 In the early 1900s, on the banks of the Mississippi Delta, a new form of music was emerging. This of course was the blues. This form of music had evolved from the fields and a chorus from the people who worked these fields. The blues would go on to influence rock and roll. Such artists as Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones. But there's one blues artist in particular. In fact, a man who is now called the Master of Blues. A man with 29 songs and only two known photographs. A man who is also part of the 27 Club. A man who allegedly sold his soul to the devil. But before we go any further, you know what to do. Please hit that subscribe button and give us a like. As always, a very special thank you to all of our patrons and producers. Without you, we could not do what we do. So I greatly, greatly, greatly appreciate each and every one of you. If you would like to join our Patreon community, there is a link down in the description box below. Welcome to Esoteric Atlanta. My name is Bryce and today on Mystery Monday, we are going to be talking about Robert Johnson. Robert Johnson was born on May 8th of 1911 in Hazelhurst, Mississippi. His mother was a woman named Julia Dodd, who had been born in 1874. His father was a man named Noah Johnson, who was about 10 years Julia's junior. Now when Julia had Robert Johnson, she was still technically married to a man named Charles Dodds. Now the relationship between Julia Dodds, Charles Dodds, and this Noah Johnson would kind of be the catalyst for Robert Johnson's life, because you see Robert Johnson spent his whole life, his whole 27 years, literally moving up and down the Mississippi River. Which as I said in the opening, is where the style of blues music began. You see, Julia Dodds had been married to a man named Charles Dodds. Charles Dodds was about 10 years Julia's senior. Charles Dodds had been born in 1865, right at the end of the American Civil War. You see, Robert Johnson's grandparents had been slaves in the Mississippi area. And Charles Dodd, who by trade was a carpenter, ended up becoming a very successful and powerful land owner. With Julia, Charles had had nine children. Robert Johnson would end up being Julia Dodds' 10th child. Before Robert Johnson was even conceived, Charles Dodds ran into some trouble in the town. It seems there was a situation between Charles and some white land owners. This prompted Charles Dodds to run out of town, leaving Julia Dodd and their nine children behind. You see, Julia Dodds had no idea where her husband, Charles, had gone. And she wouldn't find her husband, Charles Dodds, for another two years. In the meantime, she started seeing Noah Johnson, and she got pregnant with Robert Johnson, giving birth to Robert Johnson in Hazelhurst, Mississippi. Around the time that Robert was two years old, Julia had hunted down her husband, Charles, up in Memphis, Tennessee. Charles Dodds had adapted the name Charles Spencer and had gone on to remarry. Julia Dodds packed all 10 of her children up, including Robert Johnson, and went all the way back up to Memphis to be with her husband. She left all the children with Charles Spencer, including Robert Johnson, where Robert Johnson took on the last name Spencer. There are even some school records from Memphis, Tennessee, that show that Robert Johnson then Spencer was in school in Memphis. Many people believe that because he lived in Memphis, Tennessee, this is where Robert Johnson was first exposed to music. It is said that he first learned how to play the harmonica by listening to certain tunes and then playing them back again. Robert Johnson would spend nine years in Memphis, Tennessee with Charles Spencer, thinking Charles Spencer was his biological father. In the meantime, his mother, Julia Dodds, had remarried a man named Willis Dusty Willis. Now Old Dusty here, he was what we call a sharecropper, and he was 24 years younger than Julia. Sharecropping was very common during this time, during this post-Civil War time, where plantations or farmland were divided into certain sections, and people who knew how to work the land would continue to work the land, wreaking some of the profit from the products produced from the said farm. Again, this was very, very common in this time. It was almost expected that Robert Johnson would go on to do something like this for a living. Records show that in 1919, Robert Johnson, then going by Robert Spencer, moved in with his mother and her new husband, Dusty. Like I said, again, this was a chance for Robert to get to learn how to work the land with Dusty, because that was most likely what they figured he would go on to do with his life for a living. Now, Julia and Dusty were living in Commerce, Mississippi, and the only reason that we know that Robert left Memphis to go to Commerce, Mississippi with his mother is because we have school records from Commerce showing a Robert Spencer enrolled. In fact, we know that Robert Spencer stayed in school to at least 1927, which meant that he would have left school around the age of 16. This tells us that he actually had a pretty solid and good education behind him, even though he left school at 16 years old. This