Johnson, Robert (Leroy)

Johnson, Robert (Leroy), American blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist; b. Hazelhurst, Miss., May 8, 1911; d. Greenwood, Miss., Aug. 16, 1938. Johnson is revered as the preeminent exponent of folk blues music from the Mississippi River delta. Drawing on the work of such predecessors as Charley Patton and Son House, he created a repertoire of songs, 29 of which were recorded to make up the most influential body of blues recordings in history. Immediate followers such as Muddy Waters and Elmore James built their careers around his work. Later, a generation of blues-based rock ’n’ roll musicians, notably Eric Clapton and The Rolling Stones, displayed his influence and performed his songs, which included “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom,” “Ramblin’ on My Mind,” “Cross Road Blues” (or, “Crossroads”), “Love in Vain,” “Stop Breakin’ Down,” “Come on in My Kitchen,” “Sweet Home Chicago,” and “Walkin’ Blues.”

Biographical information about Johnson is relatively sparse. He was the illegitimate son of Noah Johnson, a sharecropper, and Julia Ann Majors Dodds. His mother was married to Charles Dodds Jr., a farmer who had been forced to flee Miss, around 1907 due to a business dispute and lived in Memphis. Johnson spent his first two years in labor camps with his mother. In 1914 they went to live with Dodds in Memphis; his mother later left him there and moved to Robinsonville, Miss., where she married Willie “Dusty” Willis in October 1916. Around 1918, Johnson joined them. His first musical instrument was the Jew’s harp; then he progressed to harmonica and guitar. By his teens he was following local blues musicians like Willie Brown and attempting to learn from them.

Johnson married Virginia Travis in February 1929. She died in childbirth in April 1930. Johnson left Robinsonville and settled in Hazelhurst, where he married Calletta Craft in May 1931. He later deserted her. During the early 1930s he began to display enormous talent as a performer. He is thought to have performed throughout the mid-South and Midwest and even to have traveled to N.Y. In the fall of 1936, Jackson, Miss., music store owner H. C. Speir alerted American Record Co. (ARC) salesman and talent scout Ernie Oertle to Johnson, and Oertle took him to San Antonio, where Johnson made his first series of recordings Nov. 23-27, 1936. These resulted in 16 tracks, 12 of which were released on six singles by the Vocalion label, the most successful of them being the first, “Terraplane Blues”/“Kindhearted Woman Blues.” (The songs were not copyrighted; they contained music and lyrics from traditional sources as well as original writing by Johnson.)

The popularity of his records led ARC to engage Johnson for a second set of recordings, which were made June 19-20, 1937. These sessions resulted in another 13 tracks, ten of which were released on five singles. (A final Johnson single, “Love in Vain’V’Preachin’ Blues [Up Jumped the Devil],”; was released after his death in 1939.)

Johnson was performing at Three Forks, a roadhouse near Greenwood, Miss., in August 1938, when he was poisoned by a man who was jealous of his attentions to his wife. Weakened, Johnson died three days later of pneumonia at the age of 27. Shortly after, his recordings brought interest from people who would have furthered his career: A&R man John Hammond sought him out for his celebrated From Spirituals to Swing concert held in December in Carnegie Hall, and in 1939 musicologist Alan Lomax looked for him to make more recordings.

Lomax recorded Muddy Waters, who acknowledged Johnson’s influence. Singer and slide guitarist Elmore James scored a Top Ten R&B hit in April 1952 with his version of Johnson’s “Dust My Broom.” In 1961, Columbia Records, which owned the ARC catalog, released King of the Delta Blues Singers, a 16-track LP containing three previously unreleased songs and several alternate takes, along with reissues of some of Johnson’s 1930s singles. The album was profoundly influential on the blues revival in England that spread to the U.S. after the British Invasion of 1964. Eric Clapton was especially important in exposing Johnson’s music to a new generation. As a member of John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, he recorded “Ramblin’ on My Mind” on the Blues Breakers album released in July 1966, then as a member of Cream put “(From) Four until Late” on Fresh Cream, released in December 1966. “Crossroads,” his adaptation of “Cross Road Blues” containing a verse from “Traveling Riverside Blues,” appeared on the Cream album Wheels of Fire, released in June 1968; it became a Top 40 single in February 1969. Led Zeppelin borrowed a different verse from “Traveling Riverside Blues” for “The Lemon Song,” released on Led Zeppelin II in October 1969, and The Rolling Stones covered “Love in Vain” on Let It Bleed, released in November 1969.

In 1970, spurred by this exposure, Columbia Records issued King of the Delta Blues Singers, Vol. II, bringing into print the two remaining Johnson songs not previously released, along with most of his 1930s singles. Covers of Johnson songs by rock acts became ubiquitous in the 1970s. A sampling of such recordings (all released on gold- or platinum-selling albums) includes: “Stop Breaking Down” on The Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street (1972); “Come on in My Kitchen” on the Steve Miller Band’s The Joker (1973); “Terraplane Blues” on Foghat’s Fool for the City (1975); “Sweet Home Chicago” on Foghat’s Stone Blue (1978); and “Dust My Broom” on ZZ Top’s Deguello (1979).

The 41-track double-CD set The Complete Recordings finally compiled and reissued all of Johnson’s known recordings (the 29 songs plus 12 alternate takes) in 1990; it was on the charts for more than seven months and went platinum, winning the Grammy Award for Best Historical Album. In the 1990s, Johnson’s work continued to be performed and recorded by rock acts, notably The Grateful Dead and their version of “Walkin’ Blues” on Without a Net (1990), The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ version of “They’re Red Hot” on the four-million-selling Blood Sugar Sex Magik (1991), and Eric Clapton’s versions of “Walkin’ Blues” and “Malted Milk” on the ten-million-selling Unplugged (1992).

Bibliography

B. Groom, R. J. (Knutsford, U.K., 1967; rev. ed., London, 1969); S. Charters, R. J. (N.Y., 1973); A. Greenberg, Love in Vain: The Life and Legend ofR. J. (Garden City, N.Y., 1983); P. Guralnick, Searching for R.J. (N.Y., 1989).

—William Ruhlmann