February 14, 2024 • 20 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, legend has it that Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads to learn how to play the guitar. According to Steve Johnson, Robert's grandson, that's the furthest thing from the truth. Here he is with the true story of the king of the Delta Blues.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. Up next a
story out of Mississippi where we broadcast in Oxford, about
an hour south of Memphis. And this story is about
the king of the Delta Blues. We're talking about Robert Johnson.
Much of his life is shrouded in lore and mystery.
Here to separate fact from fiction is Robert's grandson. Let's
(00:32):
get into the story.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Robert Johnson born May eight, nineteen eleven in Hazlehurst, Mississippi,
which is a town in Copiah County, Mississippi, and his
mother name was Miss Julia Dobbs. Julia had about five
kia Robert was the youngest, and she was married to
a guy named Charlie Dobbs. Charlie Dobbs was not Roberts's dad, Okay,
(01:04):
Charlie Dobbs was a man that got in trouble in
hayes of Hurst because you know, the racial tension and everything,
and mister Charlie was he was one of those that
I'm okay, I'm gonna do what I do. And so
he had to get out of town because he wanted
to do what he wanted to do, and he left
Julia and the kids there. Well, while they were there,
(01:26):
a man by the name of Noah Johnson started, you know,
calling them courtship. Noah Johnson is roberts biological father. Okay,
and the family. She took the family from hayes Hurst
moved to the Delta area, and you know, it was
considered to be a sharecropper. And from Son up to
(01:49):
Son down, you were working in the fields for a
little or no money.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
You were living.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
On them on the land on plantation where they still
were plantations, even though slavery was always her plantation and
they had what they called it commissary. The way they
would pay people for working in the fields was just
it was real slick. You would let them come and
buy food from the cover of cerey that they didn't
(02:14):
work for all the laws. So are you doing and
feeding them you weren't really paying them anything. Now his
mother was messing. She had another guy by the end.
She was pretty promiscuous when it came to relations. And uh,
the man that she was with at that time tried
to get my granddaddy to work in the fields. You know,
(02:34):
from a kid on up to his teenage year. He
refused and the man used to beat on my granddad
and whooping, trying to make him work. So Robert took
up and left. He didn't want to live the type
of life from there. He was a rambler, you know,
(02:55):
he were one of his songs, you know, a rambling
man blue, you know, traveling riverside blues.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
I mean he was.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
He was always on the go, you know, living from
home to home and not not seeing a stable family.
He would get on, jump at you know, the box cars,
and on the train. Hey, ain't nothing jumping jump in
Hey the town. He jump off from the town, you know,
(03:24):
right there in the town. I'm back on and go
keep it up. That's how you travel. Really a lot
in the Delta, you know, I.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Mean he was. But they would say footloose and fancy free. Okay.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
He talked about different relationship, having affairs, you know. He
said he had women's in Vicksburg, clean on into Tennessee.
I got clean into Tennessee. Must have had one in
Friar Point, Mississippi. Up in the Delta, he said. But
if Friar Point rider jumps all over, but my fride
(03:58):
fine ride or not hops at money out all them women.
So he had women and it was every.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
Old every Mississippi zip COO women.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
And he talked about those towns in those cities, really towns.
There were less little towns on Highway sixty one. That
was a route Iway sixty one from Vicksburg on up
to Memphis.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
Little towns he had women, so that he.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Was just kind of bounding with the man, you know,
the instincts of being a man. Yeah, and he got
to a point where he didn't really value a woman's worth,
but he didn't want to be like that. He even
got married. You know, he got married and his wife
got pregnant. They were in their teens, early teens really,
(04:50):
that was before he came to Hayshurst, and you know,
he said, I want to live a normal life. He
tried it. Okay, So he met the name Virginia Travis.
