Chasing The Blues — The Crossroads & The Grave Of Robert Johnson
The story of Robert Johnson & my tryst with the Blues plus a video to watch
Around my early twenties, I began a sonic expedition into crate digging & discovering new music online. This was after my stint as the in-house DJ at one of the most popular pubs in my college township of Manipal, where I studied engineering for my undergraduate degree.
In what was my first part-time job ever in my youth, I guided those immaculate nights for all my peers by playing the smoothest sets every night at the pub. I was 19 at the time.
This went on for three years, where I played at the pub every alternate night of the week during our semesters. But after I graduated and got employed in sales & marketing jobs, & continued my professional career, there was a lot missing in my life, especially music.
That’s when I decided to start my own YouTube music channel & in the process began to discover & unearth music spanning the decades.
But no genre hit me harder than the Blues. I discovered Howlin’ Wolf initially and was awestruck. Those wails & moans & some mean guitar, Tom Waits, in an old post I wrote on my Medium, likened Howlin’ Wolf’s vocals to the Empire State Building when he said:
“I’ve always looked to [Wolf] for guidance, and probably always will,” “He does have a voice that is otherworldly. It should be in a time capsule somewhere. When you’re a kid and you’re trying to find your own voice, it’s rather daunting to hear somebody like Howlin’ Wolf, because you know that you’ll never achieve that. That’s the Empire State Building”
But it wasn’t just the Wolf, I went way back digging into records by Son House, Skip James, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Sonny Boy Williamson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Leadbelly to Lightning Hopkins, John Lee Hooker and of course, Robert Johnson.
I also wrote about how Blues musician Blind Willie Johnson ended up on a golden record NASA sent into space (linked below)
There was something common about all these Bluesmen. They sang about pain, a deep-rooted pain from years of toiling in cotton fields in the blaring heat, to life in slavery. They carried with them their African roots, in chants & music & myth & rituals, and all this culminated slowly into the Blues.
The Blues — the musical art form that would inspire Rock and Roll decades hence. And something about that pain & turning it into rhythm & music struck a chord with me.
While Fred McDowell’s Live at the Gaslight session remains one of my favourite ever live albums of all time, I was particularly inquisitive about Robert Johnson, not only because of the expertly crafted guitar parts in his raw recorded music, but just the enigma & folk legend behind his life.
There was something about his life’s story & legend, and his wails seemed to stem from some unearthly pain, and his guitar-wielding ability was pretty unearthly as well.
That’s when I began to read more about the lives of these Bluesmen.
And the mysteries and myths that surrounded Robert Johnson added that extra bit of flavour.
Disappearing, going to the crossroads, a deal with the devil, and an untimely death at 27, it was stuff straight out of a novel or a movie.
As the story begins, Johnson wasn’t very gifted on the guitar, as per accounts from people during the early years of his music career. However, as accounts suggest, he disappeared for some time (about a year according to some accounts) without a trace and returned with impeccable guitar skills. Suddenly, he was an expert guitar player, and perhaps one of the greatest to ever play the instrument.
As the story goes, Johnson supposedly met the devil at the crossroads & sold his soul in exchange for his expert guitar playing ability. The story stems from African folklore that suggested that spirits guarded the crossroads & offered favours in exchange for something valuable to the person looking to make a deal with them.
Recently, I came across a couple of articles by writers here on Medium, wherein they wrote about their journeys to the heartland of the Blues — the Mississippi Delta.
As writer Erik Rittenberry writes in his post Chasing the Ghost of Robert Johnson in the Mississippi Delta:
“I’m in the Mississippi Delta. Deep down in it. The most southern place on earth. It doesn’t take too long driving around here to realize that this is one of the few places left in this country unscathed by the gnarled appetite of modernity.
“And I’m here for it.”
“It’s a place with excess crops and a grim past. A place where the sins of yesterday loiter in the soil and white-portico mansions sit majestically behind cotton fields that whisper untold truths.”
“I am here alone to wash away from the soul the “dust of everyday life.””
“I want to breathe it in. Feel the purity of that southern wind roll across my skin. I want to wander under the ruthless sun and drift down deserted dirt roads. I want to talk to the people of this desolate land. Listen to the music. In the land of the Delta Blues, under the infinite skies, I want to be here, madly alive, living life like a poem.”
While another writer named Lori Erickson writes in her post The Devil, Robert Johnson, and Me: A Spiritual Journey into the Mississippi Delta:
“It was near midnight, the story goes, when teenage Robert Johnson met the Devil at a crossroads and traded his soul for mastery of the Blues.”
“Did it really happen? Probably not. But in Clarksdale, Mississippi, myth and music are so tightly entwined that a monument now marks the crossroads. The Devil may have been a no-show, but the Blues showed up, and never left.”
“My husband and I traveled to the Delta for a different kind of pilgrimage: a journey into the heart of American music. I’m an author specializing in the intersection of spirituality and travel, and I’d come to explore how the Blues — raw, wrenching, and strangely holy — fit into a new book I’m writing.”
“I didn’t expect to be so moved. But in this land of cotton fields and juke joints, Robert Johnson’s ghost still lingers. And so do the deeper truths the Blues carry — about suffering, survival, and the soul’s longing for mercy.”
Both the articles, which I read a couple of times each, to get an idea of what the Mississippi Delta would be like, got me thinking about how I want to visit the US & drive down the legendary Highway 61 & explore the heart of the Delta & soak in the vibe of the region, visit old rundown juke joints, talk to the people there, discover rare Blues records, & visit Robert Johnson’s grave.
Of course, Robert Johnson’s story is just myth & folklore. But the story intrigued me enough to create a short video essay/animated documentary about it, which I uploaded on Twitter and here on Substack, because of copyright issues with the music on YouTube & Instagram.
It’s a short five to six minute documentary about Robert Johnson’s eerie, legendary story, along with some rare cuts of his music.
You can watch it here:
The journey to the Mississippi Delta is a pilgrimage my soul yearns for, & whenever I do visit the US (whenever that is), I’m going to make the road trip straight down South to the region.
It’s an innate desire deeply burned into my soul, despite residing in India all my life & being Indian (you won’t find too many Indians into the Blues).
It’s a journey for all the Blues I’ve ever listened to over the years, and sung, danced or played along on my guitar to, like an old-time lowdown in my bedroom, feeling the pain of the musicians mirroring my own & the grooves setting the tone for the nights, here in my hometown of Mumbai.
As a quote I wrote in one of my poetry books suggests: “You don’t sing because you’re happy.. you sing because you’ve got the Blues”.
I hope that visit happens soon, because it’s part of my bucket list.
It’s me chasing the Blues — at the crossroads — just like Robert Johnson.
This post was originally published on my Medium publication The Music Magnet.
You can follow me on Medium as well: https://medium.com/@gaurav_krishnan There’s a bit of a difference in my articles here & on Medium, so follow me there for access to all my articles.
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