August 28, 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
kid Robert was the youngest, and she was married to
a guy named Charlie Dobbs. Charlie Dobbs was not Roberts dad, Okay.
(01:04):
Charlie Dobbs was a man that got in trouble in
hayes 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 sundown,
(01:49):
you were working in the fields for a little or
no money. You were living on them on the land
on plantation. But they still were plantations even though slavery
was always her plantation and they had what they called
a commissary. The way they would pay people for working
in the fields was it was real slick. He would
(02:10):
let them come and buy food from the cover of
cerey that they didn't work for all the longs. So
are you doing and feeding them? You weren't really paying
them anything. Now his mother was messing with. She had
another guy. By the end, she was pretty promiscilous when
it came to relations. And uh, the man that she
was with at that time tried to get my granddaddy
(02:33):
to work in the fields. You know, 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, he were one of
(02:56):
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.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
He would get on, jump at you know, the box cars.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
And on the train, Hey jumping jump in, Hey, go
the town. He jump off from the town, you know,
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 mean he was. But
they would say footloose and fancy free.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
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 it, but my
(03:58):
fride fine ride or not.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Hobs O money out all them women. So he had
women and it was ever.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Old every Mississippi zip Cod women. And he talked about
those towns in those cities, really towns.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
They were less little towns on Highway sixty one.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
That was a route Iway sixty one from Vicksburg on
up to Memphis.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
Little towns.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
He had women, so that he 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 beach like that. He even got married. You know,
he got married and his wife got pregnant. They were
(04:47):
in their teens, early teens really, 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,
(05:08):
and the child died as well. You know, while she
was gone to her grandmother's home to have birth, your
birth to the child. Robert picked up the 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,
(05:30):
and he had it planning where he was going to
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 baby
(05:52):
would still be alive.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
And there you go.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Again, pressure depression, torment, because not only did my wife
and child die, but y'all blaming me because I'm singing
the blues. There go 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.
(06:18):
He 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. I wanted to be with my dad, wanted
to spend time with my dad. My dad, I don't
(06:39):
remember 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 just the little boy for me. You know.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
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 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 guitar. He would go
(07:29):
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 when they when they take a break,
(07:49):
he go in there, pick the guitar 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, said, look, boy, give me that guitar.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Get out of it.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
All he's doing is just noise in the people. Get
that guitar. Brother proper said Okay, I'm gonna show y'all over,
show you, and he left. 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 going to the cross roads in the Delta,
meeting up with the devil that would say, I would
give you this talent if you would give me your soul,
you will become famous. I need your soul. So he's
(08:56):
supposed have made a deal with the devil to sell
his soul, 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.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
That's not the real story, though.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
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.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
And now, being the preacher that I am.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
The Bible said all souls belong to God, and the
soul that sins shall die. So what that tells me
is that 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.
(10:35):
It's not that our soul don't belong to us.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
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.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Cut one.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
I went down to the cross road, fell down on
my knee. And again I went down to the cross road,
fell down.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
On my knee. Ad a lot about 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 do something different
lif a different type of life on. He didn't want
to be the woman I alcoholic drinking, you know man
that he was.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
You know.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
So that's the cross road that I believe he 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 in 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 Hazlehurst, 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 Hayzas in a little town called boar Regard. 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
(12:40):
I mean he was at ike home so frequently. Ike's
daughter said, yet they actually dad Dad is They called
him r L. Robert Lee Roy 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.