He married her, got pregnant and everything, and during the
childbirth she died, of course, and the child died as well.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
You know, while she.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Was gone to her grandmother's home to have birth, your
birth to the child. Robert picked up a guitar again, said, okay,
why she you know she's going there. I can kind
of pick up my old habit again, you know, So
he started playing the guitar and everything, going to different towns,
and he had it planning where he was going to
(05:33):
be right in town by the time she was getting
ready to give birth, and when he got there, her
and the baby had died, and her parents, her family
blamed Robert Johnson for both deaths, said, if you weren't
playing this old devil's music, then Virginia and that.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
Baby would still be alive. And there you go.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Again, pressure depression tornament, because not only did my wife
and child die, but y'all blaming me because I'm singing
the blues. Therego drinking and womenizing again. I mean, it
was just a cycle. And every time he was trying
to break that cycle something. Even with my grandmother. He
(06:18):
asked for my grandmother's hand in marriage, asked her dad,
you know I would like to marry virgin Maid. That
was my grandmother named Virgin Maid, and my great granddad said, Nope, no, daughter,
Mine's gonna marry anybody that's saying the devil music. They
go again. Wanted to be with my dad, wanted to
spend time with my dad. My dad, I don't remember
(06:39):
seeing his dad two times. Both towns. He would come
to my great granddaddy at home who raised my dad,
and he would try to come in to see the boy,
and my great granddaddy said, nope, as far as you
can go, you know. But he my dad looking out
the window and he's saying, his dad, give his granddad money.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
He is the little boy for me.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
You know. That happened twice. Other than that, he wasn't
He was kept away from his son, his daughter and
wife died, everybody blaming him. And so that's what i mean,
just just mormented him, really, and the life changes that
he went through and the struggles that's really is what
led him to want to pick up the gud talk.
(07:28):
He would go and uh peeping in the juke joints
and seeing us a guy named Charlie Patton and Willie
Brown and other guys playing in old juke joints, and
he took a liking to the guitar and uh, Robert,
you know, he would go in there they when they
take a break, he go in there, pick the guitar
(07:51):
up and try to play it and everything and and
just be the hold of tune. I'm talking about this.
The artist will say, look, guys, which out, please get
that guitar from that man. They kicked him out, say, look, boy,
give me that guitar. Get out of all he's doing
is just noise in the people. Get that guitar from
(08:14):
it proper said Okay, I'm gonna show y'all.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Over, show you, and he left.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
And he was determined from that point on, he was
determined that he was gonna learn how.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
To play that guitar.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Legend has it that Robert Johnson learned how to play
the guitar right going to the cross roads in the Delta,
meeting up with the devil that wuld say, I would
give you this talent if you would give me your soul,
you would become famous. I need your soul. So he's
(08:56):
supposed have made a deal with the devil to sell
his soulder. But in all actuality, the truth that the
myth is you cannot make a deal with the devil
to say your soul because you don't own your soul.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
When we come back more of Robert Johnson's story as
told by Stephen Johnson, his grandson here on our American Stories,
(09:39):
and we returned to our American Stories and the final
portion of our story on blues legend Robert Johnson when
we last left off, Stephen Johnson was telling us about
his grandfather's trip to the crossroads where he supposedly sold
his soul to the devil to learn how to play
the guitar. That's not the real story, though. Let's return
to Stephen Johnson.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
The truth is, you cannot make a deal with the
devil to sell your soul because you don't own your soul.
And now, being the preacher that I am, the Bible
said all souls belong to God, and the soul that
sins shall die. So what that tells me is that
(10:22):
we have choices in life that we have to make,
whether they be good or bad, and those choices will
be what we have to answer to when we sit
on that on their seat, on that judgment seat.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
It's not that our soul don't belong to us. We don't.
We don't own it. Okay, So he couldn't say something.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
And then on now, ah the song, if you will
listen to that song, if people pay attention to it,
Crowsroad Blue said money, I went down to the cross road,
(11:01):
fell down on my knee.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
And again I went down to the cross road, fell
down on my knee.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Ad a lot about.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
The big the Lord to say, poor Bob, if you please.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
That's totally contradicted to what the myth says about them
selling the soul. Robbo's at a crossroad in his life.
He was seeking to do right. He wanted to be,
you know, wanted to be saved, wanted to do something
different lif a different type of life. He didn't want
to be the womanizing, alcoholic, drinking, you know man that
(11:39):
he was.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
You know.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
So that's the cross road that I believe you went to.
And only God knows you know, how that ended up.
