As she lay in labor, Virginia began to experience a difficult birth, and Doctor G. M. Shaw of Robinsonville visited her on Wednesday, April 9, to try to help her deliver. But her condition grew worse, and Virginia died in childbirth at 2:00 am the following morning at her grandmother’s house. Shaw listed her cause of death as “Acute Nephritis (Child birth)” and “Eclamsia [sic].” Less than seventy-two hours after she was enumerated in the April 7 census record, she and her unborn child were dead. Robert was nowhere to found.
Virginia’s April 10 date of death, however, conflicts with the April 11 census record, which still listed her as living with Robert.8 Whoever provided the latter information did not know that Virginia had died two days earlier. Although technically correct—Virginia and Robert had been living in that location—at the time the Census was taken it seems that neither of them were in residence. If the information was wrong about Virginia’s presence, could it also have been wrong about Robert? Almost certainly the answer is yes, for informants told researcher Mack McCormick that Robert had taken advantage of the time that Virginia was away to play his guitar at various jukes up Highway 1. In fact, several weeks passed before Robert, still unaware of the deaths of his wife and baby, appeared at the family doorstep, guitar in hand. This seems to point to him spending the intervening time playing in whatever juke or party he could find.
Virginia Johnson death certificate. Mississippi State Board of Health
April 7, 1930, census record of Virginia Johnson. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, State, Mississippi; County, DeSoto; Beat 3 (part); Enumeration District 17-10, Sheet 3-A, April 7, 1930
There may be evidence of his absence in another census record, providing an answer as to where he had been, and why he was so late arriving for his child’s birth. The April 12, 1930, US Census record lists a Negro man named Robert Johnson, age nineteen, rooming in Mrs. Ophelia Morgan’s Rosedale boarding house.9 Obviously Robert Johnson is a very common name, and if the coincidence stopped there it would not be a lead worth following. But there are other curious happenstances that make it worth a second look.
The Rosedale Robert Johnson gave his occupation as a farmer, just as the musician Robert Johnson had stated on his marriage license and as he was described in the April 12 record with Virginia. This designation of a nineteen-year-old Robert Johnson as a “Laborer—Farm” is of particular interest because, of the three-hundred-plus people enumerated on the Rosedale census pages that day, this Robert Johnson is one of only three individuals identifying himself in that way, and the two other Johnsons lived with their families. Why would someone who identified himself as a farm laborer be a temporary roomer in a boarding house when all his neighbors identified themselves as factory workers, lumber hands, fishermen, or merchants? Could Robert Johnson the musician have been only traveling through Rosedale as he played his way across the Delta? Did this census record capture his temporary appearance in Rosedale much like the April 7 census record had captured Virginia while she was temporarily in Clack? If Virginia had been enumerated in two different places, couldn’t the same be true for Robert? Rosedale, after all, played an important enough part of Robert’s life that he sang about it in his song “Traveling Riverside Blues”: “Lord, I’m goin’ to Rosedale, gon’ take my rider by my side / We can still barrelhouse baby, ’cause it’s on the river side.” It must be seen as a possibility that Robert Johnson, Virginia’s husband, was in Rosedale when she died. His probable intention was to play his way up Highway 1 while Virginia gave birth and recovered with family, stopping anywhere there was a juke or a party to make some money.
