Robert Johnson 1911–1938

Singer, guitarist, composer

At a Glance…

Compositions Became Blues Standards

Rudimentary Recordings Captured Magic

Mysteries of His Life Have Made Johnson a Legend

Sold Soul to the Devil in Crossroads Bargain

Selected discography

Sources

More than half a century after his death, Robert Johnson, the legendary Mississippi Delta blues singer, remains an enigma. A provocative and influential figure in the blues field, Johnson revealed his remarkable musical skills around the age of 20 in 1931. He completed only two recording sessions—one in 1936 and the other in 1937—prior to his untimely death in 1938. Very little was known about Johnson when his first album was released in 1961. By the time Columbia Records released Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings in 1990, slightly more information had come to light, but the mystery endures.

Like that of other early Delta blues singers, the music of Robert Johnson arose from an oral tradition that began with a mixture of field hollers, chants, fiddle tunes, and religious music and ended up as the blues. The Mississippi Delta—two hundred miles of fertile lowlands stretching from Memphis, Tennessee in the north to Vicksburg, Mississippi in the south—was one of the primary locales in which the blues originated and developed. Johnson’s sound is critically recognized as the culmination of the Delta blues tradition, as exemplified by other Delta blues artists such as Charley Patton, Son House, and Skip James. Typically, Delta blues are sung by a single artist playing an acoustic guitar, often using a bottleneck or similar instrument on the frets to achieve a distinctive sound. The next generation of musicians—and those who out-lived Johnson—may have grown up in the Delta, but most left it as adults to go north and sing the city blues of Chicago. Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, two prominent Chicago bluesmen, have their roots in the Delta: both knew Robert Johnson and were heavily influenced by him.

Knowledge of Johnson, like that of his music, has come largely through recollections of musicians and others who knew him. Two of the best sources of information have been legendary Delta singer Son House, himself Johnson’s elder, and Johnny Shines, a contemporary who met Johnson in 1935 and traveled with him for a while. Additional information has been uncovered by researchers, who have helped to establish Johnson’s birth date as May 8, 1911. Some of the circumstances of Johnson’s death remain particularly unclear; there is even a dispute over the true site of his unmarked grave.

Fortunately, the recordings remain, and the 1990 issuance

At a Glance…

Born May 8, 1911, near Hazlehurst, MS; son of Julia Majors Dodds and Noah Johnson (a plantation worker); died of probable poisoning, August 16, 1938, near Greenwood, MS; believed buried in an unmarked grave at Mt Zion Church, near Morgan City, MS; new evidence indicates burial site as Payne Chapel Memorial Baptist Church, near Quito, MS; married twice.

Itinerant blues singer and guitarist, recording artist, composer. Traveled throughout the South, and as far north as Detroit and Chicago, playing in small clubs—juke joints—and at informal gatherings. Disappeared in 1930 and is believed to have stayed in southern Mississippi for about two years; returned to the northern part of the state with a guitar and uncanny musical prowess. Recorded 16 songs, including “Kind Hearted Woman,” “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom,” “Sweet Home Chicago,” and “Terraplane Blues,” for the American Record Company (ARC), November, 1936; recorded 13 songs for ARC, June, 1937.

of Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings has refocused attention on the life and artistry of this legendary bluesman. Johnson’s posthumous fame and influence on younger musicians stems largely from the power of his recordings. He is said to have been heavily influenced by early blues artists like Skip James, who was recorded in 1931, around the same time that Johnson amazed his elders with his mastery of the guitar. James’s eerie, distinctive style is reflected throughout Johnson’s recordings, most notably in “32-20 Blues,” which he adapted from James’s “22-20 Blues.”

Johnson first came to the attention of modern musicians, notably the rock generation of the 1960s, with the release of King of the Delta Blues Singers in 1961. Dueto the country blues revival of the time, older musicians who had sung as young men in the 1930s began to enjoy a second career and renewed popularity among hip, new audiences. Johnson’s album contained selections from his 1936 and 1937 recording sessions, some of which had not been previously released. Revealing the artist’s tremendous talent on vocals and guitar as well as his uncommon flair for lyrical composition, the album challenged younger rock musicians and showed them what the blues were all about. King of the Delta Blues Singers proved so popular that it was reissued in 1969; a second album followed in 1970. Bob Dylan has written that Johnson was one of two musicians—the other being Woodie Guthrie—who most influenced him. Among the Robert Johnson songs covered by rock musicians in the 1960s and later were “Love in Vain” and “Stop Breakin’ Down”—recorded by the Rolling Stones—and “Crossroad Blues”—recorded by Eric Clapton with Cream.

Compositions Became Blues Standards

Many of Johnson’s compositions had also become blues standards by the 1960s, thanks to Chicago blues artists Waters and Elmore James. In 1951 Elmore James recorded Johnson’s “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom,” making it a national hit “Sweet Home Chicago,” another Johnson composition, has been played and recorded by countless Chicago bluesmen. As a traveling musician who had crisscrossed the Delta region many times and gone as far north as Detroit and Chicago in the previous six years, Johnson had ample opportunity to refine his lyrics, judging their popularity and impact by his audiences’ reactions. Johnson played to a variety of gatherings, from Saturday night juke joint crowds to friendly groups gathered for outdoor picnics. As Johnny Shines recalled, Robert Johnson was a rambling man who was ready to hop a freight at the drop of a hat “He was a natural rambler,” Shines told Pete Welding, as recorded in the Down Beat Music Yearbook. “His home was where his hat was, and even then lots of times he didn’t know where that was. We used to travel all over … used to catch freights everywhere. Played for dances, in taverns, on sidewalks.”

While these types of playing conditions provided Johnson with a means of refining his songs, it was the discipline of the three-minute 78 rpm record that drove him to hone them into a more commercial form. He crafted his songs with a self-conscious artistry; he sang of women, drinking, traveling, and the devil. His lyrics contain haunting metaphors and vivid personifications. Rather than joining interchangeable “floating verses,” as many other Delta blues men did, Johnson made each song a statement, with intentionally developed themes. As Greil Marcus noted in the New York Times, Johnson’s songs have “an immediacy which is unmatched in the blues, and an impulse toward drama.” Johnson recorded 29 songs for the American Record Company (ARC), which eventually became part of the Columbia Broadcasting System. His complete canon of recordings includes 29 masters, plus 12 surviving alternate takes, all recorded at two ARC sessions held in San Antonio and Dallas, Texas.