But people rather believe the myth because of them going
from zero to one hundred, past one hundred two to
three years.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
And then the truth that actually happened.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Yeah, when the time from nineteen thirty to about nineteen
thirty two, Robert left to Delta, Okay, and came back
to Hazelhurst, Mississippi, searching for Noah Johnson, his biological father,
and then searching for his biological father, he connected with
(12:19):
a blues artist named Ike Zimmerman about five miles south
of Hayzast in a little town called Boarreguard. In that time,
Ike was known as one of the best blues players
in the southern area. He actually started hanging out with
Ike and he started living with him. And I mean
(12:41):
he was at ike home so frequently. Ike's daughter said,
Y had they actually dad Dad is? They called him RL.
Robert Leroy Johnson is ourl our brother. He's at the
house just as much as they would. He was sleeping
on the floor. He followed Alike, follow alike. And then
(13:02):
there would be times when during that time I mentoring,
there was a cemetery right across the street from Ike's home,
and Ike and Rober would go out there night. That's
what they would go out of cemetery at night, sit
on these stone.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Graves, facing each other, lick forlick, you know.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
And I was telling him, Okay, Robert, you can sound
just as terrible as you want to. Nobody gonna say
nothing to you out here. They're not gonna kick you
out here if I get kicked out cemetary. And so
they they, you know, they he continued to mentor and teaching,
you know, showing, and they would go to different juke
joints in the Kapye County area. This happened for like
(13:46):
two years in a row, you know, just two years straight.
So Robin said, okay, I think I got this down now.
So he went back to the depths. He saw some
of them same guys get out of there. Boy, you
just noise and the people Rober said, just let me
give me the guitar. Let me show you what I'm
working with. You got the guitar, and they say he
(14:09):
started playing it. They said, somehow mouth dropped. Hey, Willie Brown,
mouth dropped. Anybody heard it? And the people just stuning.
It was like, is this rhal Is this the same
guy that couldn't do nothing? Okay, Robert, Now, hey, you
learned how to play this day too quick?
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Where did you? How did you you had to do something? Robin?
Speaker 2 (14:35):
You went to the you went to Soldio sold the
devil learned how to play that guitar. Now, I don't
know if he played with that, you know. And it's
my belief that he said, okay, believe what you want
to be. Hey, that's what you want to think, think it.
But I know, you know, he knew where, he knew
where his talent came from. And I often compare that
(14:55):
to Michael Jordan, the goat of basketball, And they're not
saying he sold his soul to the devil. To learn
how to play basketball, it comes from practice, practice, practicing more,
you know. Driven. Granddaddy was driven to learn how to
play that good time. So talent come from all working dedication,
(15:17):
not from selling this so old. He put those hours
in and they paid off. He ended up going to
Dallas and he recalled those twenty nine songs we done
own Chicago, Dust my Broom, I, Tomorroland the Red Hot.
When I first heard that song, I was like six
(15:39):
years old, seven years old, and I remember like it
was yesterday, called I'm watching cartoon right and Tom and
jerre chasing out each other and that song Hot Tamula.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
In the Red Hot. Yeah, we got them for say up,
I mean, and they.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Come to find out when I got to be a
teenager that my granddaddy was singing it. And sweet On
Chicago are my two favorite because of the history behind it.
I called sweet on Chicago the Blues national anthem. You know,
he said, the stammach. I'm saying, wow, my granddadd We
(16:14):
were actually blessed to our talk with two guys that
actually played with my granddad, honey Boy Edward and mister Lockwood,
Robert Lockwood Junior, muster. Honey Boy told me that my granddad,
other than liking his whiskey and women, he loved to
play the guitar a lot of time with his back
(16:36):
turned to the audience because he didn't want them to
pick up what he was doing. It sounded like you're
playing two or three different guitars at the same time.
And Lockwood said the same thing. But he said, Steve,
a lot of folks said, I think that your granddaddy
walked around broke. He's the only man that I knew
back then would walk around like with one hundred dollars
(16:59):
in his pocket at a time, and back then that
was a lot of money. He said, well, keep money
in his pocket. And it was very particular about his look.