When Robert arrived at the Thomas home in Penton he was horrified at the news of Virginia’s death, but his sorrow and guilt did not end there. According to Mack McCormack’s research, her family and friends, still reeling from the tragedy, condemned Robert for being absent when she died. And, seeing his guitar, they believed his pursuit of a godless lifestyle as an “evil musician” contributed to her death. Their anger focused on that instrument, and they harassed him about why he would have brought his guitar and taken so long to arrive if he had not been playing jukes and parties on his journey. They claimed that Virginia’s death, and that of her child, were due to Robert being out “playing the devil’s music.”10
April 11, 1930, census record for Robert and Virginia Johnson, Bolivar County. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, State, Mississippi; County, Bolivar; Beat 3 (part); Enumeration District 6-24, Sheet 4-B, April 11, 1930
Memphis Slim. Blues Archive at the University of Mississippi Libraries
Robert’s friends said he began to believe that he was to blame for her death, and he turned his back on the church and God. He began to blaspheme so badly when he was drinking that those around him would leave in fear of being struck down by the Almighty.11 Piano player Memphis Slim (John Len Chatman) observed of Johnson’s behavior: “And he was about one of the most evil men. Robert Johnson, every time he’d get drunk he’d cuss God. He’d go to cursin’ God out and he could empty a house quick. ’Cause nobody wanted to be around him. They were afraid. He’d done called God some of the worst names you ever heard of. Then he’d look around and it wouldn’t be nobody in there but him. Everybody said, ‘Get away from that fool, ’cause God gon’ strike him—and he might kill me, too.’”12 Such behavior branded Robert a marked man, in league with otherwordly forces.
Dark Corner Cemetery. Bruce Conforth
April 12, 1930, Rosedale census record for a Robert Johnson. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, State, Mississippi; County, Rosedale City; Enumeration District 6-8, Sheet 21-A, April 12, 1930
Previous research only noted that Virginia was enumerated by the census on April 12 at home with Robert in Boliver County. But through our research, and some luck, Virginia’s count at her grandmother’s home in Tunica County was found as well. That information led to the discovery of her death certificate and the information that she was buried in Dark Corner Cemetery. But that raised another mystery: where was that cemetery? No graveyard exists by that name today, nor is it mentioned as such in any specific records.
Dr. Richard Taylor, director of the Tunica Museum, located an elderly undertaker in Tunica who was able to provide an answer. He remembered that Dark Corner Cemetery sat just behind the current Rising Sun Missionary Baptist Church on Green River Road. That was the same church Rev. Hurley used as his home congregation. It lies off Old Highway 61 in Penton, just over the Tunica-DeSoto County line, less than two miles away from Clack. No grave marker for Virginia exists today.
7
THE MUSIC BEGINS
Robert Johnson, now a nineteen-year-old who had just lost his wife and baby, fell back on his old habits. He visited his Memphis family to share his grief, and then in May 1930, still devastated, he moved back with his mother, Julia, and stepfather Dusty Willis. He was a totally different person than when he had left them, and life in the Willis home had changed. Dusty and Julia had moved into Tunica, some twelve miles south of the Abbay and Leatherman plantation, and they had taken in a boarder, a woman named Dove Jones. Yet Willis still expected the now adult Robert to work with him, and when he did not, his stepfather would beat him yet again. Robert found every opportunity to leave and spend nights, or even days or weeks, at the homes of sympathetic neighbors or at the Spencer house in Memphis.1 The more Willis beat him, the more Robert rambled. Willie Moore reiterated his perception of Robert’s life at this time: “He was young. He couldn’t whup the old man nohow. He’d just come by here. [He’d stay] with anybody. Anybody let him stay two or three weeks he’d stay with that person and leave there and stay [with] somebody [else] two, three weeks. [Playing music]—that’s what he’d be doin’.”2
It seems odd that Robert would continue living with his mother and stepfather under such conditions. He could have easily gone to stay with his family in Memphis, with whom he had a better relationship. But it was the proximity to musicians like Patton, Brown, and Moore that
kept him in the Delta. A few months earlier, Charley Patton had moved to the Joe Kirby Plantation near Lula, and after seeing Patton perform locally, Robert recognized Patton’s enormous talent, even if he was critical of Patton’s clowning. In addition to the two Willies—Brown and Moore—Robert now had a real recording star to watch and learn from, for Patton had already recorded more than three dozen songs. As often as possible, Robert would go to watch Patton play and even began to emulate a few of those clowning techniques, beating on his guitar and stomping his feet. And, for the time being at least, Robert continued to follow Patton’s lead of having Willie Brown play backup for him by using Willie Moore as his own second guitar. “When Robert be playing, he wanna play lead all the time. I tell you we played, [but] sometimes it’d be a year before I’d see him. I’d go out, and he’d be there. I’d get off and be back and he’d be there.”3
Already considered a professional musician by Delta standards, Robert now honed his musical skills and once again began to attract young women by the score. Moore remembered that the girls would get so excited by the blues he’d need protection from them. “I tell you one thing. He wasn’t wild, but I tell ya them gals pulled at him all the time. We’d be playing, have to put up a protection around. Them gals you see would jump up.”