(13:02):
And then 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 graves, facing each other,
(13:22):
lick forlick, you know. 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
(13:45):
happened for like two years in a row, you know,
just two years straight. So Robin said, okay, I think
I got this down that. So he went back to
the depths. He saw some of them, same guys.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
Get out of there.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
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 started playing it. They said, somehow mile dropped. Hey,
Willie Brown mouth dropped. Anybody heard it, and the people
just stunning. It was like, is this Rhala? Is this
(14:20):
the same guy that couldn't do nothing? Okay, Robert, Now, hey,
you learned how to play this day too quick? Where
did you? How did you you had to do something? Robin,
You went to the you went to Soldo sold the
devil learned how to play that guitar. Now, I don't
know if he played with that, you know. And it's
(14:43):
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
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.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
You know.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Driven. Granddaddy was driven to learn how to play that
good time. So talent come from all working dedication, not
from selling this 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,
(15:32):
Dust my Broom, I, Tomorroland the Red Hot. When I
first heard that song, I was like six years old,
seven years old, and I remember like it was yesterday,
cause I'm watching cartoon right and Tom and Jerr are
chasing out each other and that song Hot Tamula in.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
The Red Hot. Yeah, we got them.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Say up, I mean, and they come to find out
when I got to be a teenager that.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
My granddaddy was singing it.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
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 granddaddy. We were actually blessed to our talk with
two guys that actually played with my granddad, honey Boy
(16:22):
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 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 guitar.
(16:44):
It's 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 in his pocket at a time,
and back then that was a lot of money. He said,
(17:04):
we'll 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 and not have anything, you know
what I'm saying. But music started getting out and they
(17:30):
were having an event of at Connegie Hall called from
the Gospel to Swing, and the guy there putting on
the event, John Hemmersenior, He heard about Robert and he
sent his son down 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
(17:52):
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 beforeman. That
was a real big moment in history to me, that
you consider his music so good you'll play it on
the phonogram and people would still be applauding it.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
But what we found out was.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
White Robert Johnson and honey Boy Edward was performing at
a juke joint right outside of Greenwood, and Uh a
juke joint owner.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
Robert was having an affair with his wife.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
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. He looked at me. He said, boy, as
long as you lived on you never slapped no good
whisk ouyt 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.
(19:05):
Miss said he got ready slept and say, my granddaddy
gave me that. Look, I wish he was slept it.
This got my nd 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 1 (19:22):
You know.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
The parson wasn't the thing that killed him.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Immune system shut down and he contracted pneumonia, and that's
what happened. He died from pneumonia. But one of the
things that amazes me about it was when they found
his body, they found a notebod it and that note
read King Jesus, King of Jerusalem, I know my redeemer
(19:50):
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.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
You know, So the mythus 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
kid Robert was the youngest, and she was married to
a guy named Charlie Dobbs. Charlie Dobbs was not Roberts dad, Okay.
(01:04):
Charlie Dobbs was a man that got in trouble in
hayes 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 sundown,
(01:49):
you were working in the fields for a little or
no money. You were living on them on the land
on plantation. But they still were plantations even though slavery
was always her plantation and they had what they called
a commissary. The way they would pay people for working
in the fields was it was real slick. He would
(02:10):
let them come and buy food from the cover of
cerey that they didn't work for all the longs. So
are you doing and feeding them? You weren't really paying
them anything. Now his mother was messing with. She had
another guy. By the end, she was pretty promiscilous when
it came to relations. And uh, the man that she
was with at that time tried to get my granddaddy
(02:33):
to work in the fields. You know, 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, he were one of
(02:56):
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.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
He would get on, jump at you know, the box cars.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
And on the train, Hey jumping jump in, Hey, go
the town. He jump off from the town, you know,
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 mean he was. But
they would say footloose and fancy free.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
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 it, but my
(03:58):
fride fine ride or not.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Hobs O money out all them women. So he had
women and it was ever.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Old every Mississippi zip Cod women. And he talked about
those towns in those cities, really towns.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
They were less little towns on Highway sixty one.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
That was a route Iway sixty one from Vicksburg on
up to Memphis.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
Little towns.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
He had women, so that he 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 beach like that. He even got married. You know,
he got married and his wife got pregnant. They were
(04:47):
in their teens, early teens really, 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,
(05:08):
and the child died as well. You know, while she
was gone to her grandmother's home to have birth, your
birth to the child. Robert picked up the 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,
(05:30):
and he had it planning where he was going to
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 baby
(05:52):
would still be alive.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
And there you go.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Again, pressure depression, torment, because not only did my wife
and child die, but y'all blaming me because I'm singing
the blues. There go 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.
