Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911 – August 16, 1938) was an American bluesmusician and songwriter. His singing, guitar playing and songwriting on his landmark 1936 and 1937 recordings have influenced later generations of musicians. Although his recording career spanned only seven months, he is recognized as a master of the blues, particularly the Delta blues style, and as one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame describes him as perhaps “the first ever rock star”.

As a traveling performer who played mostly on street corners, in juke joints, and at Saturday night dances, Johnson had little commercial success or public recognition in his lifetime. He had only two recording sessions both produced by Don Law, one in San Antonio in 1936, and one in Dallas in 1937, that produced 29 distinct songs (with 13 surviving alternate takes). These songs, recorded solo in improvised studios, were the sum of his recorded output. Most were released as 10-inch, 78 rpm singles from 1937–1938, with a few released after his death. Other than these recordings, very little was known of his life outside of the small musical circuit in the Mississippi Delta where he spent most of his time. Much of his story has been reconstructed by researchers. Johnson’s poorly documented life and death have given rise to legends. The one most often associated with him is that he sold his soul to the devil at a local crossroads in return for musical success.

His music had a small, but influential, following during his life and in the decades after his death. In late 1938, John Hammond sought him out for a concert at Carnegie Hall, From Spirituals to Swing, only to discover that Johnson had recently died. Hammond was a producer for Columbia Records which bought Johnson’s original recordings from Brunswick Records which owned them. Musicologist Alan Lomax went to Mississippi in 1941 to record Johnson, also not knowing of his death. In 1961, Columbia released an album of Johnson’s recordings titled King of the Delta Blues Singers, produced by legendary producer and music historian Frank Driggs. It is credited with finally bringing Johnson’s work to a wider audience. The album would become influential, especially in the nascent British blues movement; Eric Clapton called Johnson “the most important blues singer that ever lived”.^[2] Bob Dylan, Keith Richards, and Robert Plant have cited both Johnson’s lyrics and musicianship as key influences on their own work. Many of Johnson’s songs have been covered over the years, becoming hits for other artists, and his guitar licks and lyrics have been borrowed by many later musicians.

Renewed interest in Johnson’s work and life led to a burst of scholarship starting in the 1960s. Much of what is known about him was reconstructed by researchers such as Gayle Dean Wardlow and Bruce Conforth, especially in their 2019 award-winning biographyof Johnson: Up Jumped the Devil: The Real Life of Robert Johnson (Chicago Review Press). Two films, the 1991 documentary The Search for Robert Johnson by John Hammond Jr., and a 1997 documentary, Can’t You Hear the Wind Howl?: The Life & Music of Robert Johnson, which included reconstructed scenes with Keb’ Mo’ as Johnson, attempted to document his life, and demonstrated the difficulties arising from the scant historical record and conflicting oral accounts. Over the years, the significance of Johnson and his music has been recognized by the Rock and Roll, Grammy, and Blues Halls of Fame, and by the National Recording Preservation Board.

Johnson died on August 16, 1938, at the age of 27, near Greenwood, Mississippi, of unknown causes. Johnson’s death was not reported publicly. Almost 30 years later, Gayle Dean Wardlow, a Mississippi-based musicologist researching Johnson’s life, found Johnson’s death certificate, which listed only the date and location, with no official cause of death. No formal autopsy had been done. Instead, a pro forma examination was done to file the death certificate, and no immediate cause of death was determined. It is likely he had congenital syphilis and it was suspected later by medical professionals that this may have been a contributing factor in his death. However, 30 years of local oral tradition had, like the rest of his life story, built a legend which has filled in gaps in the scant historical record.

Several differing accounts have described the events preceding his death. Johnson had been playing for a few weeks at a country dance at the Three Forks Club in Itta Bena, about 15 miles (24 km) from Greenwood. According to one theory, Johnson was murdered by the jealous husband of a woman with whom he had flirted. In an account by the blues musician David ‘Honeyboy’ Edwards, Johnson had been flirting with a married woman at a dance, and she gave him a bottle of whiskey poisoned by her husband. When Johnson took the bottle, Edwards knocked it out of his hand, admonishing him to never drink from a bottle that he had not personally seen opened. Johnson replied, “Don’t ever knock a bottle out of my hand”. Soon after, he was offered another (poisoned) bottle and accepted it. Johnson is reported to have begun feeling ill the evening after and had to be helped back to his room in the early morning hours. Over the next three days his condition steadily worsened. Witnesses reported that he died in a convulsive state of severe pain. The musicologist Robert “Mack” McCormick claimed to have tracked down the man who murdered Johnson and to have obtained a confession from him in a personal interview, but he declined to reveal the man’s name.

While strychnine has been suggested as the poison that killed Johnson, at least one scholar has disputed the notion. Tom Graves, in his book Crossroads: The Life and Afterlife of Blues Legend Robert Johnson, relies on expert testimony from toxicologists to argue that strychnine has such a distinctive odor and taste that it cannot be disguised, even in strong liquor. Graves also claims that a significant amount of strychnine would have to be consumed in one sitting to be fatal, and that death from the poison would occur within hours, not days.

In their 2019 book Up Jumped the Devil, Bruce Conforth and Gayle Dean Wardlow suggest that the poison was naphthalene, from dissolved mothballs. This was “a common way of poisoning people in the rural South”, but was rarely fatal. However, Johnson had been diagnosed with an ulcer and with esophageal varices, and the poison was sufficient to cause them to hemorrhage. He died after two days of severe abdominal pain, vomiting, and bleeding from the mouth.

The Leflore County registrar, Cornelia Jordan, years later and after conducting an investigation into Johnson’s death for the state director of vital statistics, R. N. Whitfield, wrote a clarifying note on the back of Johnson’s death certificate:

I talked with the white man on whose place this negro died and I also talked with a negro woman on the place. The plantation owner said the negro man, seemingly about 26 years old, came from Tunica two or three weeks before he died to play banjo at a negro dance given there on the plantation. He stayed in the house with some of the negroes saying he wanted to pick cotton. The white man did not have a doctor for this negro as he had not worked for him. He was buried in a homemade coffin furnished by the county. The plantation owner said it was his opinion that the man died of syphilis.