Robert Johnson: The Demonic Blues Messiah Who Made a Pact with Satan

Without a doubt, the figure who most contributed to creating the myth of the blues as devilish music was Robert Johnson and the legend of the pact with the devil at the Clarksdale crossroads. For this reason, but also, and I think more especially, for his character as a bluesman who revolutionized the blues scene at the time, as a guitarist, creator, and composer of the extraordinary quality he always possessed, as a pioneer of the genre and as a reference figure, as a key influence for all subsequent generations who have come into the world of blues and rock, I feel it was essential to dedicate a chapter to him in this book.

Just like in the lives of many great bluesmen, his life has been between reality and legend since its beginnings. Although for a long time the exact date of his birth was unknown, it has been confirmed that he was born on May 8, 1911 - although this date remains controversial to this day - in Hazlehurst, a small town in Copiah County, Mississippi. He was the result of a casual relationship between his mother, Julie Ann Majors , the daughter of former black slaves , and a day laborer who passed through town and who never returned nor was ever heard from again, although his mother once told him that she knew the day laborer's name was Noah Johnson and that because of that circumstance, she decided to take that surname. In fact, when Robert was born, Julia Ann was married to a man named Charles Dodds , owner of a carpentry and cabinetmaking business, but from whom she was temporarily separated.

It is known that when she was barely two years old, her family had to leave Hazlehurst in haste due to a dispute with an important landowner on the plantation where she worked (according to some versions, Charles Dodds had been forced by a mob of angry racists who intended to force him to leave Hazlehurst after a dispute with white landowners and Julia left with him and Robert, separating shortly after) and settled on another plantation in Arkansas, from which she also had to leave shortly after arriving there, this time due to problems with the man with whom she was romantically involved, who mistreated both her and Robert.

Pursued by the authorities, she was arrested and forcibly returned to Arkansas , but before doing so she made sure to leave Robert on a train bound for Memphis, Tennessee, where she appears to have lived with her husband, who had changed his name to Charles Spencer, and where, in addition to regularly attending the Carnes Avenue Colored School, she acquired her love of blues and popular music.

At the age of eleven, Robert joined his mother in Robinsonville, Mississippi, where she had settled with her new husband. This city is the starting point for one of the best-known and most prestigious documentaries ever filmed about the controversial life of the legendary bluesman, The Search for Robert Johnson , directed by Chris Hunt in 1991 and featuring contributions from Eric Clapton and Keith Richards , among others.

Although Robert Johnson began attending school in Robinsonville, due to both his vision problems and his lack of interest in his studies, he dropped out early and around the age of 13 or 14 he entered the world of music, first as a harmonica player and later delving fully into the guitar. It was during this time that he made a name for himself in Robinsonville as a promising blues player and, despite his youth, he was already accompanying established musicians on the local scene such as Charlie Patton, Willie Brown and Son House in local performances and tours, with whom he developed a closer relationship and who, in fact, was apparently the one who years later spread the rumor that his young pupil had made a pact with the devil . In 1928 he left home and returned to Hazlehurst, where he began playing in small clubs and bars until, at the age of 18, in 1929, he married 16-year-old Virginia Travis .

This marriage, however, marked a definitive turning point in Robert Johnson's life. The quarrelsome young man—already at that age he was known for his irascible temper and prone to bar fights—a womanizer, a drinker, and a budding bluesman decided to reform, got a conventional job—according to some accounts, he worked on a plantation, according to others, as a warehouse boy in a store—and even temporarily abandoned music to get ahead in his marriage. Within a year of their marriage, Virginia became pregnant, and in the final months of the pregnancy, according to Robert—this debunks one of the many false myths about Robert Johnson: he didn't abandon his pregnant wife for another woman or to go on tour as a guitarist; she left with her consent—he moved in with his parents' house to be better cared for during the birth, since in those years in the southern United States , admission to hospitals for black people was still prohibited.

During those months, Robert temporarily returned to music, but when he returned to Hazlehurst in April 1930 for the birth, he was faced with the tragic news that both his wife and daughter had died from unforeseen hemorrhagic complications during childbirth. As a result of both the unbearable grief caused by this loss and the malicious rumors and gossip that they had both died because he had abandoned them, he turned to alcohol and found refuge in the blues, devoting himself 100 percent to music from that moment on.