(06:18):
He 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. I wanted to be with my dad, wanted
to spend time with my dad. My dad, I don't
(06:39):
remember 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 just the little boy for me. You know.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
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 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 guitar. He would go
(07:29):
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 when they when they take a break,
(07:49):
he go in there, pick the guitar 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, said, look, boy, give me that guitar.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Get out of it.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
All he's doing is just noise in the people. Get
that guitar. Brother proper said Okay, I'm gonna show y'all over,
show you, and he left. 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 going to the cross roads in the Delta,
meeting up with the devil that would say, I would
give you this talent if you would give me your soul,
you will become famous. I need your soul. So he's
(08:56):
supposed have made a deal with the devil to sell
his soul, 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.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
That's not the real story, though.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
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.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
And now, being the preacher that I am.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
The Bible said all souls belong to God, and the
soul that sins shall die. So what that tells me
is that 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.
(10:35):
It's not that our soul don't belong to us.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
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.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Cut one.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
I went down to the cross road, fell down on
my knee. And again I went down to the cross road,
fell down.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
On my knee. Ad a lot about 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 do something different
lif a different type of life on. He didn't want
to be the woman I alcoholic drinking, you know man
that he was.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
You know.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
So that's the cross road that I believe he 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 in 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 Hazlehurst, 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 Hayzas in a little town called boar Regard. 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
(12:40):
I mean he was at ike home so frequently. Ike's
daughter said, yet they actually dad Dad is They called
him r L. Robert Lee Roy 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.
(13:02):
And then 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 graves, facing each other,
(13:22):
lick forlick, you know. 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
(13:45):
happened for like two years in a row, you know,
just two years straight. So Robin said, okay, I think
I got this down that. So he went back to
the depths. He saw some of them, same guys.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
Get out of there.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
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 started playing it. They said, somehow mile dropped. Hey,
Willie Brown mouth dropped. Anybody heard it, and the people
just stunning. It was like, is this Rhala? Is this
(14:20):
the same guy that couldn't do nothing? Okay, Robert, Now, hey,
you learned how to play this day too quick? Where
did you? How did you you had to do something? Robin,
You went to the you went to Soldo sold the
devil learned how to play that guitar. Now, I don't
know if he played with that, you know. And it's
(14:43):
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
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.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
You know.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Driven. Granddaddy was driven to learn how to play that
good time. So talent come from all working dedication, not
from selling this 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,
(15:32):
Dust my Broom, I, Tomorroland the Red Hot. When I
first heard that song, I was like six years old,
seven years old, and I remember like it was yesterday,
cause I'm watching cartoon right and Tom and Jerr are
chasing out each other and that song Hot Tamula in.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
The Red Hot. Yeah, we got them.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Say up, I mean, and they come to find out
when I got to be a teenager that.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
My granddaddy was singing it.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
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 granddaddy. We were actually blessed to our talk with
two guys that actually played with my granddad, honey Boy
(16:22):
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 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 guitar.
(16:44):
It's 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 in his pocket at a time,
and back then that was a lot of money. He said,
(17:04):
we'll 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 and not have anything, you know
what I'm saying. But music started getting out and they
(17:30):
were having an event of at Connegie Hall called from
the Gospel to Swing, and the guy there putting on
the event, John Hemmersenior, He heard about Robert and he
sent his son down 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
(17:52):
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 beforeman. That
was a real big moment in history to me, that
you consider his music so good you'll play it on
the phonogram and people would still be applauding it.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
But what we found out was.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
White Robert Johnson and honey Boy Edward was performing at
a juke joint right outside of Greenwood, and Uh a
juke joint owner.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
Robert was having an affair with his wife.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
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. He looked at me. He said, boy, as
long as you lived on you never slapped no good
whisk ouyt 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.
(19:05):
Miss said he got ready slept and say, my granddaddy
gave me that. Look, I wish he was slept it.
This got my nd 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 1 (19:22):
You know.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
The parson wasn't the thing that killed him.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Immune system shut down and he contracted pneumonia, and that's
what happened. He died from pneumonia. But one of the
things that amazes me about it was when they found
his body, they found a notebod it and that note
read King Jesus, King of Jerusalem, I know my redeemer
(19:50):
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.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
You know, So the mythus 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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