I'm talking about he beat the sharpest man in town,
although they try to portray him as being all broken,
just trying to scrap. How do you get to Canada
(17:21):
and not have anything, you know what I'm saying. But
music start getting out and they were having an event
of at Connegie Hall to call from Gospel to Swing.
And the guy there putting on the event, John Hammersenior,
he heard about Robert and he sent his son down
(17:43):
to Mississippi to look for Robert when he got here.
Robert had passed about a week or two before they
found me. But John Hemmersin was so intrigued by robert music.
They played on the phonograph and the people just I mean,
they were just like he was, just like he was
gonna stay performing. That was a real big moment in
(18:04):
history to me, that you consider his music so good
you play it on the phonogram and people will still.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Be applauding it.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
But what we found out was white.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Robert Johnson and honey Boy Edward was performing at a
juke joint right outside of Greenwood and uh a juke
joints owner Robert was having an affair with his wife.
Right before Robert Johnson got ready to do his first set,
they brought him a job whiskey that was open.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
So Honeyboy said he slapped.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
He told him, told my dad and the family that say,
mister Claude, I slapped that whisk out your daddy's hand,
he said.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
He looked at me.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
He said, boy, as long as you lived on you
never slapped no good whisky out in my hand like that.
And he said, Rober, you don't drink from an open
container like that. Man, you don't know what's going on.
You just let me do, don't you about that? Okay,
time went on become another job. Mister n said he
got ready slept and say, my granddaddy gave me that
look I wish he was slept. It w got my end.
(19:12):
So he ended up drinking it and it was lace.
They had parson in it. They said that during that
night he was just howling.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
You know.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
The parson wasn't the thing that killed him. The immune
system shut down and he contracted pneumonia, and that's what
happened if he died from pneumonia. But one of the
things that amazes me about it was when they found
his body, they found a notebod and that note read
(19:45):
King Jesus, King of Jerusalem, I know my redeemer liveth
and he shall call my soul from the grave.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
Again.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
That that just spelled the myth to me, because to me,
he was saying, I know my redeemer lived, and I've
accepted him as my safe you know, so the myth
is squashed.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Okay, the story of death, love and sin here on
our American stories
And we continue with our American stories. Up next a
story out of Mississippi where we broadcast in Oxford, about
an hour south of Memphis. And this story is about
the king of the Delta Blues. We're talking about Robert Johnson.
Much of his life is shrouded in lore and mystery.
Here to separate fact from fiction is Robert's grandson. Let's
(00:32):
get into the story.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Robert Johnson born May eight, nineteen eleven in Hazlehurst, Mississippi,
which is a town in Copiah County, Mississippi, and his
mother name was Miss Julia Dobbs. Julia had about five
kia Robert was the youngest, and she was married to
a guy named Charlie Dobbs. Charlie Dobbs was not Roberts's dad, Okay,
(01:04):
Charlie Dobbs was a man that got in trouble in
hayes of Hurst because you know, the racial tension and everything,
and mister Charlie was he was one of those that
I'm okay, I'm gonna do what I do. And so
he had to get out of town because he wanted
to do what he wanted to do, and he left
Julia and the kids there. Well, while they were there,
(01:26):
a man by the name of Noah Johnson started, you know,
calling them courtship. Noah Johnson is roberts biological father. Okay,
and the family. She took the family from hayes Hurst
moved to the Delta area, and you know, it was
considered to be a sharecropper. And from Son up to
(01:49):
Son down, you were working in the fields for a
little or no money.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
You were living.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
On them on the land on plantation where they still
were plantations, even though slavery was always her plantation and
they had what they called it commissary. The way they
would pay people for working in the fields was just
it was real slick. You would let them come and
buy food from the cover of cerey that they didn't
(02:14):
work for all the laws. So are you doing and
feeding them you weren't really paying them anything. Now his
mother was messing. She had another guy by the end.
She was pretty promiscuous when it came to relations. And uh,
the man that she was with at that time tried
to get my granddaddy to work in the fields. You know,
(02:34):
from a kid on up to his teenage year. He
refused and the man used to beat on my granddad
and whooping, trying to make him work. So Robert took
up and left. He didn't want to live the type
of life from there. He was a rambler, you know,
(02:55):
he were one of his songs, you know, a rambling
man blue, you know, traveling riverside blues.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
I mean he was.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
He was always on the go, you know, living from
home to home and not not seeing a stable family.