Surviving relatives of Virginia Travis told noted American blues historian and Johnson biographer Robert 'Mack' McCormick that the deaths were divine retribution for Robert's decision to sing secular songs, known as "selling your soul to the devil," leading McCormick to claim that Johnson himself accepted the phrase as a description of his decision to abandon a respectable, conventional life to become a professional blues musician.

The legend begins...

Between June and November 1930 he lived with Esther Lockwood , mother of Robert Lockwood Jr. , who would later also become a blues musician, famous for his professional association with Sonny Boy Williamson II throughout his career. Esther Lockwood was not a millionaire, but she was a wealthy woman who supported Robert for a time until he seriously resumed his musical career, months after their marriage. It is reasonable to assume that during these months of anonymity, Robert Johnson dedicated himself to learning more music, practicing and rehearsing to become a better guitarist, which would explain the surprise he produced in the Robinsonville blues environment when he reappeared, how from being a limited guitarist and whose lack of experience was evident, he had become a virtuoso , a musician of extraordinary ability and talent. But the explanation was quite different: like most blues musicians, according to what was said in those years, not only by the racist, ultra-conservative and religious white population, but even by a large part of the black population itself, Robert Johnson had sold his soul to the devil to achieve success and fame as a musician, remaining an exceptional guitarist for the duration of his career.

Son House heard Johnson play in Robbinsville, Mississippi, and said, “When I first knew him in the late 1920s, he was playing harmonica and pretty good at it, but he wanted to play guitar, even though he wasn’t very good at it. Or rather, he was lousy. I’d never heard a noise like that before!... ‘Take that guitar away from that kid!’ he’d tell people, ‘he’s driving people crazy with it!’” But a year or a year and a half later he came back and, according to Son House, “he started playing, and Willie and I couldn’t believe our eyes. He was so good! He blew us all away. He had a power and an energy that seemed to come straight from hell . He could only have made a deal with the devil.”

The rumor quickly spread like wildfire, and it's said that Robert Johnson himself fueled it in some way , consciously or unconsciously. In the first case, with the ambiguity, metaphors, and double meanings that many of his song lyrics could contain; in the second, by turning him into a mysterious figure ; unless it was in the bedroom of one of the women who attended his performances, it was very unusual to see him offstage, appearing and disappearing at breakneck speed, especially as soon as he finished his shows, during which he didn't even say "goodnight" to the audience. For many, such a magical disappearance could only be the work of the devil.

Robert Johnson was said to have sold his soul to the devil to achieve success and fame, being an exceptional guitarist for the duration of his career.

In the tradition of Voodoo, which originated in the territory now occupied by the nations of Benin, Ghana, and Togo in sub-Saharan West Africa, it was said that Papa Legba, a powerful spirit who was crowned chief of all the gods for his musical ability, would bless musicians if they invoked him at a deserted crossroads at midnight, granting them exceptional artistry as performers.

According to legend, Robert Johnson consummated his Satanic pact one midnight in the mid-1930s at a crossroads in Clarksdale, Mississippi, considered by many to be the birthplace of the blues, but its exact location is also controversial. Some claim it's located at the intersection of Highways 8 and 1 south of Rosedale. Others say it was at Dockery Plantation, near Clarksdale, while a significant majority places it at the intersection of Highways 61 and 49, so much so that a monument of sorts has been erected there with a large guitar crowning it. Highway 61—the famous Highway 61 mentioned by Bob Dylan in one of his classics—is known as the "blues highway." It is, of course, part of the "Blues Road," which we mention in another section of this book. Highway 49 is the one that leads to Parchman Prison, the inspiration for many of the most famous songs in the history of the blues.

Taking this legend of Robert Johnson's Satanic pact to the extreme, it has been claimed that when he recorded his songs he stood facing a corner against the wall and covered the mirrors in the room with blankets . Everything indicates that what he intended in any case was to improve the acoustics of the recording, but what was said was that he did this because no one could see his eyes while he was recording, since at that moment he was being possessed by Satan .

This is perhaps the most famous story of alleged Satanic pacts to achieve success and fame in earthly life, but it was by no means the first. Beyond all the literary and audiovisual works whose plots revolve around this superstition, there are some significant precedents in music.