Johnson got started in the business the way many other Delta musicians did—by auditioning. H. C. Speir was a white ARC talent scout who ran a music store in Jackson, Mississippi. He had been acting as a talent scout for seven years and was responsible for getting blues artists Patton, House, Skip James, Tommy Johnson, and others into the recording studio. Speir passed Robert Johnson on to Ernie Oertle, another ARC talent scout and salesman in the mid-South, who offered to take him to San Antonio to record in November of 1936.

Rudimentary Recordings Captured Magic

Johnson’s first session in San Antonio lasted three days. Sixteen songs were recorded in the Gunter Hotel, where ARC had set up equipment to record a number of musical acts, ranging from the Chuck Wagon Gang to groups of Mexican musicians. “Kind Hearted Woman” was the first song recorded. Also captured in San Antonio were “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom” and “Sweet Home Chicago,” both of which became post-war blues standards. “Terraplane Blues,” known for its metaphoric lyrics, became a regional hit and Johnson’s signature song. Most of the selections were released on Vocalion 78s, but three songs and several interesting alternate takes remained unissued until they appeared on the Columbia albums. About six months later, in June of 1937, Johnson was called back to record. The two-day session took place in a Dallas warehouse where, once again, ARC had set up its recording equipment to capture many different acts. This time 13 songs were recorded and 10 were released during the following year.

While Johnson’s professional recording career can be measured in months, his musical legacy has survived more than 50 years. Critics have written a great deal about his genius, his unusual vocal style, his innovative guitar work, and the sensibility of his lyrics. As Peter Guralnick wrote in Searching for Robert Johnson, “There is no end of quoting and no end of reading into the lyrics, but unlike other equally eloquent blues, this is not random folk art, hit or miss, but rather carefully selected and honed detail, carefully considered and achieved effect.”

Mysteries of His Life Have Made Johnson a Legend

Robert Johnson’s life and music have had a “carefully considered and achieved effect” on his contemporaries, as well as on subsequent generations of musicians. During his life, Johnson was the subject of considerable controversy and inspired frequent conjecture; when he was murdered in 1938, at least three versions of the tragedy were given credibility—that he was stabbed to death by a jealous husband, stabbed by a woman, or poisoned by parties unknown. Subsequent research, based on eyewitness accounts, indicates that he was poisoned by a jealous husband.

In August of 1938 Johnson and Honeyboy Edwards were playing at a house party in Three Forks, near Greenwood, Mississippi. Johnson had apparently become too familiar with the companion of the man who had hired him to play. The outraged man allegedly laced Johnson’s whiskey with poison. Johnson died three days later. Welding, quoting Shines’s account in the Down Beat Music Yearbook, related that the story had changed by the time it reached Shines, who had left Johnson to live with his own family in Memphis: he had heard that Johnson was “poisoned by one of those women who really didn’t care for him at all. And Robert was almost always surrounded by that kind.… Seems like they just sought him out.… And I heard that it was something to do with the black arts. Before he died, it was said, Robert was crawling along the ground on all fours, barking and snapping like a mad beast. That’s what the poison done to him.”

Sold Soul to the Devil in Crossroads Bargain

Shines’s reference to “the black arts” evokes another myth about Johnson: namely, that he sold his soul to the devil in order to achieve mastery over the guitar. The myth grew in response to an absence of solid information about how he had learned to play the guitar so well. As a teenager Johnson had a reputation among older musicians, like House and Willie Brown, for being a pest who would grab their instruments and try to play them. House had to tell him, “You shouldn’t do that, Robert. You’re worrying the people.… You can’t play, and you’re just keeping up a lot of noise with it.” As House recalled for Welding in the Down Beat Music Yearbook, Johnson ran away from home for about two years when his stepfather wanted him to work in the fields with him. More reliable sources attribute Johnson’s 1930 departure and extended absence from northern Mississippi to the death of his first wife and his subsequent remarriage. At any rate, upon his return, Johnson had his own guitar. Robert Jr. Lockwood and a subsequently discovered photograph confirm that Johnson’s guitar of choice was a Gibson Kalamazoo. Johnson demonstrated such a great ability after returning home that House believed he had “sold his soul to the devil in exchange for learning to play like that.” More likely, the guitarist’s prowess was the fruit of guitar teacher Ike Zinnerman’s labor.

Although Johnson never confirmed the otherworldly story, another Delta blues musician, Tommy Johnson, once told his brother the same tale about going down to the crossroads to meet the devil at midnight. Folk researchers draw a parallel between the devil in the story and the African Yoruba god, Legba, the trickster, whose favorite haunt was a crossroads. It seems Johnson knew the life he sang about: his songs are rife with devil imagery, and some of his actions while performing were apparently a bit peculiar. It has been said, for instance, that he would often turn his back when he felt the eyes of another musician were watching him too closely—as if he needed to hide the secret to his extraordinary talent. All of which adds to the myth, but takes nothing away from the music of the shadowy blues artist who came to be known as the “King of the Delta Blues Singers.”

Selected discography

King of the Delta Blues Singers, Columbia, 1961.

King of the Delta Blues Singers: Volume 2, Columbia, 1970.

Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings, Columbia, 1990.

Sources

Books

Charters, Samuel, The Bluesmen, Oak Publications, 1967.

Guralnick, Peter, Searching for Robert Johnson, Dutton, 1989.

Marcus, Greil, Mystery Train, Dutton, 1975.

Palmer, Robert, Deep Blues, Viking, 1981.

Periodicals

American Visions, June 1988.

Chicago Tribune, January 5, 1990.

Down Beat Music Yearbook, 1966.

Esquire, October 1990.

Living Blues, No. 94, 1990.

Musician, January 1991.

Nation, October 8, 1990.

New York Times, November 22, 1970.

Record Research, No. 43, May 1963.

Rolling Stone, October 18, 1990.

Wilson Library Bulletin, November 1975.

Additional information provided by Robert Johnson historian Stephen C. LaVere.

—David Bianco

Robert Johnson

Singer, guitarist, composer

For the Record…

Columbia Compilation Renewed Interest

Compositions Became Blues Standards

Rudimentary Recordings Captured Magic

Mysteries of His Life Have Made Johnson a Legend

Sold Soul to the Devil in Crossroads Bargain

Selected discography

Sources

Robert Johnson, the legendary Mississippi Delta blues singer, was a real person; that much is known. The mystery that is his life and art occurred between such well-defined events as his birth in 1911, the revelation of his remarkable musical skills around 1931, two recording sessions in 1936 and 1937, and his death in 1938. When the first album of his recordings was released in 1961 very little was known about Robert Johnson. By the time Columbia Records released Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings in 1990 more was known, but the mystery remained.

