitar. By going to the crossroads in the Delta. Meeting up with the devil. Devil said, I will give you this talent. If you will give me your soul.
You will become famous. I need your soul. And so he's supposed to make a deal with the devil to sell his soul.
Okay. What? In all actuality. Mm-hmm. to the myth is You cannot make a deal with the devil to sell your soul because You don't own your soul.
Uh When we come back. More of Robert Johnson's story as told by Stephen Johnson, his grandson here. on our American stories. Yeah. Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously.
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Olympic gold medalist Tara Davis Woodhull. And I'm U.S. Paralympic Gold Medalist Hunter Woodhall. As athletes, our lives are about having a clear path and a team that you can absolutely trust.
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When we last left off, Stephen Johnson was telling us about his grandfather's trip to the crossroads, where he supposedly sold his soul to the devil to learn how to play the guitar. That's not the real story, though. Let's return to Stephen Johnson. The truth is You cannot make a deal with the devil to sell your soul because You don't own your soul. And now being the preacher that I am.
The Bible says all souls belong to God. And the soul that sins shall die.
So, what that tells me is that we have choices in life that we have to make. Whether they be good or bad. And those choices will Be what we have to answer to when we sit on that seat, on that judgment seat. It's not yeah, our soul don't belong to us. We don't we don't own it.
Okay. So he couldn't say us something he didn't know.
Now Hmm. The song, if you will listen to that song, people pay attention to it. Crawler Blue Sea. I went to the crossroads.
Well done. I went down to the crossroad, fell down on my knees. Yet again, I went down to the crawforth, fell down on my knee. Have the Lord above our mercy. See you.
And be the Lord. Save poor Bob, if you please. That's totally contradictory to what the myth says about him selling the soul. Rob was at a crossroad in his life. He was seeking to do right.
He wanted to be, you know, wanted to be saved. He wanted to do something different, live a different type of life. He didn't want to be the womanizing, alcoholic, drinking. you know, man that he was, you know.
So that's the crossroad that I believe he went to. And only God knows, you know, how that ended up. But people would rather believe the myth because of them going from zero to a hundred. Hey, that's 100. In two to three years.
And then the truth that actually happened was what? During the time of 1930, About 1932, Robert left the Delta.
Okay. and came back. Hazelhurst, Mississippi. Searching for Noah Johnson, his biological father. And in searching for his biological father, He connected with a blues artist named Ike Zimmerman.
Wow. five miles south of Hazerst in a little town called Beauregard. In that time, Ike was known as one of the best blues players in the southern area. He actually Start hanging out with Ike. And uh he started uh living with them and I mean He was at Ike home so frequently, Ike's daughter said, Oh, yeah, they actually did.
That is is they call him R L, Robert Leroy Johnson. Is R.R.L. our brother? He's in the house just as much as they were. He was sleeping upon the floor and He followed Ike, followed Ike.
And there there will be times when uh During that time of Ike mentoring, There was a cemetery right across the street from Ike's home. And Ike and Rob will go out there at night. That's the spooky part. They would go out of the cemetery at night. fit on these stone graves.
Praising each other. Lick for lick, you know. And I was telling him, okay, Rob. You can sound just as terrible as you want to. Nobody's gonna say nothing to you out here.
They're not gonna kick you out here. You had one getting kicked out of the cemetery. And so they, you know, he continued to mentor and teach, you know, showing. And they would go to different juke joints in the Kapay County area. This happened for like two years in a row.
You know, just two years straight.
So Robert said, okay, I think I got this down now.
So he went back to the depth. He saw some of them same guys. Get out of here, boy. You just noising the people. Robin said, just just let me give me the good time.
Let me show you what I'm working with. He He got the guitar and they say he started playing it. They say somehow mouth dropped. Hey, Willie Brown mouth dropped. Anybody heard the people just stunned?
It was like, is this real? Is this the same guy that couldn't do nothing?
Okay, Robert, now, hey. You learned how to play this thing too quick. Where did you? How did you your arm? You had to do something, Robin.
You went and sold your soul to the devil, learn how to play that guitar.