was obviously a very different time in our history. We suspect that a lot of stuff happened to Robert emotionally, mentally, between the time he left school at 16 until the time he got married at the age of 18. For starters, we know that his school record said Robert Spencer, however, his marriage license says Robert Johnson. So somewhere within those two years, his mother, Julia, must have told him the truth about his biological father. Thus, Robert dropped the name Spencer and took on the name Johnson. Not actually knowing his biological father would be something that would motivate Robert Johnson throughout his life. It seems that throughout his life, even while he was heavily involved in music, he was always seeking out his dad, Noah. We also know that culturally at this time, this new wave of blues music already had the reputation of being the devil's music. There's a lot of speculation around this theory. We know that within the black culture, especially there was this drive to sing. You even see that still today in black churches, all that kind of stuff. Well, same was being taught back then in the early 1900s. You would have these very animated church services where preachers who weren't making much money were competing against what they called duke joints. And these duke joints that were jumping and jiving on Saturday night took in more money than the preachers at church. Thus the smear campaign began that these musicians, these people that frequented these joints were nothing but playing with the devil's music. Now obviously Robert Johnson would go on to make his living at these duke joints. But before he even went out into the great wide world of the Mississippi Delta's duke joints, there was already this preconceived culture around this type of music. And I do think that this is really important for us to understand moving forward in the story on whether or not Robert Johnson actually sold his soul to the devil or if that's just a tall tale, an old wives tale that's just snowballed over the years to add folklore to this already very mysterious person. You see, Robert Johnson met a woman named Virginia. He was 18, she was 15. He fell head over heels in love with Virginia and they ended up getting married. Again, from his wedding certificate, his wedding license, that's why we know he had already found out that his real father was Noah Johnson because on the wedding license he goes by Robert Johnson. Now I know 15 is very, very young, but 18 is also very, very young. And in the big scheme of things, that was only a three-year age difference. Robert Johnson had already been dabbling in music by this point. However, he loved this woman, Virginia, so much that he gave up music for her. He started working the fields, sharecropping. She ended up getting pregnant and decided that she was going to go down to her family to give birth to their child. And then once she was ready to give birth, Robert Johnson, her husband, the baby daddy would then join her. He would finish up doing some work in the area, being a very responsible young man with a family on the way. Well, the story goes that while his wife, Virginia, was with their family waiting to deliver, he started to dabble again with the devil's music. Now, unfortunately, as his wife was giving birth, she would lose her life along with the life of her child. Robert Johnson never made it in time to see them before they passed away. Now, her family would go on to blame Robert, saying that because he dabbled with the devil's music, the music took his wife and his child. At this point, Robert Johnson basically gave everything up. He was a man who had lost his heart. And so he went out there and pursued a career in music. His wife had passed away. His child was no longer living either. He had nothing else to lose. He developed the reputation of also being a lady's man around this time. And hell, if his in-laws thought he was already of the devil because of his dabbling with the harmonica, then why not just go all in? Now, on this life-changing quest, Robert decided to head back to Hazelhurst, Mississippi, his birth town, because he wanted to find his father, Noah. Now, Robert already had a reputation for being amazing on the harmonica, but at this point, he also had the reputation for being terrible on the guitar. You see, the most common instruments for these juke joints were the harmonica and the guitar. This is a simple reason as to why most of these musicians were train hoppers. They hopped trains to get from one town to the other to play their gigs. No tour bus for them. Only train hopping. And of course, when you're hopping trains, a guitar and especially a harmonica are the easiest things to carry with you. Now, as I said earlier, Robert would never actually find his biological father, but he would always kind of be hunting for him while creating all of his music and playing at these juke joints. Now, as I said, Robert had this unique talent of hearing music and being able to replicate it on the harmonica. But unfortunately, his guitar skills were lacking. However, again, that idea of being able to hear something and replicate it is rare. And a lot of musicians, a lot of