Like other early Delta blues singers, Robert Johnson was part and parcel of an oral tradition that began with a mixture of field hollers, chants, fiddle tunes, and religious music and ended up as the blues. The Mississippi Delta, 200 miles of fertile lowlands stretching from Memphis, Tennessee, in the north to Vicksburg, Mississippi, in the south, was one of the primary locales in which the blues originated and developed. Johnson is critically recognized as the culmination of the Delta blues tradition, as exemplified by Delta blues artists Charley Patton, Son House, Skip James, and others. Characteristically, Delta blues are sung by a single artist playing an acoustic guitar, often using a bottleneck or similar instrument on the frets to achieve a distinctive sound. The next generation of musicians—and those who outlived Johnson—may have grown up in the Delta, but most left it to go north and sing the city blues of Chicago. Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf are two prominent Chicago bluesmen, both originally from the Delta, who knew Robert Johnson and were heavily influenced by him.

Waters, born McKinley Morganfield, grew up in the Delta, and though he never actually met Robert Johnson, his single encounter with him has been widely quoted. As Waters described the meeting in American Visions, among other sources, “It was in Friar’s Point, and this guy had a lot of people standin’ around him. He coulda been Robert, they said it was Robert. I stopped and peeked over, and then I left. He was a dangerous man.” Knowledge of Johnson, like that of his music, has come largely through recollections of musicians and others who knew him. Two of the best sources of information have been legendary Delta singer Son House, himself Johnson’s elder, and Johnny Shines, a contemporary who met Johnson in 1935 and traveled with him for a while. Additional information has been uncovered by researchers, who have helped to establish Johnson’s birth date as May 8, 1911. Some of the circumstances of Johnson’s death particularly remain unclear; there is even a dispute over the true site of his grave.

For the Record…

Born May 8, 1911, near Hazlehurst, MS; son of Julia Majors Dodds and Noah Johnson (a plantation worker); died of probable poisoning August 16, 1938, near Greenwood, MS; believed buried in an unmarked grave at Mt. Zion Church, near Morgan City, MS, new evidence indicates burial site as Payne Chapel Memorial Baptist Church, near Quito, MS. Married twice.

Itinerant blues singer and guitarist, recording artist, composer. Traveled throughout the South and as far north as Detroit and Chicago, playing in small clubs—juke joints—and at informal gatherings. Disappeared in 1930, returned with a guitar and uncanny musical prowess. Recorded 16 songs, including “Kind Hearted Woman,” “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom,” “Sweet Home Chicago,” and “Terraplane Blues,” for the American Record Company (ARC), November, 1936; recorded 13 songs for ARC, June, 1937.

Columbia Compilation Renewed Interest

Fortunately, the recordings remain and the issuance of Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings has refocused attention on the life and artistry of this legendary bluesman. Throughout his career and posthumous fame, recordings have played an important role in Johnson’s art and its influence on younger musicians. Johnson himself was probably influenced by early blues artists like Skip James, who was recorded in i 931, the year that Johnson amazed his elders with his mastery of the guitar. James’s eerie, peculiarly unique style appears throughout Johnson’s recordings, most notably in “32-20 Blues,” which he adapted from James’s “22-20 Blues.”

Johnson first came to the attention of modern musicians, notably the rock generation of the 1960s, with the release of King of the Delta Blues Singers in 1961. Due to the country blues revival of the time, older musicians who had sung as young men in the 1930s began to enjoy a second career and renewed popularity among hip, new audiences. Johnson’s album contained selections from his 1936 and 1937 recording sessions, some of them previously unreleased. The album revealed a tremendous talent on vocals and guitar as well as an amazing ability in the lyrics of Johnson’s self-composed blues. The album challenged younger rock musicians and showed them what the blues were all about. Johnson’s first album was so popular that it was reissued in 1969; a second followed in 1970. Bob Dylan has written that Johnson was one of two musicians—the other being Woodie Guthrie—who most influenced him. Among the Robert Johnson songs covered by rock musicians in the 1960s and later were “Love in Vain” and “Stop Breakin’ Down”—recorded by the Rolling Stones—and “Crossroad Blues”—recorded by Eric Clapton with Cream.

Compositions Became Blues Standards

Many of Johnson’s compositions had also become blues standards by the 1960s, thanks to Chicago blues artists Waters and Elmore James. In 1951 Elmore James recorded Johnson’s “Dust My Broom,” making it a national hit. “Sweet Home Chicago,” another Johnson composition, has been played and recorded by countless Chicago bluesmen. As a traveling musician who had crisscrossed the Delta region many times and gone as far north as Detroit and Chicago in the previous six years, Johnson had ample opportunity to refine his lyrics, judging their popularity and impact by his audiences’ reactions. A traveling musician like Johnson would have played to a variety of gatherings, from Saturday night juke joint crowds to friendly groups gathered for outdoor picnics. As Johnny Shines recalled, Robert Johnson was a rambling man who was ready to hop a freight at the drop of a hat. “He was a natural rambler,” Shines told Pete Welding, as recorded in the Down Beat Music Yearbook. “His home was where his hat was, and even then lots of times he didn’t know where that was. We used to travel all over … used to catch freights everywhere. Played for dances, in taverns, on sidewalks.”

While these types of playing conditions provided Johnson with a means of refining his songs, it was the discipline of the three-minute 78 rpm record that drove him to hone them into a more commericial form. He crafted his songs with a self-conscious artistry; he sang of women, drinking, traveling, and the devil. His lyrics contain haunting metaphors and vivid personifications. Rather than joining interchangeable “floating verses,” as many other Delta bluesmen did, Johnson made each song a statement, with intentionally developed themes. As Greil Marcus noted in the New York Times, Johnson’s songs have “an immediacy which is unmatched in the blues, and an impulse toward drama.”

Johnson recorded 29 songs for the American Record Company, which eventually became part of the Columbia Broadcasting System. His complete recorded canon includes 29 masters, plus 12 surviving alternate takes, all recorded at two ARC sessions held in San Antonio and Dallas. Johnson got started recording the way many other Delta musicians did—by auditioning. H. C. Speir was a white ARC talent scout who ran a music store in Jackson, Mississippi. He had been acting as a talent scout for seven years and was responsible for getting blues artists Patton, House, Skip James, Tommy Johnson, and others into the recording studio. Speir passed Robert Johnson on to Ernie Oertle, another ARC talent scout and salesman in the mid-South, who offered to take him to San Antonio to record in November of 1936.

