Every Friday around 11 a.m. Central, it’s time for Classic Americana on Radio Heartland. We pull a special track from the archives or from deep in the shelves to spotlight a particular artist or song.

This week, we honor the legendary and influential blues musician Robert Johnson, born May 8, 1911, in Hazlehurst, Mississippi. He only lived to age 27, but Robert Johnson’s work has had and continues to have seismic effects in music. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which posthumously inducted Robert Johnson in 1986, describes Johnson as “the first ever rock star.”

Although he was born in Mississippi, Johnson lived in Memphis, Tennessee, for a period of his childhood, and it was there he was first exposed to and got interested in the blues and in popular music. Later, his family relocated to the Mississippi Delta — the very heart of the blues — where Robert Johnson began learning guitar from the great blues players Son House and Ike Zimmerman. A legend persists that Robert Johnson made a deal with the devil at the crossroads outside of Clarksdale, Mississippi, to acquire his incredible talents as a powerful singer and skilled guitarist, but in truth, Robert Johnson had good teachers, practiced a lot, and as a result, became a great musician.

Johnson embarked on a career as a touring musician, primarily setting his own itinerary and bringing his music throughout much of the United States and Canada, although his primary touring grounds tended to be in the states along the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, where he gained a loyal following. As much of a performer as he was, he was only recorded on a couple of occasions: once in San Antonio, Texas, in 1936, and again in Dallas in 1937. Both sessions were produced by London-born music executive Don Law. The San Antonio sessions took place in room 414 of the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio, where Law had Johnson sing into the corner of the room for the best acoustics. During that San Antonio session, one of the tracks Johnson recorded was “Sweet Home Chicago,” a song that has become a blues standard and is one of Johnson’s best-remembered and most beloved tracks.

Johnson died in his home state of Mississippi in 1938, at the age of 27. The exact cause of his death is unknown, and it wasn’t widely reported. In fact, in late 1938, Johnson was invited to perform at Carnegie Hall by show organizers who were not yet aware that Johnson had passed.

A master of guitar, Johnson was among the players whose style of rhythm and melody made it seem like more than one guitarist was in the room. Chuck Berry is said to have incorporated Robert Johnson’s style into his playing. And like a number of musicians from his era, Robert Johnson’s music resurfaced and was celebrated during the folk revival of the early 1960s; Bob Dylan was soon a fan and began to emulate Johnson. Meanwhile, Don Law, the producer of those Texas recording sessions, introduced Robert Johnson’s music to the U.K., where it had a profound effect on numerous guitar players, including Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones.

In 2003, The Complete Recordings of Robert Johnson — a compilation of 29 songs recorded during Johnson’s Texas sessions from 1936 and 37 — were included by the National Recording Preservation Board in the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry as “audio treasures worthy of preservation for all time.”

Classic Americana Playlist

External Links

Robert Johnson Blues Foundation – Crystal Springs, Miss. (official site)

Robert Johnson Birthplace – Mississippi Blues Trail