Robert really did see the road as his home and was always in quest of something new. “You could wake Robert up, you could quit playing at 2 o’clock and wake Robert up at three-thirty and say ‘I hear a train making up, what you wanna do, catch it?’ ‘Yeah, let’s catch it,’ [he’d say]. He wouldn’t exchange no words with you; he’s just ready to go. Robert was one of the first hippies. But Robert was the cleanest hippie you’d ever see in your life. Robert could take a pair of pants, and press ’em, and roll ’em up and put ’em into a paper bag. He’d carry ’em for a week, and take those pants and shake ’em out, and it’d be straight.”8
Unattached or attached, married or divorced, young or old, thin or heavy, women were Robert’s main pursuit. In spite of their care, however, he always ended up abandoning them, re-creating what had happened to him during his formative years with his mother, Julia. Shines attempted to explain his behavior. “Since Robert was the particular person that he was, you would have to say that his love life was very slack or open. You see, no woman really had an iron hand on Robert at any time. When his time came to go, he just went. I never could see how a man could be quite so neutral. I have seen him treated so royally that you would think he would never depart from this kindhearted woman that would do anything in the world for him. But how wrong can you be?” And unfortunately, Robert was often too forward. “Even men’s wives were fair game for him.”9 Robert’s reckless behavior with “that type of woman,” which Son House had warned him about seven years earlier, led him down a trail of heartbreak.
When the two musicians reached a small Arkansas town, Robert once again repeated his pattern of chasing a married woman. “We were having quite a time in this little town where people gathered every night to gamble, drink, and dance, or whatever employed their minds to do for their pleasure. We were playing regularly in this get-together joint every night and this specific night Robert saw this girl and wanted to meet her. He found another girl who knew her, and got this girl to introduce them. Robert didn’t lose any time, even though she told him she was married. Robert would not let her out of his sight the rest of the night. And when we left there a couple of days later she was with us, and she stayed for quite a while. Her name was Louise, and she was everything that Robert wanted: she could sing, dance, drink and fight like hell. Oh, yes, she could play a little guitar too. She and Robert used to get on until she hit him on the head with a hot stove eye.”10
Sometimes, however, Robert allowed a woman to penetrate his defensive exterior. “I only know two women who might have been near as close, and they were Shakey Horton’s sister and Robert Lockwood Jr.’s mother. I have heard Bob talk more about Shakey’s sister than anyone else. Robert’s mother must have meant quite a bit to him too, because he called her his wife. I am sure that you’ve noticed that I call these ladies ‘girls,’ but that is just a figure of speech, because there was only one girl in the bunch, and that was Horton’s sister. She was in her early teens, but the rest were thirty and older. Robert spent a lot of time getting the attention of girls without knowing it himself, and he spent the rest of the time trying to get away from them.” Regardless of the consequences, Robert never stopped pursuing women. “Women, to Robert, were like motel or hotel rooms: even if he used them he repeatedly left them where he found them. Robert was like a sailor—with one exception: a sailor has a girl in every port but Robert had a woman in every town. Heaven help him, he was not discriminating—probably a bit like Christ. He loved them all—the old, young, fat, thin, and the short. They were all alike to Robert…. Did Robert really love? Yes, like a hobo loves a train—off one and on another.”11
As Robert had learned as a boy on his stepfather’s farm, the end of picking season (September through December) was when all the musicians would descend on the plantations to try to win over some of that year’s farming profits (if there were any). He knew, therefore, that these were the best months for a traveling musician in the South since there was more available money and less labor for the workers to do, which meant more frolicking. West Memphis was a particularly good place to make money at this time, and toward the end of 1937 Shines and Robert were living there in a boarding house. Built around the lumber industry, West Memphis had a population of under one thousand but had a significant black nightlife. Eighth Street was known as “Little Chicago” and was as famous for its clubs as was Memphis’s Beale Street.