He would get on, jump at you know, the box cars,
and on the train. Hey, ain't nothing jumping jump in
Hey the town. He jump off from the town, you know,
(03:24):
right there in the town. I'm back on and go
keep it up. That's how you travel. Really a lot
in the Delta, you know, I.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Mean he was. But they would say footloose and fancy free. Okay.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
He talked about different relationship, having affairs, you know. He
said he had women's in Vicksburg, clean on into Tennessee.
I got clean into Tennessee. Must have had one in
Friar Point, Mississippi. Up in the Delta, he said. But
if Friar Point rider jumps all over, but my fride
(03:58):
fine ride or not hops at money out all them women.
So he had women and it was every.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
Old every Mississippi zip COO women.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
And he talked about those towns in those cities, really towns.
There were less little towns on Highway sixty one. That
was a route Iway sixty one from Vicksburg on up
to Memphis.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
Little towns he had women, so that he.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Was just kind of bounding with the man, you know,
the instincts of being a man. Yeah, and he got
to a point where he didn't really value a woman's worth,
but he didn't want to be like that. He even
got married. You know, he got married and his wife
got pregnant. They were in their teens, early teens really,
(04:50):
that was before he came to Hayshurst, and you know,
he said, I want to live a normal life. He
tried it. Okay, So he met the name Virginia Travis.
He married her, got pregnant and everything, and during the
childbirth she died, of course, and the child died as well.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
You know, while she.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Was gone to her grandmother's home to have birth, your
birth to the child. Robert picked up a guitar again, said, okay,
why she you know she's going there. I can kind
of pick up my old habit again, you know, So
he started playing the guitar and everything, going to different towns,
and he had it planning where he was going to
(05:33):
be right in town by the time she was getting
ready to give birth, and when he got there, her
and the baby had died, and her parents, her family
blamed Robert Johnson for both deaths, said, if you weren't
playing this old devil's music, then Virginia and that.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
Baby would still be alive. And there you go.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Again, pressure depression tornament, because not only did my wife
and child die, but y'all blaming me because I'm singing
the blues. Therego drinking and womenizing again. I mean, it
was just a cycle. And every time he was trying
to break that cycle something. Even with my grandmother. He
(06:18):
asked for my grandmother's hand in marriage, asked her dad,
you know I would like to marry virgin Maid. That
was my grandmother named Virgin Maid, and my great granddad said, Nope, no, daughter,
Mine's gonna marry anybody that's saying the devil music. They
go again. Wanted to be with my dad, wanted to
spend time with my dad. My dad, I don't remember
(06:39):
seeing his dad two times. Both towns. He would come
to my great granddaddy at home who raised my dad,
and he would try to come in to see the boy,
and my great granddaddy said, nope, as far as you
can go, you know. But he my dad looking out
the window and he's saying, his dad, give his granddad money.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
He is the little boy for me.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
You know. That happened twice. Other than that, he wasn't
He was kept away from his son, his daughter and
wife died, everybody blaming him. And so that's what i mean,
just just mormented him, really, and the life changes that
he went through and the struggles that's really is what
led him to want to pick up the gud talk.
(07:28):
He would go and uh peeping in the juke joints
and seeing us a guy named Charlie Patton and Willie
Brown and other guys playing in old juke joints, and
he took a liking to the guitar and uh, Robert,
you know, he would go in there they when they
take a break, he go in there, pick the guitar
(07:51):
up and try to play it and everything and and
just be the hold of tune. I'm talking about this.