Now, I don't know if he played with that. It's my belief that he said, okay, believe what you want to believe. Hey, if that's what you want to think it. But I know. You know, he knew where his talent came from.
And I often compare that to Michael Jordan, the goat of basketball. And they're not saying he sold his soul to the devil to learn how to play basketball. It comes from practice. Practice. Practicing more pract y you know, driven.
Granddaddy was driven to learn how to play that guitar.
So talent comes from hard work and dedication. not from selling your soul. He put those hours in. And they pray it off. He ended up going to Dallas.
When he recorded those 29 songs. We don't own Chicago. Dust my broom. Hot to Marlin the Red Hots. When I first heard that song, I was like six years old, seven years old.
And I remember like it was yesterday because. I'm watching cartoon, right? And Tom and Jay were chasing after each other. And that song Hot the Marlin Red Hot. Yeah, we got him for sale.
I mean, and they come to find out when I got to be a teenager, that my granddaddy was singing it. That one and Sweet On Chicago are my two favorites. because of the history behind it. I call Sweet Home Chicago the Blues National Anthem, you know. He said to Stammer, And I'm saying, wow, my granddad.
We were actually blessed who are Talk with two guys that actually play with my granddad. Honeyboy Elkwoods. and Mr. Lockwood, Robert Lockwood Jr. Mr.
Honeyboy told me that my granddad, other than liking his whiskey and women, He loved to play the guitar. a lot of time with his back turned to the audience because he didn't want them to pick up what he was doing. It would sound like you're playing two or three different guitars at the same time. And Mr. Lockwood said the same thing.
But he says, Steve, a lot of folks said thanked your granddaddy. Fuck around, bro. That's the only man that I knew back then would walk around. Like with $100 in his pocket at a time. And back then, that was a lot of money.
He said he would keep money in his pocket. And he was very particular about his look. I'm talking about he be the sharpest man in town. Although they try to portray him as being dope, broke and just trying to scrap. How do you get to Canada?
And not have anything, you know what I'm saying? What Music started getting out. Yeah. They were having an event of a Carnegie Hall. It's called From Gospel to Swing.
And. The guy that putting on the event, John Hammond Sr. He heard about Robert. and he sent his son down to Mississippi to look for Robert. When he got here, Robert had passed about a week or two before they found him.
But John Hamasine was so intrigued by Robert's music. They played on a phonograph. And the people just, I mean, they were just like he was just like he was on stage performing. That was a a real big moment in history to me. That you consider his music so good, you play it on the phonogram, and people would still be applauding it.
What we found out was what? Oh Rob Johnson and Honey Boy Edwards was performing at a juke joint right outside of Greenwood. And uh the Juke joins owner. Robert was having an affair with his wife. Right before Robert Johnson got ready to do his first set, they brought him a jar of whiskey.
That was open.
So, Honey Boy said, he slept, he told him, told my dad and the family that. Hey, Mr. Claude, I slapped that whiskey out your daddy's hand. He said, he looked at me. He said, Boy, as long as you live, don't you never slap no good whiskey out of my hand like that?
And he said, Rob, you don't drink from an open container like that, man. You don't know what's going on. You just let me do it. Don't you worry about that.
Okay, time went on, here come another job. Mr. Hunter Boy said he got ready to slapping and say my granddaddy gave him that. Look, oh, I wish you would slap that whisky out of my hand.
So he ended up drinking it. Mm. It was lace. It had poison in it. It say that during that night, He was just howling, you know.
The poison wasn't thing that killed him. Immune system shut down. and he contracted pneumonia. And that's what happened if he died from the morning. But one of the things that amazes me about it was When he found his body, They found a note by And that note read, King Jesus, King of Jerusalem, I know my Redeemer liveth, and he shall call my soul from the grave.
Again, that dispels the myth to me. Because to me he was saying I know my redeemer lives in I've accepted it. Damn that's my favorite. Yeah. Prometheus Squashed, okay?
The story of death, love, and sin here. on our American stories. At CVS, it matters that we're not just in your community, but that we're part of it. It matters that we're here for you when you need us, day or night. And we want everyone to feel welcomed and rewarded.
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