Short Stuff: Robert Johnson and the Devil

Did the legendary blues singer really sell his soul to the devil in exchange for amazing musical skills? Probably not! But there’s still an interesting story there and it features the Coen Brothers.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hello, and welcome to short Stuff. There's Chuck, there's Jerry.
I'm Josh, and this is Welsh. I already said, short stuff,
I've already screwed up and wasted time, squandered precious time. Chuck,
let's just get started. Bannon in it? Oh yeah, in it?
Like I said, Oh, yeah, who was the I can't

(00:25):
remember the Simpsons character? Now? What a dummy bleeding gums Murphy.
Well he played the sacks. Yeah, I know, but I
don't know. He was a jazz man, not a blues man.
He was a hepcat. He was super happy. He wore
like sandals year round without socks with suits, I believe.
So yeah, this is about the blues, and specifically Robert Johnson. Um.

(00:45):
And this is I have an interesting relationship with the blues. Yeah,
and that I love occasionally putting on like Sun House
or Robert Johnson or something like that, um and enjoy
it for a bit, but then I have to turn
it off. And I also recognize that blues is the
foundation of rock and roll, like full stop, but I

(01:08):
also hate like I just call it the blind Willie's Blues.
It's a place here in Atlanta. This legendary blues barber Like,
it's like the blues version of smooth jazz. Yeah, it's
like where you see like the fifty two year old
and flip flops and cargo shorts up there playing the blues.
That's the stuff that makes me hate the blues despite
loving rock and roll and recognizing that blues is the

(01:30):
foundation of that. I'm with you, so you can collective,
you can. It is complicated. Actually, that's really really good
way to put it. All right, So we're talking about
Robert Johnson and whether or not he sold his soul
to the devil at the Crossroads to gain more talent
as a blues guitarist and singer. Spoiler, that did not happen,
because there is no there is no devil. What I've

(01:53):
wasted my life. But we're gonna talk a little bit
about Robert Johnson's history and uh, and he's certainly man
who sang the blues for a reason, a lot of reasons. Yeah,
he had a pretty rough life. So he was as
a little kid. He he got moved from place to place,
mostly between uh little towns in Mississippi and I believe

(02:14):
Memphis and um he uh, he lost his dad early
and I think his dad left, his stepfather abused him. Um,
and he uh, yeah, he just kind of had a
rough especially after he became an adult. He married his girlfriend, Virginia,
and they had a kid, and Virginia and the baby

(02:35):
died during childbirth, and so he kind of, um got
unmoored after that and very very quickly, um started singing
the blues more than ever, became a pretty hardcore alcoholic,
I believe as a result. So yeah, he he definitely
had it rough, and he lived the life that that
you could live to be the foundation of the Blues basically,

(02:57):
which he grew up to be. And they they think
he even he's a member of the twenty seven club,
perhaps the first even if you really think about it.
But he died at twenty seven years old, supposedly out
of and you know, records are tough on guys like
Robert Johnson, but supposedly was poisoned by the husband of

(03:18):
one of his lovers on you know, when he was
twenty seven years old. Right. So, but in that time, though,
he managed to create like a body of work that,
like you said, is is basically pointed to is one
of the major blocks in the foundation of rock and roll. Um,
this is in the thirties that he was he was

(03:38):
playing prolifically, right, Yeah, and he you know, he followed
in the footsteps of Uh. You know, he wasn't the
first blues guitarist by any means. No, No, he wasn't.
He wasn't. In fact, Um, there's the story, and this
is the whole thing where it's like, you know, why
why did he sell the sol of double? What's the
what's the story? We're gonna tell you this story. The
whole thing starts back in and robin Inville, Mississippi, and

(04:01):
there is a duke joint where the blues is being
played by a couple of legends, um sonhouse who you mentioned, Uh?
And I think who else was there that night? Willie
Brown was playing that night and these guys were already
established as Delta Blues Mett right and Um. The house
was packed, and I guess in between sets, a very
young Robert Johnson, uh came up to the stage and

(04:25):
grabbed and I'm sure the stage is just a chair
that was on the same level as the other chairs
or wherever people were sitting and understanding, Um, and he
grabs the guitar not even his guitar, I mean the audacity, right,
and he starts playing, and because it's Robert Johnson, you
would assume that everybody was just stopped, transfixed at how
amazing he was. That is not how it went down

(04:46):
at all. As a matter of fact. No, he wasn't
very good. Uh, and Sonhouse, you know, even says, uh,
why don't he said that? People came and told him,
why don't some of y'all go down and make that
boy put that thing down? He's running us crazy, right
because his playing was so bad and this is humiliating enough,

(05:06):
they went over and basically said, you you not only
need to stop playing, you need to leave this juke joy.
You just showed you're actually not not cool enough to
even sit here as like an audience member anymore. So
he left and he disappeared, and he vanished. And then
a year later, as legend has it, right, uh, at
another blues place again, Willie Brown and um Sonhouse, we're

(05:31):
playing and Robert Johnson shows up, and he shows up
with a guitar, his own guitar this time, and he
starts playing and it's like nothing anyone else has ever heard.
This guy has turned insanely good, almost overnight, and he's
got a seventh string on his guitar and everyone was
like what yeah, and he used it to great effect.
Eric Clapton put it, um kind of succinctly. He said that, Um,

(05:55):
he was simultaneously playing a disjointed baseline on the low strings,
rhythm on the middle rings, and lead on the trouble strings,
which had the effect of sounding like there were multiple
people playing when it was really just him on that
seven string guitar. That's how fast and how varied the
music he was playing was, and no one had ever
heard anything like it. Yeah. So uh. The legend is

(06:16):
that he went down to the crossroads during that time,
sold his soul to the devil, and Satan granted him
with these special talents in exchange for his soul. But
like you already spoiled that, that actually probably didn't happen.
So should we take a break. We should take a break.
We'll do some more explaining when we get back. M okay, chuck.

