Robert Johnson

There is little evidence to believe that he had any family. However, the blues singer Robert Junior Lockwood was said to be the son of one his ‘girl friends’ as also Claude Johnson.

He died on August 16, 1938 after drinking poisoned whisky allegedly given to him by friends of a man on whose wife he showed too much interest. The exact location of his grave is, unfortunately, officially unknown.

Robert Johnson was born on May 8, 1911 in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, to Julia Major Dodds and Noah Johnson, a laborer in a local sawmill.

Robert’s mother was married to Charles Dodds, who had been forced by locals to leave Hazlehurst. He was living in Memphis as Charles Spencer.

Julia brought Robert to live with her husband Charles Spencer in Memphis in 1913. Three years later, he started attending school there, quite possibly St. Peter’s elementary school.

At Memphis, his older brother Leroy spent time in the musical establishments in the area (dance halls, bars, etc.) and played the guitar. He probably taught Robert a few elements of guitar playing.

1920 Census records show him living with his mother and her new husband, William “Dusty” Willis in Crittenden, Arkansas, where he attended Indian Creek school in Commerce, Mississippi.

By 1928, he learnt one of his first guitar songs, ‘I’m Gonna Sit Down and Tell My Mama’, from Harry Hard Rock Glenn and could also play harmonica, Jews harp piano, pump organ, and guitar.

In 1930, Son House, a blues singer and guitarist, moved to Robinsonville. House remembered Johnson as a 'little boy' who was a competent harmonica player but an embarrassingly bad guitarist.

In 1931, he left the Delta to find his biological father Noah. He arrived in Martinsville, close to his birthplace Hazlehurst and met Ike Zimmerman who took him home and taught him guitar.

When Johnson next appeared in Robinsonville, he seemed to have acquired a miraculous guitar technique. In a later interview, Son House attributed Johnson's new technique and progress to the Devil pact.

Between 1932 and 1938, he moved frequently between large cities like Memphis, Tennessee and Helena, Arkansas and the smaller towns of the Mississippi Delta and neighboring regions of Mississippi and Arkansas.

‘Terraplane Blues’, recorded in 1936, was Johnson’ first single. A moderate regional hit, selling 5,000 copies, he used the car model Terraplane as a metaphor for sex with clear sexual innuendos.

“Hellhound on My Trail", a song recorded by him in 1937 in Dallas, is considered his greatest. It was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in the "Classic of Blues Recording" category.