Robert Johnson

Robert Johnson was born on May 8, 1911, came from Hazlehurst and died on August 16, 1938, and in between he laid down the recordings that every blues guitarist since has had to reckon with. There were just two sessions, both produced by Don Law: San Antonio in 1936 and Dallas in 1937. Out of them came 29 songs, plus 13 alternate takes that survived, all cut alone with a guitar in makeshift studios. Most came out on 78 rpm singles in 1937 and 1938, with a few following after he died. That's the whole recorded legacy, and his career in the studio lasted only seven months.

The records themselves are staggering: a voice that cracks between a moan and a shiver, and a guitar that sounds like two players at once. "Cross Road Blues" is as haunted as anything in the catalog. The legend everybody knows says he traded his soul to the devil at a crossroads for his gift; his life was so thinly documented that stories like that rushed in to fill the gap.

In his lifetime he worked street corners, juke joints and Saturday night dances around the Delta with little fame to show for it. It was Columbia's 1961 album King of the Delta Blues Singers that put him in front of a wider audience, and the young British blues crowd took it to heart. Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Robert Plant and Bob Dylan all count him as a key influence. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted him in 1986, and in 2006 he received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

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