The artist will say, look, guys, which out, please get
that guitar from that man. They kicked him out, say, look, boy,
give me that guitar. Get out of all he's doing
is just noise in the people. Get that guitar from
(08:14):
it proper said Okay, I'm gonna show y'all.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Over, show you, and he left.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
And he was determined from that point on, he was
determined that he was gonna learn how.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
To play that guitar.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Legend has it that Robert Johnson learned how to play
the guitar right going to the cross roads in the Delta,
meeting up with the devil that wuld say, I would
give you this talent if you would give me your soul,
you would become famous. I need your soul. So he's
(08:56):
supposed have made a deal with the devil to sell
his soulder. But in all actuality, the truth that the
myth is you cannot make a deal with the devil
to say your soul because you don't own your soul.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
When we come back more of Robert Johnson's story as
told by Stephen Johnson, his grandson here on our American Stories,
(09:39):
and we returned to our American Stories and the final
portion of our story on blues legend Robert Johnson when
we last left off, Stephen Johnson was telling us about
his grandfather's trip to the crossroads where he supposedly sold
his soul to the devil to learn how to play
the guitar. That's not the real story, though. Let's return
to Stephen Johnson.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
The truth is, you cannot make a deal with the
devil to sell your soul because you don't own your soul.
And now, being the preacher that I am, the Bible
said all souls belong to God, and the soul that
sins shall die. So what that tells me is that
(10:22):
we have choices in life that we have to make,
whether they be good or bad, and those choices will
be what we have to answer to when we sit
on that on their seat, on that judgment seat.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
It's not that our soul don't belong to us. We don't.
We don't own it. Okay, So he couldn't say something.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
And then on now, ah the song, if you will
listen to that song, if people pay attention to it,
Crowsroad Blue said money, I went down to the cross road,
(11:01):
fell down on my knee.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
And again I went down to the cross road, fell
down on my knee.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Ad a lot about.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
The big the Lord to say, poor Bob, if you please.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
That's totally contradicted to what the myth says about them
selling the soul. Robbo's at a crossroad in his life.
He was seeking to do right. He wanted to be,
you know, wanted to be saved, wanted to do something
different lif a different type of life. He didn't want
to be the womanizing, alcoholic, drinking, you know man that
(11:39):
he was.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
You know.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
So that's the cross road that I believe you went to.
And only God knows you know, how that ended up.
But people rather believe the myth because of them going
from zero to one hundred, past one hundred two to
three years.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
And then the truth that actually happened.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Yeah, when the time from nineteen thirty to about nineteen
thirty two, Robert left to Delta, Okay, and came back
to Hazelhurst, Mississippi, searching for Noah Johnson, his biological father,
and then searching for his biological father, he connected with
(12:19):
a blues artist named Ike Zimmerman about five miles south
of Hayzast in a little town called Boarreguard. In that time,
Ike was known as one of the best blues players
in the southern area. He actually started hanging out with
Ike and he started living with him. And I mean
(12:41):
he was at ike home so frequently. Ike's daughter said,
Y had they actually dad Dad is? They called him RL.
Robert Leroy Johnson is ourl our brother. He's at the
house just as much as they would. He was sleeping
on the floor. He followed Alike, follow alike. And then
(13:02):
there would be times when during that time I mentoring,
there was a cemetery right across the street from Ike's home,
and Ike and Rober would go out there night. That's
what they would go out of cemetery at night, sit
on these stone.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Graves, facing each other, lick forlick, you know.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
And I was telling him, Okay, Robert, you can sound
just as terrible as you want to. Nobody gonna say
nothing to you out here. They're not gonna kick you
out here if I get kicked out cemetary. And so
they they, you know, they he continued to mentor and teaching,
you know, showing, and they would go to different juke
joints in the Kapye County area. This happened for like
(13:46):
two years in a row, you know, just two years straight.
So Robin said, okay, I think I got this down now.
So he went back to the depths. He saw some
of them same guys get out of there. Boy, you
just noise and the people Rober said, just let me
give me the guitar. Let me show you what I'm
working with. You got the guitar, and they say he
(14:09):
started playing it. They said, somehow mouth dropped. Hey, Willie Brown,
mouth dropped. Anybody heard it? And the people just stuning.
It was like, is this rhal Is this the same
guy that couldn't do nothing? Okay, Robert, Now, hey, you
learned how to play this day too quick?
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Where did you? How did you you had to do something? Robin?