Giuseppe Tartini , the renowned 18th century violin composer and performer, was perhaps the first musician to be the subject of Satanic pacts, with his inspiration and the powerful impact his performances had on his audience said to be directly driven by Satan. One of his works in particular, known as the Violin Sonata in G minor , also known as The Devil's Trill , Tartini's Dream , or Sonate du diable , is said to have been one of the strangest and most technically complex compositions ever written up to that date, yet also utterly fascinating , giving rise to a number of legends, one of which is attributed to Tartini himself.

According to this version, Tartini confessed shortly before his death that he wrote this piece the morning after a night in which he dreamed that the devil , with whom he had supposedly made a pact to sell his soul, appeared to him and asked him to play the violin with him. He handed his violin to the devil and began to play with incredible skill and virtuosity, a piece that remained in his head and inspired the creation of the famous sonata.

About the author and the book

Mariano Muniesa (Madrid, 1967) has a long and prolific career in music journalism, both in print and on radio and television. He has directed and presented various programs dedicated to the world of rock on Cadena 100 Cope, Onda Cero, Cadena SER – 40 Principales, Mariskalrock.com and M21 Radio. On television, he did the same with his program Rock Star on 40 TV – Canal+, in addition to participating in other programs on Onda 6 TV and Canal Red. In print media, since the mid-80s he has been an editor for specialized magazines such as Popular 1 , Heavy Rock , LH Magazine and Rolling Stone , deputy editor of Kerrang! and director and editor of the Spanish edition of the German magazine Rock Hard (2000-2006) and Rock Star (2007-2008). He has collaborated with, among others, the Orense newspaper La Región and Diario Red.

He is the author with the most works published in Spanish on the Rolling Stones worldwide, and is the author of biographies of The Who, Led Zeppelin, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Metallica, and Rammstein, among others. Since December 2024, he has been a member of the Board of Directors of the RTVE Corporation. His new book, entitled Eso no fue en mi libro de historia del blues (That Wasn't in My Blues History Book) (Almuzara), offers a passionate and enthralling journey through 20th-century black soul music, from its earliest origins to its influence on the present, with a historical, social, and political context.

In 19th century Europe, one of the greatest violinists in the history of music, Niccolò Paganini , gained worldwide fame. It was also said that his immeasurable mastery of the violin could only have come from a pact with the devil. According to Carlos Fisas in his book Historias de la historia, during his most popular period it was said that, having been responsible for a crime , he sold his soul to Satan in exchange for not being discovered and becoming the best violinist in the world. Similarly, a legend was also spread that during a great concert he gave in Vienna, Satan himself appeared on the scene to help him execute the most difficult parts of his performance. In fact, when he died in the French city of Nice in 1840, the city's archbishop denied him burial in a cemetery , under the pretext that he was a disciple of the devil and had sold his soul in exchange for success.

Tommy Johnson , one of the pioneers of the Delta blues, before Robert Johnson, stated directly that he had sold his soul to the devil to achieve success as a musician, as stated by his brother LeDell : "If you want to learn how to make number 1 songs, take your guitar and go to a crossroads . Make sure you get there a little before 12 (at night) and start playing something on your guitar. Before long, a big man will appear whose face you cannot see, dressed in black, and ask to borrow your guitar. He will take it, tune it, play a song, and give it back to you. After that night, I learned naturally to play everything I want to play and what I am famous for."

For some years now, it has been claimed that the musician who left the deepest mark and is considered Robert Johnson's mentor was Isaiah "Ike" Zimmerman , a bluesman from Beauregard, Mississippi , whom Johnson met around 1931 while he was in the area hoping to find and meet his father, Noah Johnson . Zimmerman took Johnson in and actually allowed him to live in his home for a few months, where he taught him his style of guitar playing and from whom Johnson learned a lot, especially his technique. Years later, there was even a controversy between the families of both musicians, as members of Zimmerman's family have claimed that some of Johnson's songs, including "Ramblin' on my Mind " , were in fact written by Zimmerman before Johnson took over the house, and others, including "Dust My Broom" and "Come on in my Kitchen" , were co-written by Zimmerman and Johnson.

However, there are those who claim that he taught him other things... it was known that Ike Zimmerman frequently rehearsed in the Beauregard Cemetery and it seems that on more than one occasion, the two of them practiced at night sitting on the gravestones in the cemetery, which undoubtedly further fueled the legend that Zimmerman had revealed to him the ritual by which he could come into contact with the devil.