Did The Father of The Blues Really Sell His Soul to The Devil?

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Let's get into the story. Robert Johnson was born May the 8th, 1911 in Hazelhurst, Mississippi, which is a town in Copiah County, Mississippi. And his mother's name was Miss Julia Dobbs. Julia had about five kids. Robert was the youngest and she was married to a guy named Charlie Dobbs. Charlie Dobbs was not Robert's dad, okay? Charlie Dobbs was a man that got in trouble in Hazelhurst because, you know, the racial tension and everything. And Mr. Charlie was, he was one of those that, okay, I'm going to 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 Julia and the kids there. Well, while they were there, a man by the name of Noah Johnson started, you know, calling him courtship.

Noah Johnson is Robert's biological father, okay? And the family, she took the family from Hazelhurst, moved to the Delta area and, you know, was considered to be a sharecropper. And from sunup to sundown, you were working the fields for little or no money. You were living on land, on plantations, where they still were plantations.

Even though slavery was old, it was still plantations. And they had what they called a commissary. The way they would pay people for people for working in the fields was just, it was real slick. You 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 her. She had another guy by the end.

She was pretty promiscuous when it came to relations. And 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 with granddad and whooping, trying to make him work.

So Robert took up and left. He didn't want to live the type of life. From there, he was a rambler, you know. He came back with one of his songs, you know, a rambling man blues, you know, traveling riverside blues. I mean, he was always on the go, you know, living from home to home and not seeing a stable family. He would get on, jump at the, you know, the box cars and on the train.

Hey, ain't that nothing empty? Jump, jump in, yeah, get in town, he'd jump off the town, you know, right there in the town. You know, right there in the town.

I'm back on. That's how he traveled really a lot in the Delta, you know. I mean, he was, what they would say, footloose and fancy free, okay.

He talked about different relationships, having affairs. You know, he said he had women's in Vicksburg, clean on into Tennessee. I got women's in Vicksburg, clean on into Tennessee. Must have had one in Fry Point, Mississippi up in the Delta. He said, but his Fry Point rider jumps all over him.

Out of all them women. So he had women in every Mississippi zip code, 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. Highway 61 from Vicksburg on up to Memphis, little towns, he had women. So that he was just kind of battling 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 woman's worth, but he didn't want a bitch 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 Hayes Hurston. He said, I want to live a normal life. He tried it.

Okay. So he met a 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 gone to her grandmother's home to have birth, give birth to the child, Robert picked up the guitar again and said, okay, while she's on there, 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 a plan 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 her baby had died.

And her family blamed Robert Johnson for both deaths. Said, if you weren't playing this old devil's music, then Virginia and their baby would still be alive. And there you go again. Pressure, depression, torment, because not only did my wife and child die, but y'all were blaming me because I'm singing the blues. There you go, drinking and womanizing again.

I mean, it was just a cycle. And every time he was trying to break that cycle, even with my grandmother, he asked for my grandmother's hand in marriage, asked her dad, you know, I would like to marry Virginia. That was my grandmother's name, Virginia. And my great granddad said, nope, no daughter of mine is going to marry anybody that sang the devil's music.

There you go again. Wanted to be with my dad, wanted to spend time with my dad. My dad, I don't remember seeing his dad two times. Both times, he would come to my great granddad's home who raised my dad, and he would try to come in to see the boy.

And my great granddad said, nope, as far as you can go. You know, but my dad looking out the window and he's seeing his dad give his granddad money. He just took the little boy for me.

You know, that happened twice. Other than that, he wasn't, he was kept away from his son. His 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 and the struggle, that really is what led him to want to pick up the guitar. He would go and peep in the juke joints and seeing this guy named Charlie Patton and Willie Brown and other guys playing in those juke joints. And he took a liking to the guitar. And, you know, he would go in there, when they take a break, he'd go in there and pick the guitar up and try to play it and everything and just be kind of hold a tune.

I'm talking about this. The artist would say, look, guys, would y'all please get that guitar from that man. They kicked him out and said, look, boy, give me that guitar, get out of here. Give me that guitar, get out of here.

All he's doing is just noising the people. Get that guitar from him. Robert said, okay, I'm going to show y'all.

I'm going to show 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 learned how to play the guitar by going to the crossroads in the Delta, meeting up with the devil. They would say, I will give you this talent if you will give me your soul, you will become famous. I need your soul. So he's supposed to have made a deal with the devil to sell his soul. Okay. But in all actuality, the truth to the myth is you cannot make a deal with the devil to sell your soul because you don't own your soul.

When we come back, more of Robert Johnson's story as told by Steven Johnson, his grandson here on Our American Stories. You wouldn't settle for watching a blurry TV, would you? So why settle for just okay TV sound? Upgrade your streaming and sound all in one with Roku Streambar. This powerful two-in-one upgrade for any TV lets you stream your favorite entertainment in brilliant 4K HDR picture and hear every detail with auto speech clarity. Whether you're hosting a party or just cleaning the house, turn it up and rock out with iHeartRadio and room-filling sound. Learn more about Roku Streambar today at roku.com.

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NetSuite.com slash stereo. And we return to our American stories and the final portion of our story on blues legend Robert Johnson. 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 a 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. Our soul don't belong to us.