West Memphis was a wide-open town and Robert had no trouble connecting with several local women. “We were in West Memphis, Arkansas, playing for a fellow called ‘City.’ There was a girl not more than a midget in height and size who also lived in this boarding house that we all took for granted because she was always running errands for us as well as anyone else in the neighborhood. When she would make a run for us, the change that was left, we would give it to her because we thought she was just a very nice girl. One day we missed Robert and thought he was on Eighth Street with a girl that he gave quite a bit of attention to. We were satisfied with this explanation until the girl we thought he was with came over with food for Robert, and the rest of us too, but when she didn’t find Robert we had to make a quick guess as to where he was regardless of what we really thought. So we said he was in Memphis, but she wanted no part of this and was getting quite angry. So somebody had to find him.” Knowing Robert’s habits, Shines guessed where Robert had gone. “Well, I knew this little girl was up and around early and she might know where Robert was—and she did. One guess, and I bet you are right! He was there in her bed. She only had one room and since it would have looked kind of foolish to ask her to go out of her room so I could talk to Robert, I told her what happened, and she was very broad-minded about the whole thing. She in turn told Robert a way to get out of the hotel without being seen, and it worked. After that Robert used this exit quite often, but he was not always coming from the little girl’s room!”12
West Memphis boarding houses. Margaret Elizabeth Woolfolk
These boarding houses were flimsy contraptions with walls so thin you could hear a conversation in the next room. Such a ramshackle structure was an imminent fire hazard and when a blaze finally occurred Shines saw another previously unknown side of Robert’s character and talents. “We was in West Memphis and we was staying at a fellow’s place called Hunt. Robert and I went out to get something to eat, little drink, we looked up and we saw a fire. Robert said, ‘That looks like Hunt’s place.’ I said, ‘Yeah, it is!’ Our guitars were in there. When we got there the place was burned on down to the ground. Our guitars were in there. So we started up [Highway 61] walking. And I didn’t know Robert knew how to blow a harmonica. I never knew he knew anything about a harmonica at all. Robert had a harmonica in his pocket. He reached in his pocket and got his harmonica out and started blowing it. We blocked up Highway 61. He blowin’ harmonica and I’m singing, and then he was singing and blowing, pattin’ our hands and dancing. And we made enough money then on the highway, the highway patrolmen had to come and direct the traffic, ’cause people blocked the highway up. And we made enough money right then on the highway that when we got to Steele, Missouri, we bought two brand new guitars. Kept going.”13
Reportedly Shines bought a new Stella and Robert bought a Kalamazoo KG-14. Such guitars sold new for $9.95 and $14.50, respectively. Eventually they found themselves back in Memphis in early 1938, and they separated for a brief period. But a violent act brought them together again for their most far-reaching trip.
Sometime during this period of separation, Robert apparently decided to take another photo of himself. Much speculation has been given as to when this dime store photo was taken. Some have insisted that it was taken in San Antonio, while others want to place the location in cities that can then lay claim to this important part of cultural history. The simple fact is that we do not know where it was taken, but we can estimate when it was done. Since it is generally agreed upon that the guitar Robert is holding is a Kalamazoo KG-14, and since that guitar did not become available un
til 1936, the photo had to be taken after that. The only record of a boarding house fire in West Memphis occurred on December 11, 1937. Since Shines remembers Robert purchasing a Kalamazoo after the boarding house fire, but has no recollection of Robert taking such a photo, it was probably done during their brief separation.
The photo is interesting for several reasons. First, it is Robert posing himself. This is Robert Johnson as he imagined himself to be, as he wanted others to see him. Second, it is no longer a photo of a young optimistic guitarist, but rather seems to portray a road-seasoned veteran who projects the journeys, both good and bad, of his life. He holds an unlit cigarette in his mouth, perhaps to indicate a certain worldliness or toughness. He no longer wears a suit, but is in a plain shirt and suspenders. He holds his guitar in a manner not very playable, but rather to show off his chording and long fingers. He stares directly at the camera with a rather stoic intent. This is Robert Johnson the blues musician.