Rudimentary Recordings Captured Magic

Johnson’s first session in San Antonio lasted three days. Sixteen songs were recorded in the Gunter Hotel, where ARC had set up equipment to record a number of musical acts, ranging from the Chuck Wagon Gang to groups of Mexican musicians. “Kind Hearted Woman” was the first song recorded. Also captured in San Antonio were “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom” and “Sweet Home Chicago,” both of which became post-war blues standards. “Terraplane Blues,” known for its metaphor-ic lyrics, became a regional hit and Johnson’s signature song. Most of the selections were released on Vocalion 78s, but three songs and several interesting alternate takes remained unissued until they appeared on the Columbia albums. Six months later, in June of 1937, Johnson was called back to record. The two-day session took place in a Dallas warehouse where, once again, ARC had set up its recording equipment to capture many different acts. This time 13 songs were recorded and 10 were released during the following year.

While Johnson’s professional recording career can be measured in months, his musical legacy has survived more than 50 years and is likely to become timeless. Critics have written a great deal about his genius, his unusual vocal style, his innovative guitar work, and the sensibility of his lyrics. As Peter Guralnick wrote in Searching for Robert Johnson, “There is no end of quoting and no end of reading into the lyrics, but unlike other equally eloquent blues, this is not random folk art, hit or miss, but rather carefully selected and honed detail, carefully considered and achieved effect.”

Mysteries of His Life Have Made Johnson a Legend

Like many of his songs, which help reveal the kind of life he led, Robert Johnson’s life itself has had a “considered and achieved effect,” not only on his contemporaries, but also on subsequent generations of musicians. During his life, tales were circulated about him, explaining the unknown aspects of his life; and when he was murdered in 1938, at least three versions were given credibility—that he was stabbed to death by a jealous husband, stabbed by a woman, or poisoned by parties unknown. Subsequent research, based on eyewitness accounts, indicates that he was poisoned by a jealous husband. In August of 1938 Johnson and Honeyboy Edwards were playing at a house party in Three Forks, near Greenwood, Mississippi. Johnson became too familiar with the companion of the man who had hired him to play, and he drank some poisoned whiskey and died three days later. Welding, quoting Shines’s account in the Down Beat Music Yearbook, related that by the time the story reached Shines, who had left Johnson to live with his own family in Memphis, Johnson had been “poisoned by one of those women who really didn’t care for him at all. And Robert was almost always surrounded by that kind … seems like they just sought him out…. And I heard that it was something to do with the black arts. Before he died, it was said, Robert was crawling along the ground on all fours, barking and snapping like a mad beast. That’s what the poison done to him.”

Sold Soul to the Devil in Crossroads Bargain

Shines’s reference to “the black arts” evokes another myth about Johnson: namely, that he sold his soul to the devil in order to achieve mastery over the guitar. The myth grew in response to an absence of information about how Johnson had learned to play the guitar so well. As a teenager he had had a reputation among older musicians, like House and Willie Brown, for being a pest who would grab their instruments and try to play them. House had to tell him, “You shouldn’t do that, Robert. You’re worrying the people…. You can’t play, and you’re just keeping up a lot of noise with it.” As House recalled for Welding in the Down Beat Music Yearbook, Johnson ran away from home for about six months—though some sources say his absence spanned nearly two years—when his stepfather wanted him to work in the fields with him. More reliable sources attribute Johnson’s 1930 departure and extended absence from Northern Mississippi to the death of his first wife and subsequent remarriage. When Johnson returned he had his own guitar. Robert Jr. Lockwood and a subsequently discovered photograph confirm that Johnson’s guitar of choice was a Gibson Kalamazoo. Johnson demonstrated such a great ability upon his return home—most likely the fruits of bluesman Ike Zinnerman’s tutelage—that House believed he had “sold his soul to the devil in exchange for learning to play like that.”

Although Johnson never confirmed the story, another Delta blues musician, Tommy Johnson, once told his brother the same tale about going down to the crossroads to meet the devil at midnight. Folk researchers draw a parallel between the devil in the story and the African Yoruba god, Legba, the trickster, whose favorite haunt was a crossroads. It seems Johnson knew the life he sang about quite well, and his songs are rife with devil imagery. As if hiding some secret talent, he would often turn his back when he felt the eyes of another musician were watching him too closely. All of which adds to the myth, but takes nothing away from the music of the shadowy blues artist who came to be known as the “King of the Delta Blues Singers.”

Selected discography

King of the Delta Blues Singers, Columbia, 1961.

King of the Delta Blues Singers: Volume 2, Columbia, 1970.

Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings, Columbia, 1990.

Sources

Books

Charters, Samuel, The Bluesmen, Oak Publications, 1967.

Guralnick, Peter, Searching for Robert Johnson, Dutton, 1989.

Marcus, Greil, Mystery Train, Dutton, 1975.

Palmer, Robert, Deep Blues, Viking, 1981.

Periodicals

American Visions, June 1988.

Chicago Tribune, January 5, 1990.

Down Beat Music Yearbook, 1966.

Esquire, October 1990.

Living Blues, No. 94, 1990.

Musician, January 1991.

Nation, October 8, 1990.

New York Times, November 22, 1970.

Record Research, No. 43, May 1963.

Rolling Stone, October 18, 1990.

Wilson Library Bulletin, November 1975.

Additional information provided by Robert Johnson historian Stephen C. LaVere.

—David Bianco

Johnson, Robert

(1893-1968)
Johnson & Johnson Company

Overview

Robert Wood Johnson was the head of the famous Johnson & Johnson Company, a supplier of health care and baby products founded by his father. He was known as a humane employer, a wartime administrator, an author, a philanthropist, and a liberal business leader. His name survives today not only in the company itself, but also in the philanthropic functions of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Personal Life

Robert Wood Johnson's life began on April 4, 1893, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, home of his father's Johnson & Johnson business headquarters. A son of Robert Wood and Evangeline Armstrong Johnson, young Johnson attended Lawrenceville School and Rutgers Preparatory School but did not attend college, choosing instead to begin working for his father at the age of 17.

Rising eventually to president and then chairman of the board, Johnson was dedicated to the company's success and equally dedicated to the welfare of the employees. He declared in a 1947 speech, according to an article in Coronet magazine, that business should never forget the plight of ordinary workers. To ignore them, he said, "is as foolish as it would be to ignore public health, crime, and the need for education."

Apart from his heavy business commitments, Johnson found time for a number of hobbies. He enjoyed flying, beginning with an old biplane in 1919, then an early monoplane, an autogiro, and later his own company plane. He also enjoyed tennis and hunting but preferred yachting, winning several cups in competition. He once raced and cruised from Hudson Strait to the Caribbean and on another occasion crossed the Atlantic to Spain.