very famous musicians are able to do that. As Tamara said in our last video regarding Lionel Ritchie and some of these other great musicians, they don't actually even know how to read music. They can just feel it and play it. And so for a long time, Robert tried to teach himself the guitar in the styles of a man named Son House and Ike Zimmerman. These were two men that were really big and really popular within the juke joints of the day. Now, the story goes that Robert would actually follow Son House and Willie Brown, his musical partner, around. He would just kind of follow them from joint to joint to joint. And in between sets, he would ask them questions about their guitar playing skills. And it is said that Son House laughed and never wanted Robert Johnson to actually touch his guitar because he knew that although Robert Johnson was super talented on the harmonica, he really did not know how to work the guitar. Well, in 1931, all of that changed because this is when Robert Johnson actually met Ike Zimmerman. Again, another idol of his who was an incredible guitar player in these juke joints. Now, the funny thing about Ike Zimmerman is Ike Zimmerman also carried this legend that he had sold his soul to the devil in order to be this incredible blues musician. Now, Zimmerman had been born in Alabama in 1907 and the roots of this rumor came from the story that Zimmerman learned how to play the guitar in graveyards. And according to Zimmerman, there was a logical explanation for this. The graveyards were quiet. It was a place where he could go and not be distracted by the world around him. And of course, none of the people in the graveyard were actually going to complain if his guitar playing skills were not great. Zimmerman would go to these graveyards in the middle of the night. No one else was awake. And he would work and work and work and work to figure out how to play the guitar. Because he was in graveyards, obviously this got the town talking, tongues wagging as to what he was literally doing in a graveyard. But again, there is a logical explanation. Well, Zimmerman ended up taking Robert Johnson in and teaching him how to play the guitar. And it seems that Zimmerman was quite the dedicated, if not strict teacher. He would take Robert with him to the graveyard every night and work with him and work with him and work with him on this guitar. But I know from things I've done in my life that it doesn't matter how much a teacher is willing to work with you. What matters is how much effort you're willing to give back. And we know that Robert Johnson desperately wanted to be able to play the guitar. He loved music. And so suffice it to say, Robert Johnson was probably very willing to sit there night after night after night and labor over learning this guitar in these graveyards. Now for those who don't play the guitar, I want you to think about that for a minute. I play the piano. I have worked with the guitar a little bit. But when you play the guitar, you have to develop calluses on your finger. In the process of developing these calluses, you can bleed your fingers cramp. You have to get your arms strong to be able to move. So this effort that Robert Johnson put towards his guitar wasn't just learning the music. There was a physical energy that was given to this discipline. But needless to say, about a year later, Robert Johnson showed back up at a juke joint with Sunhouse and Willie Brown playing. And lo and behold, Robert Johnson stole the show. Sunhouse and Willie Brown were shocked at how much he had improved in just one year. This, of course, once more got the tongues wagging. Again, not only was this music already considered to be the devil's music, and not only did Robert Johnson learn how to play the guitar in a graveyard, but there was already some suspicions around a particular crossroads. In fact, many people said, you don't go away for one year and come back playing like that. He had to have gone to the crossroads. Now these aren't just any crossroads. These are the crossroads in Dockery, Mississippi, on a plantation called Dockery Plantation. It seems it was already local legend that this is where one would go. If one wanted to, perhaps, sell one soul to the devil. It just so happens to be that around this particular plantation is the delta, the Mississippi delta, again, where blues was created. So the story goes that if you want to sell your soul to the devil at these crossroads, you have to go at midnight. You stand on the crossroads. And in Robert Johnson's story, they say he got there at midnight holding his guitar when this big looming entity of the devil walked up to him. Robert Johnson then gave the guitar to the devil. The devil then started playing the guitar. The deal was, when the devil gave the guitar back to Johnson, if Johnson were to then take the guitar, it means that he agreed to take on the talents of the devil in exchange for his soul. Now, to this day, there is still a huge question mark on whether something like that actually happened or not. And we know that Robert Johnson, regardless of whether this story was true or not, we know that he used the story to fuel his career. He played with