Speaker 2 (14:35):
You went to the you went to Soldio sold the
devil learned how to play that guitar. Now, I don't
know if he played with that, you know. And it's
my belief that he said, okay, believe what you want
to be. Hey, that's what you want to think, think it.
But I know, you know, he knew where, he knew
where his talent came from. And I often compare that
(14:55):
to Michael Jordan, the goat of basketball, And they're not
saying he sold his soul to the devil. To learn
how to play basketball, it comes from practice, practice, practicing more,
you know. Driven. Granddaddy was driven to learn how to
play that good time. So talent come from all working dedication,
(15:17):
not from selling this so old. He put those hours
in and they paid off. He ended up going to
Dallas and he recalled those twenty nine songs we done
own Chicago, Dust my Broom, I, Tomorroland the Red Hot.
When I first heard that song, I was like six
(15:39):
years old, seven years old, and I remember like it
was yesterday, called I'm watching cartoon right and Tom and
jerre chasing out each other and that song Hot Tamula.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
In the Red Hot. Yeah, we got them for say up,
I mean, and they.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Come to find out when I got to be a
teenager that my granddaddy was singing it. And sweet On
Chicago are my two favorite because of the history behind it.
I called sweet on Chicago the Blues national anthem. You know,
he said, the stammach. I'm saying, wow, my granddadd We
(16:14):
were actually blessed to our talk with two guys that
actually played with my granddad, honey Boy Edward and mister Lockwood,
Robert Lockwood Junior, muster. Honey Boy told me that my granddad,
other than liking his whiskey and women, he loved to
play the guitar a lot of time with his back
(16:36):
turned to the audience because he didn't want them to
pick up what he was doing. It sounded like you're
playing two or three different guitars at the same time.
And Lockwood said the same thing. But he said, Steve,
a lot of folks said, I think that your granddaddy
walked around broke. He's the only man that I knew
back then would walk around like with one hundred dollars
(16:59):
in his pocket at a time, and back then that
was a lot of money. He said, well, keep money
in his pocket. And it was very particular about his look.
I'm talking about he beat the sharpest man in town,
although they try to portray him as being all broken,
just trying to scrap. How do you get to Canada
(17:21):
and not have anything, you know what I'm saying. But
music start getting out and they were having an event
of at Connegie Hall to call from Gospel to Swing.
And the guy there putting on the event, John Hammersenior,
he heard about Robert and he sent his son down
(17:43):
to Mississippi to look for Robert when he got here.
Robert had passed about a week or two before they
found me. But John Hemmersin was so intrigued by robert music.
They played on the phonograph and the people just I mean,
they were just like he was, just like he was
gonna stay performing. That was a real big moment in
(18:04):
history to me, that you consider his music so good
you play it on the phonogram and people will still.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Be applauding it.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
But what we found out was white.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Robert Johnson and honey Boy Edward was performing at a
juke joint right outside of Greenwood and uh a juke
joints owner Robert was having an affair with his wife.
Right before Robert Johnson got ready to do his first set,
they brought him a job whiskey that was open.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
So Honeyboy said he slapped.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
He told him, told my dad and the family that say,
mister Claude, I slapped that whisk out your daddy's hand,
he said.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
He looked at me.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
He said, boy, as long as you lived on you
never slapped no good whisky out in my hand like that.
And he said, Rober, you don't drink from an open
container like that. Man, you don't know what's going on.
You just let me do, don't you about that? Okay,
time went on become another job. Mister n said he
got ready slept and say, my granddaddy gave me that
look I wish he was slept. It w got my end.
(19:12):
So he ended up drinking it and it was lace.
They had parson in it. They said that during that
night he was just howling.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
You know.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
The parson wasn't the thing that killed him. The immune
system shut down and he contracted pneumonia, and that's what
happened if he died from pneumonia. But one of the
things that amazes me about it was when they found
his body, they found a notebod and that note read
(19:45):
King Jesus, King of Jerusalem, I know my redeemer liveth
and he shall call my soul from the grave.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
Again.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
That that just spelled the myth to me, because to me,
he was saying, I know my redeemer lived, and I've
accepted him as my safe you know, so the myth
is squashed.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Okay, the story of death, love and sin here on
our American stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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