At the same time that Robert was gaining more local fame, Eddie “Son” House Jr. was being released from Parchman Penitentiary. After serving some two years for killing a man named Leroy Lee, allegedly in self-defense, House relocated to Robinsonville in June 1930 to work on the Tate, Cox, and Harbert plantations where Willie Brown was already living.
Son House, 1964. Photo by John Rudoff
Robert was excited when he heard that House and Brown would be playing in a nearby location. He was anxious to learn whatever he could, from anyone he could, and this in part accounts for the stories about him that House would later tell. But House played a very different style than Robert was used to. Robert was playing mostly standard folk tunes, and House was playing rough, in-your-face, original bottleneck dance tunes. People didn’t want to hear the old songs Robert was playing. They wanted to get down and dirty, and that’s what Son’s bottleneck playing offered them: harsh, sweaty music that gave them the cathartic release they needed after a week of hard labor.
House was a conflicted man. He was also drawn to preaching, and the battle between that calling and the blues would be one he would face all his life. Originally, House wanted nothing to do with music, especially such secular music as the blues. When he was only fifteen, House began a career as a preacher. However, in 1928, he was attracted to bottleneck-style guitar and began playing the blues. In Commerce and Robinsonville he tried to straddle both worlds and started his own congregation. Elizabeth Moore considered him a great preacher. “He really could sing and he really could preach. He got baptized four times in four different churches.” But his reputation as a drinker, womanizer, and blues singer ended his religious career. As Moore remembered, “Them members up there put him outta business.”4
After being tossed out of the preaching business—though he would continue to pepper his performances with impromptu sermons—House, along with Brown, became regular performers at the Oil Mill Quarters, a juke joint in Robinsonville run by bootlegger Nathaniel Richardson. Robert would sneak away from the watchful eye of Dusty Willis and go to hear both men playing together. He already knew Brown and wanted to use that familiarity to become part of their musical scene.
Charley Patton. From the collection of John Tefteller and Blues Images. Used with permission, www.bluesimages.com
Many years later, House related his first memories of Robert: “We’d play for Saturday night balls and there’d be this little boy standing around. That was Robert Johnson. He was just a little boy then. He blew a harmonica and he was pretty good with that, but he wanted to play a guitar. His mother and stepfather didn’t like for him to go out to those Saturday night balls because the guys were so rough. But he’d slip away anyway. Sometimes he’d even wait until his mother went to bed and then he’d get out the window and make it to where we were. He’d get where Willie and I were and sit right down on the floor and watch from one to the other. And when we’d get a break and want to rest some, we’d set the guitars up in the corner and go out in the cool.”5
Aside from Robert not being a “little boy,” this first part of House’s recollection is fairly accurate, and most blues writers have accepted it as truth. But when describing what would happen when Robert appeared at their jobs, House’s story begins to lose credibility. He claimed that when they would take their break, Robert would try to play their guitars, but he could only make noise. “Robert would watch and see which way we’d gone and he would pick one of them up. And such a racket you never heard. It’d make people mad, you know. They’d come out and say, ‘Why don’t y’all go in there and get that guitar away from that boy! He’s running people crazy with it.’ I’d come back in and I’d scold him about it. ‘Don’t do that, Robert. You drive the people nuts. You can’t play nothing. Why don’t you blow the harmonica for ’em?’ But he didn’t want to blow that. Still, he didn’t care how I’d get after him about it. He’d do it anyway.” In spite of House’s alleged annoyance with Robert he relented and showed him some guitar riffs. “I learned him stuff from me. Started out when we was living, oh, not two miles apart. He was at home with his mother and father.”6
But House was wrong about several of his facts. Robert was not a little boy; he was a nineteen-year-old widower. Robert was also not a noisemaker on the guitar or even a novice. He had been playing with other musicians at jukes for at least two years.