Johnson also had a vital interest in Republican politics, once serving as the mayor of Highland Park, New Jersey. He felt that his experience in small-town politics taught him a great deal about human psychology; on one occasion, for example, he personally went to the home of a resident who had complained about uncollected garbage—and Johnson himself loaded up the garbage and took it to the town dump. Although he steadfastly refused to run for Congress in 1948, he maintained an interest in political issues throughout his life.

In addition to his business and political interests, Johnson believed in the importance of good works. A practicing Episcopalian whose religion was more than just a tradition, he worked with ministers, priests, and rabbis to improve management-labor relations. He received numerous awards throughout his life, among them the People to People Award from President Eisenhower (1957), the Gold Medal of Merit from the Veterans of Foreign Wars (1959), the Brotherhood Award from the National Conference of Christians and Jews (1958), and the Executive of the Year Award from the American College of Hospital Administrators (1965). He was a patron of the American Museum of Natural History and, most importantly, the initiator of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a major supporter of health-related causes.

Those who wrote about Johnson during his lifetime portrayed an energetic man who constantly looked for new experiences. "The General," as he was called after his wartime service, was well respected by colleagues and employees and had a strong devotion to duty. He was sometimes unconventional but had an engaging personality and a good sense of humor, which served him well even with political and business opponents. He is remembered today for his business successes and especially for championing small business and the rights of the individual.

Johnson lived in Princeton, New Jersey, and had three wives: Margaret Shea, Elizabeth Ross, and Evelyne Vernon, to whom he was married at the time of his death on January 30, 1968. He had a daughter, Sheila, a son, Robert W. Johnson Jr. and five grandchildren.

Career Details

As a son of the founder of Johnson & Johnson, young Johnson gravitated naturally toward his father's company. Following the lead of Englishman Joseph Lister, who had identified airborne germs as sources of infection, the elder Johnson and his brothers had developed the first adhesive surgical plaster and tape and the first ready-made, sterile, sealed surgical dressings. The company filled a very real need. Before Lister's discoveries, some hospitals reported postoperative mortality rates as high as 90 percent. Johnson & Johnson vastly improved products available for antiseptic surgery and post-surgical care, and the company fast became the best-known name in health care supplies in the United States. By the 1890s Johnson & Johnson was calling itself "The Most Trusted Name in Surgical Dressings."

The younger Johnson spent several years as a youth doing hard mill work in various areas of the Johnson & Johnson factory, from the plaster shop to the adhesive tape department. The company continued to diversify during the early decades of the 1900s, buying a textile mill and adding the Band-Aid adhesive bandage and Johnson's Baby Cream to its product line in the 1920s. After going on an around-the-world tour in the early 1920s, Johnson and his brother J. Seward Johnson convinced the company that it should look into selling their products in an international market. Soon Johnson & Johnson Ltd. was set up in Great Britain. Later, during Johnson's tenure in executive positions, the company also expanded into Australia (1931), Sweden (1956), and Japan (1961).

Chronology: Robert Johnson

1893: Born.

1910: Graduated from Rutgers Preparatory School.

1918: Became vice president at Johnson & Johnson.

1920: Elected mayor of Highland Park, New Jersey.

1931: Became vice president and general manager at Johnson & Johnson.

1932: Became president of Johnson & Johnson.

1938: Started term as chairman of the board.

1942: Entered U.S. Army Ordnance Department.

1942: Promoted to brigadier general.

1943: Appointed chairman of the Smaller War Plants Corporation.

1943: Married third wife, Evelyn Vernon.

1944: First book, But, General Johnson, published.

1947: Or Forfeit Freedom was published.

1949: Robert Johnson Talks It Over was published.

1968: Died.

Johnson became a vice-president by the age of 25 and president of the company in 1932, replacing his uncle, James W. Johnson. Suspicious of unwieldly bureaucratization in industry, Johnson initiated a policy of decentralization, giving divisions and affiliates a great deal of autonomy in their operations. It was said that he embarked on this policy after once calling a meeting of all executives involved with a particular product. Dismayed that they numbered 27, he then and there decided to reorganize to eliminate inefficiency.

Divisions under Johnson's leadership eventually included such names as Surgikos, Inc. (surgical packs and gowns), the Personal Products Division (sanitary napkins), Ortho Pharmaceutical Corporation (birth control products), and Ethicon (sutures). In 1959 Johnson & Johnson bought McNeil Laboratories, a producer of prescription drugs, and Cilag-Chemie, a Swiss pharmaceutical company. In 1961, the company acquired Janssen Pharmaceutical. Retiring in 1963, Johnson stayed with the company after that as chairman of the board. At the time of his death in 1968, Johnson & Johnson had some 90 plants and $700 million in sales in 120 countries.

During World War II, Johnson became rationing administrator for the state of New Jersey, then a colonel assigned to Army Ordnance. He was promoted to brigadier general in 1942, becoming known thereafter as "the General" to employees and friends alike. He then became chief of the New York Ordnance District and later chairman of the War Production Board and of the Smaller War Plants Corporation (SWPC), over the strong objections of Senator Harry S. Truman of Missouri, who thought that big business would have too much control of government contracts under Johnson's leadership.

Johnson set out to prove Truman wrong, moving immediately to guarantee more contracts for small plants. In a speech in 1943, he condemned the building of larger and larger defense plants, when smaller plants could serve the nation's purposes well. He was eventually credited with bringing more government contracts to small businesses in New York state and northern New Jersey. Political wrangling, however, began to negate the SWPC's effectiveness. In September 1943, Johnson resigned his position. Despite the frustrations of the job, most agreed that he had done well in a difficult assignment.

Johnson's first book, But, General Johnson (1944), detailed his experiences in Washington, condemning bureaucracy and centralization in a good-humored way. The second, Or Forfeit Freedom (1947), proclaimed many of Johnson's reform ideas and critiqued the industry of his day. Johnson also published Robert Johnson Talks It Over in 1949 and was one of the authors of Human Relations in Business in 1950.

Social and Economic Impact

Johnson had a uniquely people-centered approach to business operations. In 1935, he wrote a pamphlet entitled "Try Reality," in which he urged other industrialists to adopt new policies of corporate responsibility to their employees and to the world at large. He later created the Johnson & Johnson, credo stating that its first responsibility was to its consumers; the second, to its employees; the third, to the community and environment; and the fourth, to the stockholders. Johnson and his successors believed that the stockholders would be well served if the company met the first three responsibilities. Johnson & Johnson's credo attracted wide media attention and was acclaimed as a future-oriented approach to business practices. To this day, Johnson & Johnson is known for its humane personnel policies, such as liberal family leave and on-site day care.

