Standin' at the Crossroads

The time has come.

North of Clarksdale, Mississippi there is a crossroads. Highways 61 and 49 intersect, amidst a background of barley and blues lore. For it is here where a young man made a deal with the devil. That young man was Robert Johnson, King of the Delta Blues.

As the story goes, Johnson sold his soul in exchange for the ability to play the guitar unlike anyone who came before.

As journalist and blues enthusiast Debra DeSalvo described in her book The Language of the Blues, the process goes something like this:

Get yourself a black cat bone. Cut your nails to the quick and put the trimmings in a small bag with the black cat bone. During a full moon, bring the bag and your instrument to a lonely crossroads a few minutes before midnight. Kneel in the middle of the crossroads and chant six times: “Attibon Legba, open the gate for me.”

Now sit cross-legged and play your best song. At the stroke of midnight, you will hear footsteps. Do not look up until they stop in front of you and a hand reaches down to take your guitar. Standing before you will be a tall man dressed in a sharp black suit. Do not speak to him. He will take your guitar, tune it, and play a song. When he hands it back to you, the deal is done and your soul belongs to him.

But don’t get carried away. Finding a black cat bone is much harder than you think, and even should your Hoodoo succeed, you will never be Robert Johnson. There can only be one.

His recordings are meager--his entire discography consists of just 29 songs recorded in the space of about a year from 1936 to 1937. His biography is even sparser. Most of what we know about him we can thank blues researcher Steve LaVere for. In the early 1970s, LaVere managed to track down Johnson’s family and obtain the only photographs we have of Johnson, previously unknown recordings, and a few facts. And I mean few.

We know that he was born in Mississippi in 1911 and died there--poisoned by a jealous boyfriend--in 1938, making him the first member of the “27 Club.” We know he had good tastes in headwear, as evidenced by the photo above. And we know he could play the guitar.

Here is a video of perhaps his most famous recording, “Crossroad Blues”:


Don’t get caught up in how basic that riff is on the surface. Listen closely. At points it sounds as if there are two guitars playing at once. But it is only Johnson--he had an understanding of how the instrument worked on the most basic level and he could command and manipulate the sounds he produced merely by channeling this understanding. This isn’t rare for talented musicians. But no one had done this before in this way, until Johnson. And therein lies the magic--and perhaps the roots of the satanic myth.

Now, not everyone is quite so respectful of Mr. Johnson. Infamous music journalist Chuck Klosterman, in his book Killing Yourself to Live, admits that Johnson’s recordings make him “sleepy” and claims, “even the songs that are technically different sounded identical to all the others. I like blues-based rock, but I hate the fucking blues; it was more fun to play Let it Bleed and look at Johnson’s photograph on the front of the box. He certainly had a stellar hat.”

Klosterman has a point. The music isn’t showy or even technically astounding. And no, it’s not what Guitar Hero makes you think devil-driven-music should sound like. But there is a raw energy to it--an aching, rough beauty that musicians and music lovers alike have discovered within Johnson’s work.

As Eric Clapton once said, “I have never found anything more deeply soulful than Robert Johnson.” How’s that for God complimenting the Devil?

Actually, better yet how’s this:


It turns out, if you take “Crossroad Blues,” speed it up a bit and add Ginger Baker’s steady hand, Jack Bruce’s ego and his relentless bass mastery, and Eric Clapton’s general prescense and divine guitar prowess, you get one of the greatest examples of Blues-rock ever recorded.

Give them a little over 30 years, and it gets even better:


And that’s part of what’s so great about Robert Johnson. Not just what he did, but what he started. (Cyndi Lauper even recorded a version of “Crossroads” which really isn’t so bad--especially when one considers that Cyndi Lauper recorded it...)