House’s later claims downplaying the skills of the younger musician are understandable, because a year after House’s story ends Robert returned and amazed them with his skills. He would literally take House’s seat. The archetype of a younger musician replacing his older master is both iconic and mythic, and House must have resented Robert displacing him. It was Son House’s show, not Robert’s. The jobs at which House accused Robert of just making noise were House and Brown’s gigs after all, and this could account for House’s interpretation of Robert’s skills. The people who had come to those jukes came to hear the two men, not Robert. After frolicking to the house-rocking music provided by the two older players, the standard folk and pop songs that Robert played, no matter how well he played them, were not what people had come to hear. They could very easily have been annoyed by anything that was different.
But in spite of what might or might not have happened there, Robert was honing his guitar skills with every chance he had. When he wasn’t practicing he never passed up an opportunity to play with other people. He played with a woman from West Helena and House’s cousin Frank in a juke in Bowdre, Mississippi. He also experimented playing with a pianist, Punk Taylor, from nearby Lost Lake.7
Along with music, however, there was one other constant in Robert’s life: his family in Memphis. No matter how focused he was on playing guitar, Robert always found the time to assist his family in any way he could. That summer, Charles Spencer decided to move his family from Memphis to Eudora, Mississippi, east of Robinsonville. He had been a success at carpentry in Memphis, and perhaps he was just looking for some time to raise crops for the winter. He called upon Robert to help them, and he was quick to respond. His “Baby Sis,” Annye (no blood relation but the daughter of Charles and his wife Mollie), said that even after Robert helped them move he would return again and again to help Charles with the plowing. Robert wouldn’t help Dusty Willis with his field work, but he had no problem helping his first and lifelong father figure. The Spencers didn’t stay long on that plantation, however, for by that fall Charles and his family returned to Memphis to move into a Hernando Street apartment with Robert’s half sister Carrie and her husband, Louis Harris. Once again, anxious to help, Robert hitched a ride from Clarksdale with a friend of Carrie’s who had a truck, and helped that move.8
As much as things seemed
to be settling down for Robert, he was facing another crossroad in his life. If he continued his musical path he had to face certain realities. “The bluesman was low class. He couldn’t intermix with people,” Jackson music storeowner and record scout H. C. Speir observed. “[He] smelled a little and had to have a drink before he could play. He was what we call the meat barrel type. Bessie Smith come along and they [companies] dolled it up. They put a little perfume on her type singing. Pulled it out of the meat barrel…. He wasn’t going to work; hold no steady job. He just wanted to play on the streets and pick up nickels and dimes.”9 Robert Johnson wanted that lifestyle. He wanted to be a “meat barreler” and just play music. He would never go back to being a sharecropper.
Unhappy living with Dusty and Julia, Robert needed a respite from going back and forth to Memphis. Ever since Julia told him that his father was Noah Johnson, Robert had wondered who he was, and who that made him. So as soon as the Spencers were safely back in Memphis, Robert headed south to seek out his biological father and possibly establish a relationship with him. (He didn’t leave, as Son House maintained, because he grew tired of House and Brown chasing him away from their gigs.)
And so he headed south to Hazlehurst in Copiah County. What Robert actually found was his most important guitar mentor, living near the small communities of Martinsville and Beauregard, a musician who had no reputation outside of that area. Soon everything in Robert’s life would change once again.
8
HERE COMES THAT GUITAR MAN
Robert Johnson was back in Hazlehurst for the first time since he and his mother, Julia, had left it when he was an infant. He had come to look for his biological father, Noah Johnson, and had no idea where to begin. As he stood on its streets and looked at the strangely familiar surroundings he began doing the only thing he could think of: to go into every store and ask if anyone knew of someone named Noah Johnson. The name sounded famailiar to many, but no one had seen or heard of him for years. Robert went from store to store and plantation to plantation, but he was left with no information. It’s not known how long he kept up his inquiry, but eventually Robert decided his attempts were in vain and gave up his search.
Up Jumped the Devil Page 7