(06:59):
So we've established that there actually isn't a devil unless
it's the greatest trick you ever pulled. We may have
just fallen victim to that, but um, not only, so
does that mean that that story didn't happen in that sense,
it probably didn't even happen to Robert Johnson. There's seems
to have been a case of mistaken identity because there's

(07:21):
a story of an earlier blues man who's not related
to Robert Johnson, but at the same last name. His
name was Tommy Johnson. And if you're a fan of
the movie, oh brother, were art thou and you were
only familiar with Robert Johnson like me, you may have
been wondering all this time why they didn't just call
that character Tommy Johnson Robert Johnson, since he was clearly
based on Robert Johnson. Well, it turns out, I know

(07:43):
now that the Coen Brothers did their homework. They tend
to do that. So, yeah, Tommy Johnson was in that
movie and had sold his soul to the devil in
that movie. It's been covered elsewhere. That was a great
movie to me. Crossroads with Ralpha Maccio was a good well.
I mean it was one of those HBO movies that,

(08:04):
as a young kid who got a guitar at thirteen,
watched like fifty times. I thought it was pretty great.
I mean, Steve. I isn't it? Oh? Yeah, he plays
Satan's right hand man and lead shredder in the in
the main cutting heads competition at the end. Did Pat
Morita play Satan? He totally should have. No. Who was it?

(08:25):
Oh man, he's been in stuff. If you saw him,
he be like, oh he plays a good Satan wings Houser. No,
Tree Williams No, I don't know. Then those are the
only three actors you know? Uh, Tommy Chong nor anyway,
I haven't seen it in a while. I'd like to
check it out. But that there's always sort of been
this blues legend all the way around is where the

(08:47):
crossroads you go meet the Devil. You sign up for
a lifetime of hell fire in exchange for um. But
what seems to be like a good deal on earth,
even though the tail end of that tale always ends
is like they die young or something. Right. Don't fall
for it, kids, that's right, Like it's supposedly Jimmy Page
sold is sold at the devil too? Sure? Who didn't

(09:09):
you know? So? Um? The story, though, you know, seems
to have originated with Tommy Johnson. And there's a there's
a an article, there's this site Chuck called um Paranormal Academic,
which is just like a dream come true for me.
I just found it. Um. It was linked to in
this house Stuff Works article, and I mean, you're not

(09:31):
going to tinfoil hat dot com anywhere, No, not anymore.
I've kind I've resended my membership um so on Paranormal Academic.
There's a an excerpt from an interview with Tommy Johnson's
brother who said, Tommy told me the story of what happened,
and he supposedly went down to the crossroads. He said,
anybody can do this. You get onto the crossroads, get

(09:52):
there a little before midnight to make sure they're on time,
which is hilarious that he included a little detail be
be punctual and um, if you bring your own instrument,
like great big black man will show up, take your
instrument from you, tune it for you, hand it back
and the deal is done. That's how it happens. And
that's what the legend became. And but then at some

(10:12):
point it seems to have been transposed onto from Tommy
Johnson onto the later on much greater known Robert Johnson.
And Robert Johnson seems to have been like sure Yeah,
that happened to me, and you can really see that
in some of the song titles of the body of
his work. Yeah, hell hound on my trail, Me and
the Devil blues um. Obviously the song Crossroads, Crossroad blues

(10:36):
up jumped the devil. Here's the thing though, The singing
about the devil and talking about the devil in that
community at that time was very commonplace, and Robert Johnson
was talking about his demons, not literal demons, just his
demons in life because he had a rough go and
then you know, fell into alcoholism and chasing women and uh,

(11:00):
probably believed that the hell hounds were on his tail
or I'm sorry, on his trail right, in his it's right,
the devil had given him. So um. That's the interpretation
by his grandson, Stephen Johnson, who also has an answer
for that question. Okay, alright, fine, but yeah, but besides
the supernatural, how could somebody go from zero to hero

(11:23):
blues legend wise in just a year like that? And
Stephen Johnson's like, actually it is probably more like three years,
Like yeah, he actually probably was kicked out of that
juke joint for playing badly and he probably did come
back and blow those same people away. But it wasn't
a year is about three years, and he didn't go
sell a soul of the devil. He went and studied

(11:43):
under a legendary guitarist named Ike Zimmerman, whose family confirms
that Robert Johnson was there all the time around that time. Yeah. So,
like the the boring but also inspiring answer was practice. Yeah,
don't he got good because he played a ton of guitar.
Probably uh, because he wanted to get better, but probably

(12:04):
also due to a little bit of shame and wanted
to go back there and make a name for himself.
So he practiced and practiced in practice like anybody who
was good at anything does. And that is the true
legacy of Robert Johnson, legendary blues man. Right right, well,
thanks for listening. You can read about this article on
how stuff Works. That's where we got this one, right Chuck,
That's right, all right, Well then until next time, Short

(12:27):
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