We don't own it. Okay, so he couldn't sell something he didn't own. Now, the song, if you will listen to that song, people pay attention to it.

Crossroad blues say, I went down to the crossroad fell down on my knee. And beg the Lord to save poor Bob if you please. That's totally contradictory to what the myth says about him selling his soul. Robert was at a crossroad in his life. He was seeking to do right. He 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 man that he was. So that's the crossroad that I believe he went to. And only God knows how that ended up.

But people will rather believe the myth because of them going from zero to a hundred past a hundred in two to three years. And then the truth that actually happened was what. During the time from 1930 to about 1932, Robert left the Delta and came back to 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 about five miles south of Hazelhurst 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 started hanging out with Ike and he started living with him. And I mean, he was at Ike's home so frequently Ike's daughter said, they asked his dad, they called him R.L., Robert Leroy Johnson, is R.L.

our brother? He's at the house just as much as they were. He was sleeping on the floor and he followed Ike, followed Ike. And there will be times when, during that time Ike mentoring, there was a cemetery right across the street from Ike's home. And Ike and Robert would go out there at night, that's a spooky part.

They would go out of the cemetery at night, sit on these stone graves, praising each other lick for lick, you know. And Ike was telling him, okay, Robert, you can sound just as terrible as you want to. Nobody going to say nothing to you out here. They're not going to kick you out of here.

You're not going to get 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 Copiah 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 something I'm saying, guys, get out of there, boy. You're just noising the people. Robert said, just let me, give me the guitar.

Let me show you what I'm working with. He got the guitar and they say he started playing it. They say, Son House, mouth dropped. And Willie Brown, mouth dropped. Anybody that heard him, 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, you're all, you had to do something, Robert. You went to the, you went and sold your soul to the devil, learned how to play that guitar. Now, I don't know if he played with that or, you know, it's my belief that he, he said, okay, believe what you want to believe. Hey, that's what you want to think.

Think it. But I know, you know, he knew, he knew where his talent came from. And I often compare that to Michael Jordan, the goat of basketball. And they not saying he sold his soul to the devil to learn how to play basketball. It comes from practice, practice, practice, and more practice, you know, driven. Granddaddy was driven to learn how to play that guitar. So talent come from hard work and dedication, not from selling your soul.

He put those hours in and they paid off. He ended up going to Dallas and he recorded those 29 songs. We done owned Chicago, Dust My Broom, Hot Tamale and the Red Hot. When I first heard that song, I was like six years old, seven years old. And I remember it like it was yesterday because I'm watching cartoons, right?

And Tom and Jerry were chasing out each other. And that song, Hot Tamale and the Red Hot, yeah, we got it for sale. I mean, and they come to find out when I got to be a teenager, my granddaddy was singing it. That one and Sweet Home Chicago are my two favorites because of the history behind it.

I call Sweet Home Chicago the blues national anthem. You know, he set the stamina. I'm saying, wow, my granddaddy. We were actually blessed to talk with two guys that actually played with my granddad, Honey Boy Edwards and Mr. Lockwood, Robert Lockwood Jr. Mr. Honey Boy told me that my granddad, other than liking his whiskey and women, he loved to play the guitar.

A lot of times when his back turned to the audience, because he didn't want them to pick up what he was doing, it would sound like he was playing two or three different guitars at the same time. And Mr. Lockwood said the same thing. But he said, Steve, a lot of folks said, I think that your granddaddy walked around broke. That's the only man that I knew back then that would walk around like with a hundred dollars 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'd be the sharpest man in town. Although they try to portray him as being broke and just trying to scrap.

How do you get to Canada and not have anything? You know what I'm saying? The music started getting out and they were having an event up at Carnegie Hall. It was called From Gospel to Swing. And the guy they were 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 Hammond Sr. was so intrigued by Robert's music. They played on the phonograph and the people just, I mean, they were just like he was on stage performing.

That was a real big moment in history to me that you consider his music so good you played on the phonogram and people would still be applauding it. What we found out was white. Robert Johnson and Honey Boy Edwards was performing in a juke joint right outside of Greenwood. And the juke joint 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 told my dad and family, he said, Mr. Clark, 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, Robert, you don't drink from an open container like that, man. You don't know what's going on. You just let me do don't you worry about that.

Okay. Time went on. Here come another jar.

So Honey Boy said he got ready to slap me and say my granddaddy gave me that look, I wish you would slap that whiskey out of my hand. So he ended up drinking it. And it was laced, it had poison in it. He said that during that night, he was just howling, you know, the poison wasn't the thing that killed him. The immune system shut down. And he contracted pneumonia.

And that's what happened. He died from pneumonia. But one of the things that amazes me about it was when they found his body, they found a note by it. 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 dispelled a myth to me, because to me, he was saying, I know my Redeemer liveth and I've accepted him as my savior. So the myth is squashed. Okay.

The story of death, love and sin here on Our American Stories. With so many streaming devices out there today, what sets Roku apart? Roku players are made for one thing, to get you the entertainment you want quick and easy. That means a simple home screen with your favorites front and center, channels like iHeartRadio that launch in a snap and curated selections of TV for when you only sort of know what to watch. Not to mention all the free TV you can stream, including over 300 free live channels on the Roku channel. Find the perfect Roku player for you today at Roku.com. Happy streaming.

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