the rumors. We see this story in a lot of his lyrics. I wish I could play his music for you guys on this video so you can hear it and see the words. But again, copyright and all that jazz. But I will put a link down in the description box below to some of his music, so you can hear it for yourselves. We also know that there are a lot of references to Hoodoo in his music. Hoodoo is another form of spiritual practice, kind of like Voodoo, but also very different. Now, again, Hoodoo and Voodoo can be both good and bad, depending on who the person is who is performing the rituals. Now, I know from where my family is from the low country of South Carolina that Hoodoo is just a part of the culture. So just because someone writes about it in their music does not mean they're actually using it to do harm. So a lot of people will point to this in his music and say, oh, he must have definitely sold his soul because here is this reference to Hoodoo where I say it's not necessarily the case. Again, even where I come from, where my family is from, I could hear people talking about Hoodoo and Voodoo and music from that area and it doesn't really mean a whole lot. It's just a cultural reference. Now, it does seem for the remainder of his life, Robert carried a lot of guilt and a lot of pain again over his wife, Virginia's passing and their child's passing. So it was almost like he just threw caution to the wind and ran with it. He obviously liked his alcohol and again liked his women. It seems that he had numerous affairs with many women who were obviously married and made a lot of their husbands very uncomfortable. People also say that Robert Johnson had a way of hypnotizing people. Like when he was on the stage, he could lure you into his performance. Is this the magic of the devil? Or is it just that some people have an it factor that allows them to be very hypnotic performers? But we know in 1936 Robert Johnson went to Texas to record some of his music. This is the only recording that we have of Robert Johnson. Because Robert Johnson ended up passing away on August 16, 1938 at only 27 years old. Now it is believed that Robert's passing was caused by a poisoned drink. He was in a joint same as always and he had been having a liaison with the owner of the joint's wife. Now allegedly as the story goes, the owner put some stuff in his drink. Now the story goes that one of his friends tried to take the drink from Robert because it was served to him open. I guess it was a bottle and it came open and he was trying to tell him like look dude it's not supposed to come to you open but he didn't listen to him and he drank the drink and then spent the next like three days in agony before eventually passing away. And because he died so young, this legend, this rumor of him selling his soul grew and grew and grew and grew. Now we're not totally sure where Robert Johnson is buried. We have three possible locations and these three locations are actually marked for Robert Johnson. These locations are the Mount Zion Baptist Church in Morgan City, Mississippi, the Paine Chapel in Keto, Mississippi, and Little Zion Church in Greenwood, Mississippi. But many historians believe that the most likely location for Robert Johnson's grave is probably a potter's field. Now potter's fields were common for a while. We talked about this over a year ago in our Oakland Cemetery, a video which I will place a link to that in the description box below. They were basically grave sites, unmarked grave sites for paupers, for people who could not afford an actual burial plot. And even though Robert Johnson would probably be very wealthy if he were alive today because he was extremely talented, he wasn't then. And passing over at such a young age, being out of touch with his families probably means he was placed in a potter's field somewhere at again the age of 27. Now as I said in the beginning, Robert Johnson is probably one of the most respected musician in modern day music. Again, a lot of our big bands play tribute to Robert Johnson. A lot of his songs have been covered by many huge touring groups. Now all of the information we have on Robert Johnson's life was not really available to us until 1967 when somebody did find his death certificate. Before then, most of Robert Johnson's life was nothing but an unsolved mystery. And could it be that for about 30 years after his passing, not knowing anything really about his life fueled this rumor that he had sold his soul to the devil? Or are all the rumors completely true? I would love to hear your opinion down in the comment section below. I will be asking Janine this question when we see her next. All right guys, thank you again for sitting through another video. No, this video did not come from New Orleans, but it does come from the surrounding area of New Orleans. And I think it's a super interesting story. Thank you again to Josh McKay for doing our music. If you would like to purchase the opening song, there is a link down in the description box below. And thank you again to Todd Roderick for helping me get this story out to you all. I hope that you're all having a wonderful, wonderful day and I will talk to you soon. Bye.