Delta Blues, Part 4 - Robert Johnson
by Don Erickson
Charley Patton is considered to be the "Father of the Delta Blues", but most people consider Robert Johnson as the "King" of that style of music.
Johnson was born in Hazelhurst, Mississippi on May 8, 1911. Hazelhurst is south of the Jackson/Crystal Springs area where Tommy Johnson made his home. Robert's mother, Julia, had been married to Charles Dodds, but Robert's father was Noah Johnson, a man about whom almost nothing is known. Robert's earliest years were spent with his mother in Delta labor camps and on various plantations. They tried living with Charles Dodds in Memphis, where Dodds had earlier fled from a lynch mob. This didn't work out and after a year or two Dodds sent Robert to Robinsonville in the upper Delta. His mother and new step-father, Dusty Willis, looked after him until he was eighteen.
He had become interested in music and had picked up the Jew's harp and harmonica, and wanted to learn guitar.
In Robinsonville, Robert started hanging around fellow musician Willie Brown. Charley Patton would come around and Robert would follow the two of them to picnics and juke joints where Robert was able to check out the master pioneers of the Delta Blues firsthand.
In February of 1929, Robert met and married 16-year-old Virginia Travis. Unfortunately in April 1930 his wife died during childbirth, along with their child. This event, along with his unstable early years certainly provided fuel for the tormented style of Blues he would later develop.
A few months later, Son House arrived in Robinsonville and began playing with Brown and Patton. House soon became Robert's favorite musician.
Son House had this to say about Robert: "We'd all play for the Saturday night balls and there'd be this little boy standing around. That was Robert Johnson. He blew harmonica then, and he was pretty good with that, but he wanted to play a guitar. His mother and step-father didn't like for him to go out to these Saturday night balls because the guys were so rough. But he'd slip away anyway." Robert would sit at their feet aand play guitar during their breaks. Son added, "And such another racket you'd never heard. It'd make the people mad, you know..."
Robert would become the object of ridicule from House, Patton and Brown when they were drunk and feeling mean. Some people give up when faced with that kind of treatment; other people become driven to prove that people have it all wrong. Robert left the Delta abruptly and within a year was back in the Delta just east of Robinsonville in the town of Banks, Mississippi. House and Brown were playing there, and let Robert sit in on a bet. Son had this to say, "So he sat down there and finally got started. And, Man! He was so good. When he finished all our mouths were standing open. I said, 'Well ain't that fast! He's gone now!'"
The story spread about his talent and the way he supposedly attained his newfound abilities. His remarkable improvement, like Tommy Johnson before him, was attributed to a midnight pact with the Devil at a Delta Crossroads.
What we do know is when he had left the Delta, he went back to the Hazelhurst area and married an older woman who worked to support while he honed his guitar playing under the tutelage of Ike Zinnerman who was from Alabama.
Reprinted with permission from the June 1997 issue of the Blues Crier
