Did 1930s bluesman Robert Johnson sell his soul to Satan for guitar brilliance and fame?

Close to midnight during the early 1930s, wannabe bluesman stepped out of the shadows of the Mississippi swampland. In one hand he carried his beat-up acoustic guitar; in the other a bottle of rye whiskey to keep out the cold. He shivered slightly. Not because of the chilly air, but because he’d got an appointment with the Devil himself. Johnson was on his way to a lonely crossroads to sell his mortal soul in exchange for guitar expertise and fame.

In the Southern States of America, at the time, there had long been the belief among African Americans that entering a Faustian pact was a route to bettering your life. This was hardly surprising, considering their abject poverty and the fact that the slave trade was still in living memory. Most, however, were too God-fearing to even contemplate making a deal with Satan.

But not Robert Johnson. His thirst for fame and the good life was too great.

Just as a distant clock struck midnight, he stepped into the heart of the crossroads and waited. An owl hooted and there was the odd rustle in the undergrowth. Then, from behind him, came a voice. Johnson swung round to see a tall man, dressed all in black, and wearing shades and a top hat.

“Why, good evenin’ Robert boy. You come to make yo’ bargain?”

Johnson nodded and handed his guitar to the diabolic-looking man, who re-tuned it (to open “D” now known as the “Devil’s tuning”) and gave it back. After that, the man got Johnson to sign away his soul on a piece of parchment. Then looked down at the young black man’s feet and said, “Need yo’ shoes too, boy, take ’em off.”

Johnson complied and handed them to the man, then asked, “Why’d you need my shoes, sir?”

The man in black grinned, “Don’t you worry ’bout them boy, you get ’em back in Hell…”

With that he disappeared into the night. Not long afterward, Johnson was dazzling audiences with his brilliance on the guitar and soon became a famed recording artist.

While this story might sound like something out of Dennis Wheatley’s satanic novels of the 1960s, it’s actually the myth that underpins blues and rock music – even today. Anyone who decides to learn the electric guitar, and has their sights on becoming a rock star, is aware of the Faustian pact that lies behind the undertaking – even if only in the back of their mind.

Dig into Robert Johnson’s life and music, however, and you’ll find that this idea isn’t quite as preposterous as it sounds. Many of his lyrics give the game away. They hint at an involvement in Hoodoo, the spirituality and folk magic of the rural South, which originated in Nigeria and is very similar to the Voodoo of New Orleans and Haiti. Johnson’s classic Hellhound on my Trail (1937) is a prime example:

“You sprinkled hot foot powder, mmm, mmm, around my door…it keep me with ramblin’ mind, rider, every place I go.”

Such lyrics – which to the uninitiated might seem cryptic – can easily be unlocked with a little knowledge of Hoodoo. “Hot foot powder” is a herb and mineral concoction used in Hoodoo magical workings (known as “conjure”) to make people go away. You can still get it today from spiritual supplies stores like 13Moons.com (US) and Mandrake-Press.co.uk (UK). Because hot foot powder had been sprinkled around Johnson’s door, he just kept “rambling” and was never able to stay home very long.

Clearly, he may have used the idea of hot foot powder as a metaphor to describe his life as an itinerant musician. But the point is, it shows he was familiar with Hoodoo. This is no surprise, in fact, as the culture Johnson grew up in, although ostensibly Christian, still very much believed in magic, hexes and the notion that a terrible pact could be made with supernatural entities at an intersection.

Despite the extensive research that has been done into Johnson’s life, the facts remain sketchy. He was probably born on 8 May, 1911, in Hazlehurst, Mississippi – the result of a brief extramarital affair between Julia Ann Dodds and a local plantation worker called Noel Johnson. Music caught the young Robert Johnson’s interest at at a young age. His first instruments were the Jew’s harp and the harmonica. In 1929, before he got seriously involved with the guitar, he got married to 16-year-old Virginia Travis, but tragically she died in childbirth in 1930.

That year, the renowned bluesman Son House moved to Robinsonville, where Johnson was now living. His music had a profound effect on the budding young bluesman. The admiration, however, was not reciprocated. On hearing Johnson play, Son House declared:

“Such another racket you ever heard! It made people mad, you know. They’d come out and say, ‘Why don’t y’all go in there and get that guitar from that boy! He’s running people crazy with it.'”

Unhappy with the backbreaking work he was now doing as a sharecropper on the plantations, Johnson eventually left Robinsonville and headed deep into the Mississippi Delta, where he tried his luck playing “Juke Joints”, the tumble-down shanties where people danced, drank and listened to music.

During his time in the Delta something strange happened, which transformed him from a mediocre (at best) guitar player into a brilliant one. When he returned to Robinsonville, Son House was astonished by his development. “He was so good!” he recalled. “When he finished, all our mouths were standing open. I said, ‘Well, ain’t that fast! He’s gone now!'”

This was when rumors began to circulate that Johnson had traded his soul with the Devil…

Not only had he suddenly become a virtuoso guitar player, but he had also gained extraordinary charisma. His performances regularly moved audiences to tears, and he attracted many blues players, destined to become famous in their own right, as his disciples. In short – his career was on the up.

The idea that you could sell your soul to the Devil in exchange for fame was common currency among bluesmen in the 1930s. It had been part of black culture for years. The Rev LeDell Johnson (no relation to Robert) described how his brother Tommy Johnson (1896-1956), like Robert Johnson, left home scarcely able to play guitar and came back an accomplished musician:

“Now, if Tom was living, he’d tell you. He said the reason he knowed so much, said he sold hisself to the Devil. I asked how. He said, ‘If you want to learn how to play anything you want to play and learn how to make songs yourself, you take your guitar and you go to where a road crosses that way, where a crossroad is. Get there, be sure to get there just a little ‘fore 12.00 that night so you know you’ll be there. You have your guitar and be playing a piece there by yourself. A big black man will walk up there and take your guitar and he’ll tune it. And then he’ll play a piece and hand it back to you. That’s the way I learned to play anything I want.'”

Son House was adamant that Robert Johnson had done the same thing, as were many other blues players.

By 1936, Johnson had been spotted by a scout for the American Record Company. The label duly put him in the studio to record a string of songs that were to become classics in the blues and rock field. These included Terraplane Blues, Preaching Blues (Up Jumped the Devil) and Crossroads Blues. The latter song, covered by Cream in 1968, is plainly about