Robert Johnson Biography Quotes 6 Report mistakes

Early life and family
Robert Johnson was born in Mississippi in 1911 and came of age in the rural communities that stretched between Hazlehurst and the Delta towns north of there. His mother, Julia, moved frequently in search of work and stability, and Johnson grew up amid the migrations, field labor, church gatherings, and juke joints that shaped Black life in the South. As a boy he took to the harmonica before turning his attention to the guitar, listening closely to older players who passed through places like Robinsonville and Tunica. In that circle he encountered Son House and Willie Brown, influential local musicians whose artistry drew crowds and set a standard that Johnson studied intently.

Training and transformation
Early recollections by Son House describe Johnson as an eager but uneven guitarist who disappeared for a time and then returned with astonishing command over the instrument. The leap has fueled stories of secret tutelage and nocturnal practice, and several witnesses later pointed to a mentor often identified as Ike Zimmerman. According to those accounts, Zimmerman drilled Johnson in technique, time, and tone, sometimes rehearsing in graveyards at night to avoid complaints and distractions. However the details are reconstructed, the results were clear: Johnson developed a fluid style that wove a steady, propulsive bass with nimble treble lines and ringing chordal accents. He used open tunings and slide guitar to expand his palette and matched the guitar's drama with a voice that could move from intimate confession to raw, urgent wails.

Itinerant career and associations
By the mid-1930s Johnson was traveling widely as an itinerant musician, playing plantation dances, roadside stores, boarding houses, and night spots across Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, and beyond. He partnered at times with Johnny Shines, who later offered vivid recollections of Johnson's showmanship and restlessness, and crossed paths with Rice Miller, later famous as Sonny Boy Williamson II. In Helena, Arkansas, Johnson spent time around the household where the young Robert Lockwood Jr. lived; Lockwood later credited Johnson as a key teacher and influence. Johnson's repertoire drew from contemporaries and commercial records as well as his own compositions, and he adapted material on the fly to suit audiences, a trait that impressed peers like Willie Brown and kept him in demand.

Recording sessions
Word of Johnson's talents reached talent brokers such as H. C. Speir in Jackson, whose network connected Delta players to the American Record Corporation's field sessions. In late 1936 Johnson traveled to San Antonio, where he recorded under the supervision of producer Don Law. Those sides included Kind Hearted Woman Blues and Terraplane Blues, the latter becoming his first significant seller. A second session followed in 1937 in Dallas, yielding further masterpieces such as Cross Road Blues, I Believe I'll Dust My Broom, Sweet Home Chicago, Love in Vain, Hellhound on My Trail, Me and the Devil Blues, Malted Milk, and Stop Breakin' Down Blues. Across two sessions he recorded dozens of takes of 29 or so distinct songs, leaving a compact but remarkably varied body of work. The records, issued on 78 rpm discs by Vocalion and ARC, circulated on jukeboxes and phonographs in the South and Midwest and established his reputation among musicians and dedicated listeners.

Personal life on the road
Life on the road carried hazards and heartbreak. As a young man Johnson had married and suffered the loss of his wife during childbirth, an event that friends said deepened his itinerant habits and his reliance on music. He traveled light, formed brief partnerships, and often drew the affection of women in the audiences he entertained. Companions like Johnny Shines and David Honeyboy Edwards later recalled both his generosity and his guardedness, a man who could be companionable one night and gone the next, following rumors of better crowds or safer ground.

Death
In the late summer of 1938, while playing at a rural venue near Greenwood, Mississippi, Johnson fell suddenly ill. Friends, including Honeyboy Edwards, described him drinking from a bottle of whiskey that may have been tampered with by a jealous husband. Johnson lingered for several days in severe distress and died shortly afterward, in his late twenties. The official paperwork from the time listed no attending physician and left the precise cause uncertain, a vacuum that has allowed stories of poisoning, illness, and accumulated hardships to coexist. Even his burial site has been debated, with memorial markers at more than one churchyard in the Greenwood area.

Myth, craft, and the crossroads
Johnson's sudden transformation from novice to virtuoso, combined with lyrics that invoked devils, hellhounds, and bargains, fed a burgeoning folklore about a pact at a midnight crossroads. Scholars have noted that similar tales once attached to another Mississippi musician, Tommy Johnson, and that the myth migrated as storytellers sought to explain Robert's rapid ascent. What is beyond debate is the craft: his blurred yet precise slide, the architectural balance of bass and treble, the way he could imply multiple guitar parts at once, and the singer's control he exercised over phrasing and dynamics.

Legacy and influence
During his lifetime his records reached a modest but fervent audience. After his death, interest persisted among collectors and advocates such as John Hammond, who had hoped to present Johnson on a 1938 New York concert and, upon learning of his death, played the records instead. In 1961, the release of the LP King of the Delta Blues Singers introduced a new generation to his work, and musicians like Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Bob Dylan, and countless blues and rock players took inspiration from his songs and techniques. Meanwhile, researchers including Gayle Dean Wardlow and others tracked down documents and witnesses, bringing more of Johnson's story into view. Today his compact discography remains a touchstone: in a few hours of studio time he captured the haunted elegance, rhythmic drive, and narrative intensity that defined a crucial current of American music. The people around him during his brief life, Son House, Willie Brown, Ike Zimmerman, Johnny Shines, Robert Lockwood Jr., Honeyboy Edwards, and the producers and scouts who put up the microphones, from H. C. Speir to Don Law, all helped shape a path that Johnson walked at great speed. His art, preserved on fragile shellac and vivid in memory, continues to travel much farther than he ever could in his short years.

Our collection contains 6 quotes who is written by Robert, under the main topics: Wisdom - Deep - Free Will & Fate - Father - Husband & Wife.