Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911 – August 16, 1938 Hazlehurst, MS) was an American blues singer, songwriter and musician. His landmark recordings in 1936 and 1937 display a combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that has influenced later generations of musicians. Johnson’s poorly documented life and death have given rise to much legend. The one most closely associated with his life is that he sold his soul to the devil at a local crossroads to achieve musical success. He is now recognized as a master of the blues, particularly as a progenitor of the Delta blues style.

As an itinerant 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 only participated in two recording sessions, one in San Antonio in 1936, and one in Dallas in 1937, that produced recordings of 29 distinct songs (with some alternate takes). These songs, recorded at low fidelity in improvised studios, were the totality of his recorded output. About half of these were released as 10-inch, 78 rpm singles from 1937–1939, many after his death at the age of 27. Other than these recordings, very little was known of him during his life outside of the small musical circuit in the Mississippi Delta where he spent most of his life; much of his story has been reconstructed after his death by researchers.

His music had only a small, but influential, following during his life and in the years after his death. As early as 1938, his music was being sought by influential producers such as John Hammond, who tried to recruit him to record and tour without even knowing of his death. Brunswick Records, which owned the original recordings, was eventually bought by Hammond’s Columbia Records, which would later release the recordings to a wider audience. Musicologist Alan Lomax went to Mississippi in 1941 to record Johnson, also not knowing of his death. A compilation album, titled King of the Delta Blues Singers, was released by Columbia in 1961, which finally brought his work to a wider audience. The album would become an influential record, especially on the nascent British blues movement which was just getting started at the time; Eric Clapton has called Johnson “the most important blues singer that ever lived.”Musicians as diverse as Bob Dylan, Keith Richards, and Robert Plant have cited both Johnson’s lyricism and musicianship has 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 and repurposed by a many later musicians.

Renewed interest in Johnson’s work and life led to a burst of scholarship starting in the 1960s. Much of what we know about him today was reconstructed by researchers such as Gayle Dean Wardlow. The 1991 documentary The Search for Robert Johnson by John Hammond, Jr. was another attempt to document his life, and demonstrated the difficulties arising from the scant historical record and conflicting oral accounts.