At times Johnson disappointed his more conservative business colleagues with his liberal approach. His belief in union-management cooperation defied traditional business practices of the times. Within management, he disliked people who never disagreed with him and did not retaliate against dissenters. His policy of decentralization also went against the current thinking among other large industries whose divisions were increasingly becoming less autonomous. Johnson also promoted a higher minimum wage, improved factory conditions, and the responsibility of business to society.

Under the leadership of Robert Johnson, the contributions of the company to the social and economic wellbeing of Americans were considerable. Continuing in his father's tradition of providing quality health care products, he improved some older products such as baby powder and baby cream and made them best-sellers; and his policy of diversification has made the company the great success it is today, employing over 91,000 people in its worldwide operations. At all times, Johnson was idealistic in his approach to business and the people who worked for him. According to his obituary in the New York Times, Johnson once said, "We build not only structures in which men and women of the future will work, but also the pattern of society in which they will work. We are building not only frameworks of stone and steel but frameworks of ideas and ideals."

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is his enduring legacy. Arising not only from his business interests, but also from his humanitarian concern for patients, the foundation was begun in 1972 from a $1.2 billion bequest from Johnson and $2 billion in grants. The foundation issues a grant to help Americans get basic health care, improve health services to the chronically ill, and reduce the harm caused by substance abuse. The phrase "made possible by the Robert Johnson Wood Foundation" is also commonly attached to health-related programs on the Public Broadcasting System and in other media outlets. The goals of the foundation reflect Robert Wood Johnson's own sense of personal and corporate responsibility for the health of the whole society.

Sources of Information

Contact at: Johnson & Johnson Company
One Johnson and Johnson Plz.
New Brunswick, NJ 08933
Business Phone: (732)524-0400
URL: http://www.jnj.com

Bibliography

Current Biography Yearbook. New York: H.W. Wilson Co., 1943.

International Directory of Company Histories, Chicago: St. James Press, 1991.

Johnson and Johnson. Company History. Available from http://www.johnsonandjohnson.com

New York Times, 31 January 1968.

Oswald, George. "Johnson of J & J: Industry's Rebel." Coronet, October 1949.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Homepage. Available from http://www.rwjf.org/jabout.htm and http://www.rwjf.org/library/jlib.htm.

Who Was Who in America. Chicago: Marquis Who's Who, 1973.

Robert Johnson (1676-1735)

South carolina governor

Sources

Early Life. Among his several marks of distinction Robert Johnson served both as a proprietary (1717–1719) and royal (1731–1735) governor in South Carolina. His father, Nathaniel Johnson, had served as South Carolina’s proprietary governor from 1702 to 1708. Robert was born in England in 1676. As a young child he and his parents went to the Leeward Islands where his father served as governor. After his term Nathaniel moved to South Carolina to develop property he held there. He sent his family back to England expecting to meet them shortly in South Carolina once he had made the necessary preparations. On the family’s voyage to England the French intercepted their vessel and held them as prisoners for a year. The children’s mother died while in captivity. Eventually the children were reunited with their father, who, apart from his original intentions to be a private planter in the colony, agreed to serve as governor. Pleased with Nathaniel Johnson’s service, the proprietors later (1717) selected his son to take the chief executive position.

Proprietary Governor. Robert Johnson had been characterized as “a person of Integrity and Capacity well affected to her Majestys Government and every way qualified for that Trust.” Upon this recommendation the Board of Trade agreed to his becoming governor provided he would swear an oath and provide a bond to ensure that he would uphold the Navigation Acts earlier imposed on the colonies. With Johnson’s oath and bond supplied, he was appointed. As capable a man as Johnson was, his first year in office reflected his inexperience. The proprietors had offered assemblymen a deal that if they would approve a new quitrent law (proprietors were losing money due to the ineffective implementation of the existing law) they would personally receive a two-year remission in past quitrent debts. The proprietors also directed Johnson to present before the assembly a plan to raise the price of land in South Carolina. The assembly completely rejected it. The young governor was furious and determined to retaliate by blocking their appointment for powder receiver. Johnson argued that as chief commander of the militia, he had the sole right for such an appointment. He eventually withdrew his demand but did scold the assembly by insisting that they should recognize the proprietors as their “masters.” The assemblymen responded that they did not recognize the proprietors as such. This small episode illustrates the growing frustration already existent between colonial leaders and proprietors. Although Johnson was able to eventually work harmoniously with the assembly on subsequent financial matters, the assembly’s determination to reject proprietary attempts at undue dominance remained a constant.

Road to Royal Rule. Provincial discontent intensified in the summer of 1718 when the proprietors began an assault on the assembly by disallowing many of its laws and by ordering Johnson to dissolve the assembly and make arrangements for new elections. Johnson recognized that the proprietors were out of hand, and he began to work with the assembly (which he did not dissolve) against proprietary prerogatives. Added to this was the refusal of the proprietors to help defend the colony against piracy. In that same summer pirate Edward Teach (Blackbeard) practically held Charleston captive for a week. When word spread that South Carolina’s shores were vulnerable, other pirates made similar attempts. For a period of five months the colony was periodically terrorized by various sea bandits, with no help from the proprietors. Eventually the piracy all but ceased on the Carolina coast when Governor Johnson himself led an expedition that captured pirate Stede Bonnet along with forty-eight others. The pirates were convicted and hanged in Charleston.

Resentments. The proprietors’ refusal to send aid during this crisis hardened the colonists’ attitude toward them even further. And if that was not enough to cause an antiproprietary revolt, the subsequent actions taken by the proprietors did. In 1719 the proprietors attempted to completely reorganize the council by replacing antiproprietors with men more apt to comply with their wishes. Also in that year they reintroduced the earlier efforts of land reform and assembly reelections. This time Governor Johnson, albeit reluctantly, complied with their wishes, dissolved the assembly, and called for new elections. But the new assembly, which had convened on 10 December 1719, refused to recognize the reorganized council. They requested that Governor Johnson rather than the proprietors assume governorship under the Crown. He refused and gave the reason of “my honor as being Intrusted by their Lordships.” On 21 December, the day of the militia muster in Charleston, Governor Johnson ordered the soldiers to go home; they refused. On that day the rebel factions were successful in dismissing Johnson from the governorship, replacing him with James Moore Jr. A revolution had occurred. Johnson made several efforts to regain control of the government. He had hoped to be named the first royal governor. Yet in 1721 the Board of Trade appointed sixty-six-year-old Francis Nicholson, the most tried and proven royal administrator available, as the first royal governor of South Carolina. But Johnson’s career was not over.

