The 27's - Robert Johnson 1911-1938

Robert Johnson was born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, on May 8, 1911 to Julia Major Dodds and Noah Johnson. At the time Julia was married to Charles Dodds, a relatively successful and prosperous wicker furniture maker. Together Julia and Dodds had ten children, but Dodds had been forced out of Hazelhurst by lynch mob following a dispute with white landowners in the city. Dodds escaped by disguising himself as a woman and relocated to Memphis under the name Charles Spencer. Julia stayed behind, but sent their children one at time to live with their father.

It was during this time that Robert was born, the result of and affair that Julia had with Noah Johnson, a local farm worker. Despite the infidelity Robert was accepted by Dodd and was also sent to live with his siblings.

Around 1919 Robert returned to live with his mother who had relocated to Robinsonville, Mississippi. Julia had remarried a man named Dusty Willis and Robert soon became known as "Little Robert Dusty” although he continued to use the name Robert Spencer. Later Robert adopted the surname of his natural father, Noah Johnson and is listed as Robert Johnson on his marriage certificate to then sixteen-year-old Virginia Travis who died during childbirth shortly after their marriage.

Around 1930 the blues musician Son House moved to Robinsonville where his musical partner, Willie Brown, already lived. While both House and Brown remember Robert Johnson, they don’t remember him being very good at the guitar. About this time Johnson left the Robinsonville area, then reappeared a few months later with a miraculous guitar technique.

According to legend, as a young black man living in rural Mississippi, Robert Johnson had a great desire to become a blues musician. He was told to take his guitar to a crossroad near the Dockery Plantation at midnight. There he was met by the Devil who took the guitar and tuned it. The Devil played a few songs and then returned the guitar to Johnson, giving him mastery of the instrument in exchange for his soul.

Johnson began travelling up and down the Delta as an itinerant musician. When he would arrive in a new town, he would play on street corners for tips. Johnson often did not focus on original compositions, but instead performed standards of the day. Johnson also had an uncanny ability to establish a rapport with his audience, in every town in which he stopped, Johnson would establish ties to the local community.

During this time Johnson established a relationship with Estella Coleman, a woman who was about fifteen years older and the mother of musician Robert Lockwood, Jr. Johnson reportedly cultivated a woman to look after him in each town he played in. He supposedly asked homely young women living in the country with their families whether he could go home with them, and in most cases the answer was yes, until a boyfriend arrived or Johnson was ready to move on.

In 1936 Johnson made his first recordings. The recording session was held in room 414 at the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio where Brunswick Records had set up as a temporary studio. In the ensuing three-day session, Johnson played sixteen selections, and recorded alternate takes for most of these. Among the songs Johnson recorded were "Come On In My Kitchen,” "Kind Hearted Woman Blues,” "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom" and "Cross Road Blues.” The first songs to appear were "Terraplane Blues" and "Last Fair Deal Gone Down.” These were probably the only recordings of his that he would live to hear.

In 1937, Johnson traveled to Dallas, Texas, for another recording session in a makeshift studio at the Brunswick Record Building, 508 Park Avenue. Eleven records from this session would be released within the following year.

Johnson died on August 16, 1938, at the age of 27, near Greenwood, Mississippi. He had been playing for a few weeks at a country dance in a town a few miles from Greenwood. Johnson began flirting with a woman at a dance who offered him an open bottle of whiskey. The woman was unaware that her husband had poisoned the bottle of whiskey she gave to Johnson. Fellow blues legend Sonny Boy Williamson allegedly advised him never to drink from an offered bottle that had already been opened. According to Williamson, Johnson replied, "Don't ever knock a bottle out of my hand."

Johnson is reported to have begun feeling ill the evening after drinking from the bottle and had to be helped back to his room in the early morning hours. Over the next three days, his condition steadily worsened and witnesses reported that he died in a convulsive state of severe pain, symptoms which are consistent with strychnine poisoning.

Robert Johnson has had enormous impact on music and musicians that came after him and influenced genres of music that weren’t recognized as such until long after his death. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame included four of his songs in a set of 500 they deemed to have shaped the genre:

* “Sweet Home Chicago” (1936)
* “Cross Road Blues” (1936)
* “Hellhound on My Trail” (1937)
* “Love in Vain” (1937)

Johnson recorded these songs a decade and a half before the beginning of rock and dying a year or two later. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted him as an “Early Influence” in their first induction ceremony in 1986, almost a half century after his death.