 I like to have music playing in the background while I work. For me, the music of choice is usually the blues. I feel like there's always been something deep and dark about the blues and obviously I'm not the only one who thinks so. Music has been a part of life since the beginning of recorded time, and likely before. The earliest songs offered a welcome respite to simple villagers and monastic liturgies often had earthly secular themes. By the early days of the 20th century, jazz music was being blamed for inciting lewd and lascivious acts, even though now jazz is regarded as pleasantly sophisticated. And then came the blues. I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird But True, a companion to Weird Darkness. It was said that the devil himself presided over the birth of the blues in the Mississippi Delta in the 1920s and he has kept a grip on the offspring of the blues ever since. It was not just the fact that blues players were black and therefore were considered a threat to the white population of the still segregated region. No, it was the fact that African Americans in those days were determined to enjoy what little life had to offer them and that often meant dancing, drinking and, of course, music. But there was another rarely acknowledged reason why white society and the religious authorities were suspicious, even fearful of black music. The blues sounded otherworldly to the whites, smacking of voodoo and African rhythm that could only be the music of the devil. One of the most enduring legends in blues history tells how Robert Johnson, the king of the Delta Blues singers, sold his soul to the devil at a crossroads on Mississippi's Highway 61 at midnight in exchange for some amazing guitar skills and a handful of tunes. In Awkward Young Man, he had been booed offstage only nine months earlier and so when he returned to the local juke joints after making his pact with the devil, the crowd was spooked by his transformation. His fame spread quickly, but at night Johnson was haunted by dreams in which the devil pursued him down a long, dirt road leading to a cemetery. These nightmares inspired his classic songs Crossroad Blues, Me and the Devil Blues and Hellhound on My Trail. The story goes that the devil only allowed Johnson to live until his 27th birthday. He was apparently poisoned by a club owner who suspected the singer of seducing his wife. He was buried in an unmarked grave by the locals who refused to put him in consecrated ground for fear that the devil would come to clean his own. When blues artists left their rural backwaters for Chicago, searching for record contracts and regular gigs, they soon found that they needed to amplify their guitars to be heard above the rattle of the elevated trains and the noise of the traffic. Electric guitars, bass, drums and amplified vocals made for a raunchier rhythm-driven sound and with it came even earthier lyrics, which enhanced the music's reputation for promoting debauchery, drinking and drugs. But the religious groups did not come out in force against the new race music until it threatened to corrupt a white audience through the records of Elvis Presley, Chuck Barry, Little Richard, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and many others. As rock and roll was unleashed upon a generation of teenagers who had never heard anything like it before, it was condemned from pulpits across America as the music of the devil. Society blamed it for the subsequent rise in drunkenness, vandalism, violence and juvenile delinquency. The blues, rock and roll and the devil have been inseparable ever since. For me, it's the perfect background noise for stories of murder, sin, scandal, crime and the supernatural. Rock music has evolved in many directions over the years, but the blues have remained the same. They still have that angry, wicked sound that conjures up visions of dive bars, pool halls, graveyards and an abandoned crossroads in Mississippi, where the devil just might be waiting for the next hopeful guitar player to come along, looking for fame and fortune. The devil and Robert Johnson was written by Troy Taylor. You can find a link to the original story in the show notes. Please subscribe so you don't miss future videos, including my podcasts Weird Darkness and Daily Dose of Weird News. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you like to support the show, you can get exclusive Patreon-only content for as little as $5 per month, content you can't find anywhere else online. Learn more by clicking the link in the show notes, or visit MarlarHouse.com and click on Become a Patron. Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time, Weirdos.