Royal Governor. From 1724 Johnson had been in London seeking a royal governorship. In 1729 his connections and past experience gave him the opportunity to mediate the negotiations between the proprietors (who wanted to sell the Carolinas) and the Crown. Johnson helped to successfully negotiate the deal, which also helped him to win his second appointment as governor of South Carolina. There were two major plans for South Carolina that Johnson presented to the Board of Trade. He and his friend Samuel Wragg, the South Carolina Assembly agent to London, convinced the Crown authorities, because of hard-money policy failures, to allow for a more flexible currency system in the colony. This would ease many of the cash-flow problems that had almost shut down any semblance of effective government. One of the most important elements in Johnson’s instructions from the Board of Trade was the authority to implement a new township system, a plan he had earlier introduced to the board. The system allowed for the formation of ten townships in the Carolina backcountry to be settled by exiled Protestants from Europe. As an inducement for settlement South Carolina would provide free land to the refugees. This would serve the colony in at least two important ways, Johnson argued. It would mean a greater balance between whites and blacks in the colony. Also, the presence of new settlements on the frontier would enhance the colony’s military defense. It is one thing to present new policy; it is another to successfully implement it.

Reasonable Harmony. Upon Johnson’s arrival in 1730 he found a much more conciliatory attitude among the colonists. As one Anglican missionary stated, “I think the People have done with their former animosities, and have been in an indifferent easy quiet condition.” South Carolina colonists had come to recognize the “futility of extremism.” This attitude also existed with Johnson. Although the province faced much graver financial problems than previously known, Johnson’s flexible interpretation of his instructions helped funnel necessary funds to pay off debts earlier than would have otherwise been possible.

Middle Ground. On other key issues Johnson compromised enough to bring most factions into a conciliatory position. For example, in accordance with his instructions he somehow convinced the assembly to allow the council to initiate and amend money bills. Albeit reluctantly, the assembly assented to the instruction; only once in Johnson’s administration did it challenge the council’s authority in this matter. The harmony that Johnson helped to bring about led to a more prosperous economy. Johnson and Wragg successfully gained concessions from Parliament for direct rice shipments to Europe, thus opening up a vast market for South Carolina planters. From 1732 to 1739 the rice economy in the province boomed. Also beginning in 1732 Johnson’s township plan began to pay off. By the year of Johnson’s death (1735) six of nine townships were populated with hundreds of productive Protestant immigrants from Europe. This was the beginning of a very large influx of Swiss, German, Welsh, Irish, and Scottish immigrants into the colony. Serving as buffers from Indians, the townships added to the already-growing harmony. The largest buffer against the Spanish in Florida, the new colony of Georgia, also materialized under Johnson’s leadership. Had it not been for South Carolina’s enthusiastic aid to James Oglethorpe, founder of Georgia, the new colony would not have succeeded. In addition to funds and supplies Johnson sent a very able councilor, William Bull, to assist Oglethorpe with Indian negotiations, militia establishment, surveying, and construction.

Land. Of course Robert Johnson’s royal governorship was not without its problems. He spent much of his time trying to work out land disputes that the transition from a proprietary to royal government created. Critics accused Johnson of showing favoritism to the wealthy landed elite by giving them more land than was allowed and by not charging quitrents to some. Others blamed Johnson’s instructions which outlined an incomplete quitrent law (1731). The new law left Johnson with a system of collection so incomplete that he had to improvise its execution. It is reasonable to lay the blame on both Johnson and the 1731 law. Wherever it should be laid, this failure in the land system was a blight in an otherwise successful administration.

The Good Governor. Johnson’s service ended with his death on 3 May 1735. He had been the governor both under proprietors and under the Crown. He had taken his political knocks, especially in his first term. His is a story of reasonable compromise, a quality necessary for any colonial governor’s success. He learned his lessons early, lessons that would win him another chance at leadership. The lessons learned helped him in no small way to lead the colony in transition from considerable tumult to reasonable harmony. For this he has long been known in South Carolina history as “the good Governor Johnson.”

Sources

Helen Kohn Hennig, Great South Carolinians from Colonial Days to the Confederate War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1940);

Richard P. Sherman, Robert Johnson: Proprietary & Royal Governor of South Carolina (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1966);

M. Eugene Sirmans, Colonial South Carolina: A Political History, 1663–1763 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1966).

Robert Johnson

Of all the great blues musicians, Robert Johnson (1911-1938) was probably the most obscure. All that is known of him for certain is that he recorded 29 songs; he died young; and he was one of the greatest bluesmen of the Mississippi Delta.

There are only five dates in Johnson's life that can undeniably be used to assign him to a place in history: Monday, November 23; Thursday, November 26; and Friday, November 27, 1936, he was in San Antonio, Texas, at a recording session. Seven months later, on Saturday, June 19 and Sunday, June 20, 1937, he was in Dallas at another session. Everything else about his life is an attempt at reconstruction. As director Martin Scorsese says in his foreword to Alan Greenberg's play Love In Vain: A Vision of Robert Johnson, "The thing about Robert Johnson was that he only existed on his records. He was pure legend."

Beginnings

Robert Johnson was born in the Mississippi Delta (Hazlehurst, Mississippi) sometime around May 8, 1911, the 11th child of Julia Major Dodds, who had previously born 10 children to her husband Charles Dodds. Born illegitimate, Johnson did not take the Dodds name.

Twenty two-year-old Charles Dodds had married Julia Major in Hazlehurst, Mississippi—about 35 miles from Jackson—in 1889. Charles Dodds owned land and made wicker furniture; his family was well off until he was forced out of Hazlehurst around 1909 by a lynch mob following an argument with some of the more prosperous townsfolk. (There was a family legend that Dodds escaped from Hazlehurst dressed in women's clothing.) Over the next two years, Julia Dodds sent their children one at time to live with their father in Memphis, where Charles Dodds had adopted the name of Charles Spencer. Julia stayed behind in Hazlehurst with two daughters, until she was evicted for nonpayment of taxes.

By that time she had given birth to a son, Robert, who was fathered by a field worker named Nonah Johnson. Unwelcome in Charles Dodds' home, Julia Dodds became an itinerant field worker, picking cotton and living in camps as she moved among plantations. While she worked in the fields, her eight-year-old daughter took care of Johnson. Over the next ten years, Dodds would make repeated attempts to reunite the family, but Charles Dodds never stopped resenting her infidelity. Although Charles Dodds would eventually accept Johnson, he never would forgive his wife for giving birth to him. While in his teens, Johnson learned who his father was, and it was at that time that he began calling himself Robert Johnson.

