Robert Johnson

Robert Johnson is considered by many music historians to be the "most influential bluesman of all time and the person most responsible for the shape popular music has taken in the last five decades." While Johnson only recorded 29 songs between 1936 and 1937--including such blues standards as Terraplane Blues and Cross Road Blues--he nonetheless altered the course of American music. Eric Clapton has called Johnson "the most important blues musician who ever lived....I have never found anything more deeply soulful than Robert Johnson. His music remains the most powerful cry that I think you can find in the human voice.” As a young man, Johnson roamed widely around the south playing juke joints and levee camps picking up songs and guitar skills from a variety of black players creating his own distinctive style and voice phrasing. Legend has it that Johnson brokered a deal with the Devil in order to learn to play the guitar. Supposedly the deal took place at midnight at an undisclosed delta crossroads; when Johnson emerged he was recognized as the king of the delta players. In 1986, Robert Johnson was recognized by the music industry for his influence on popular music and inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.