Around 1914, Johnson moved in with Charles Dodds' family, which by that time included all of Dodds' children by Julia Dodds, as well as Dodds' mistress from Hazlehurst and their two children. Johnson would spend the next several years in Memphis, and it was reportedly about this time that he began playing the guitar under his older half-brother's tutelage.

Johnson did not rejoin his mother until she had re-married several years later. By the end of the decade, he was back in the Mississippi Delta living with his mother and her new husband, Dusty Willis. Johnson and his stepfather, who had little tolerance for music, did not get along, and Johnson had to slip out of the house to join his musician friends. Eventually he decided to run away.

It is not known whether Johnson attended school in the Delta during this time. Some later accounts say that he could neither read nor write, while others tell of his beautiful handwriting. In any case, everyone agrees that music was Johnson's first interest, and that he had gotten his start playing the jew's harp and harmonica.

Bluesman

By 1930, Johnson had married and become serious about playing the guitar. During the time that he was married, he lived with his sister and her husband. But his wife died in childbirth at the age of 16. By some accounts, Johnson briefly moved back with his mother and stepfather, where he encountered the same problems that he had found intolerable when he was growing up and soon left. In 1931, he married for a second time. By then, his fellow musicians were beginning to take note of his precocity on the guitar.

Johnson began traveling up and down the Delta, travelling by bus, hopping trains, and sometimes hitchhiking. When he arrived in a new town, he would play on street corners or in front of the local barbershop or a restaurant. He played what his audience asked for—not necessarily his own compositions. Anything he earned was based on tips, not salary. With an ability to pick up tunes at first hearing, Johnson had no trouble giving his audiences what they wanted. Also working in his favor was an ability to establish instant rapport with his audiences. In every town he stopped, Johnson would establish ties to the local community that would serve him in good stead when he passed through again a month or a year later.

Fellow musician Johnny Shines was 17 when he met Johnson in 1933. He estimated that Johnson was maybe a year older than himself. In Samuel Charters' Robert Johnson, the author quotes Shines as saying, "Robert was a very friendly person, even though he was sulky at times, you know. And I hung around Robert for quite a while. One evening he disappeared. He was kind of [a] peculiar fellow. Robert'd be standing up playing some place, playing like nobody's business. At about that time it was a hustle with him as well as a pleasure. And money'd becoming from all directions. But Robert'd just pick up and walk off and leave you standing there playing. And you wouldn't see Robert no more maybe in two or three weeks… . So Robert and I, we began journeying off. I was just, matter of fact, tagging along."

During this time Johnson established what would be a relatively long-term relationship with a woman who was about 15 years older than himself—the mother of future musician Robert Jr. Lockwood. But Johnson reportedly also had someone—a woman—to look after him in all of the towns he played in. Johnson would reportedly ask young women living in the country with their families whether he could go home with them, and in most cases the answer was yes. At least until their husbands came home or Johnson was ready to move on.

Recording Sessions

Around 1936, Johnson met H. C. Spier in Jackson, Mississippi, who ran a music store and doubled as a talent scout. Spier put Johnson in touch with Ernie Oertle, who offered to record the young musician in San Antonio, Texas. At the recording session, Johnson was too shy to perform in front of the musicians in the studio, so played facing the wall. In the ensuing three-day session, Johnson played 16 selections. When the recording session was over, Johnson presumably returned home with several hundred dollars in his pocket—probably more money than he had ever had at one time.

Among the songs Johnson recorded in San Antonio were "Come On In My Kitchen," "Kind Hearted Woman," and "Cross Roads Blues." "Come On In My Kitchen" included the lines: "The woman I love took from my best friend/Some joker got lucky, stole her back again,/You better come on in my kitchen, it's going to be rainin' outdoors." In "Cross Roads Blues," another of his great songs, he sang: "I went to the crossroads, fell down on my knees./I went to the crossroads, fell down on my knees./I asked the Lord above, have mercy, save poor Bob if you please./Uumb, standing at the crossroads I tried to flag a ride./Standing at the crossroads I tried to flag a ride./Ain't nobody seem to know me, everybody pass me by."

When his records began appearing, Johnson made the rounds to his relatives and the various children he had fathered to bring them the records himself. The first songs to appear were "Terraplane Blues" and "Last Fair Deal Gone Down," probably the only recordings of his that he would live to hear.

In 1937, Johnson traveled to Dallas, Texas, for another recording session. Eleven records from this session would be released within the following year. Among them were the three songs that would largely contribute to Johnson's posthumous fame: "Stones In My Heart," "Me And The Devil," and "Hell Hound On My Trail." "Stones In My Heart" and "Me And The Devil" are both about betrayal and making a pact with the devil. The terrifying "Hell Hound On My Trail" is often considered to be the crowning achievement of blues-style music.

Interestingly, six of Johnson's blues songs mention the devil or some form of the supernatural. In "Me And The Devil," he began, "Early this morning when you knocked upon my door,/Early this morning, umb, when you knocked upon my door,/And I said, 'Hello, Satan, I believe it's time to go,' " before leading into "You may bury my body down by the highway side,/ You may bury my body, uumh, down by the highway side,/So my old evil spirit can get on a Greyhound bus and ride."

Death at the Crossroads

In the last year of his life, Johnson is believed to have traveled to St. Louis and possibly Illinois. He spent sometime in Memphis and traveled through the Mississippi Delta and Arkansas. By the time he died, at least six of his records had been released.

His death came on August 16, 1938, at the approximate age of 26 at a little country crossroads near Greenwood, Mississippi. He had been playing for several weeks at a country dance in a town about 15 miles from Greenwood when, by some accounts, he was given poisoned whiskey at the dance by the husband of a woman he had been seeing.

Johnson was buried in the graveyard of a small church near Morgan City, Mississippi, not far from Greenwood, in an unmarked grave. His life would be short but his music would serve as the root source for an entire generation of blues and rock and roll musicians.

Among the Mississippi Delta bluesmen believed to have exerted the strongest influences on Johnson's music are Charley Patton, Willie Brown, Howlin' Wolf, Tommy Johnson, and Son House. Peter Guralnick, in Searching for Robert Johnson, quotes Son House, "We'd all play for the Saturday night balls, and there'd be this little boy standing around. That was Robert Johnson. He was just a little boy then. He blew harmonica and he was pretty good with that, but he wanted to play guitar."

Books

Charters, Samuel, Robert Johnson, Oak Publications, 1973.

Greenberg, Alan, Love In Vain: A Vision of Robert Johnson, DaCapo Press, 1994.

Guralnick, Peter, Searching for Robert Johnson, E.P. Dutton, 1989. □