Once Shines reunited with Robert their last adventure together would take shape. As Shines remembered, “My cousin, Calvin Frazier, had gotten in a little mix-up in Arkansas in which his brother was killed. And his arm was broken in two places. But he killed a couple of the guys that was shooting at him and his brother. He went to the John Gaston hospital and he was arrested in the John Gaston hospital, but they never did carry him to jail. They told him, ‘Don’t leave town.’ He didn’t leave town, so he had a magistrate’s hearing, we went down to this hearing, and they told him, ‘Frazier, we understand what your problem was and everything. We never had no trouble with you Fraziers, and neither you Shineses, not here. Suppose you just get up and walk out of here right now and we didn’t know where you went. We couldn’t tell nobody where you went if you walked out of here. Because if that man over in Arkansas gets you back over there, then he gonna give you a lotta trouble because one of those guys was one of his pets. They told him everything that happened on that farm. He was one of his pets, and you killed him. He wants you pretty bad, but he’s not going to take the expense of trying to get you from outside the United States. Suppose you just got up and walked on out of the United States somewhere. We couldn’t tell him where you went or anything like that. ’Cause we don’t know where you’re going. All we know is you’re gonna leave here.’ So we got up and walked out. We went on up in Canada.”14
Robert Johnson, dime store photo. © Delta Haze Corporation
The three men—Johnny Shines, Robert Johnson, and Calvin Frazier—quickly headed north with the ultimate intention of reaching Canada. Hopping freight trains, hitchhiking, or just walking, the trio made their way toward Chicago. Along the way they learned more about how Robert operated as a musician. For Robert, the rules for making money were specific, and he was adamant how he wanted it done. First: find the right place to play. “Just try to find out where the Black neighborhood was. Walk up and down the railroad track and just watch to see which side the Black kids are on. Whichever side we find the Black kids on, that’s the side we go, ’cause that was the Black side. All the towns was segregated then—whites on one side of the tracks, Blacks on the other one.”15 Second: divide up the work. Robert didn’t like playing with another musician on the streets because it would reduce the amount of money each could make. “Robert’s motto was this: ‘You make your money and I’ll make mine. You play on this corner, I’ll play on the next corner.’ If we was together and made a quarter we’d have twelve and a half cents a piece. But if I was on this corner and he was on that corner and each of us made a quarter we’d have twenty-five cents a piece.”16
Calvin Frazier. Blues Archive at the University of Mississippi Libraries
As usual, even on the extented trip together Robert revealed little about his personal life. Shines remembered him being distant yet focused. “Well, I don’t know if he had a personality. He had an approach. You know. He was a musician and he approached you as a musician. With song and play. If he liked you he liked you, if he didn’t he didn’t. He didn’t pretend that he liked you. He didn’t talk very much. He thought all the time.”17
Robert didn’t have to talk much about himself because his music revealed him as a vulnerable, deeply feeling man. And that’s what allowed him to have such success with the women. Shines recalls Robert making an audience cry through his passionate playing: “Things like that often happened. And I think Robert would cry just as hard as anyone. It was things like this, it seems to me, that made Robert want to be by himself, and he would soon be by himself. The thing that was different, I think, was that Robert would do his crying on the inside. Yes, his crying was on the inside.”18
Playing blues came with powerful moral condemnation, as Johnny Shines remembered: “A lot of black people, if they heard a young man even whistling the blues, they wouldn’t allow him in their house, their yard, stop him at the gate. ‘Go away, you’re the devil.’ They was afraid he’d bring a curse on them.”19 Robert may not have made a deal at the crossroads, but he was familiar enough with his own pain and with hoodoo beliefs that, having been rebuked several times for playing the devil’s music, it would have been hard for him to completely dismiss ideas about the devil. And if you really thought that there was evil in your life, then why not spend it drinking, womanizing, and rambling? After all, for Robert, no place could ever truly be home. Many people confirmed his tendency to vanish quickly, to be in someone’s company one minute and the next be gone, which explains why he didn’t hesitate to leave Memphis with Shines and Frazier. The trio of musicians thought they were leaving the Jim Crow South behind as they headed north, but the Depression and the Great Migration of blacks out of the South to northern industrial centers had created a new form of racism.
The group traveled north out of Memphis on Highway 51 until they hit Wickliffe, Kentucky, on the Mississippi River. There they had their first on-the-road romantic encounter. “[We] met some girls that I liked very much. They were a dance team that had never been no place and wanted to be seen and heard. I should have said a song-and-dance team of four people. They could really go to town, and I wanted to take them with us when we left and had it all arranged, but Bob, he would slip from one girl to the other until he had them all fighting among themselves. Now he was ready to give them the slip, and we did. It seems to me that where there were no women around, that’s where Robert would find the woman he liked best; and he had to have her or go to hell trying to get her. And he got her.”20
From Wickliffe they crossed the Mississippi River into Missouri and followed Highway 55 north to Saint Louis. There they met two well-known blues musicians: the much-recorded “Devil’s Sonin-Law, the High Sheriff from Hell” Peetie Wheatstraw, and Blind Teddy Darby. Shines recalled them as “people you couldn’t forget because of their type of music. I liked Teddy Darby’s songs and I thought he was a pretty good player. And Peetie Wheatstraw, I thought he was great. We hit Saint Louis on that trip but we didn’t stay there too long.”21
From Saint Louis they continued north until they reached Decatur, Illinois, where they were hired to play for a white square dance. Their performances for white audiences in the North exposed them to a new type of racism that they hadn’t seen in the South. Shines recalled their surprise at another event in Illinois. “We was in Illinois and we stopped at this café and a fellow asked us to come in and play a piece or two and we played, and he hired us to play. And I didn’t know, I know I didn’t ever see any black people in there, but I didn’t know it was a town where there wasn’t any black people, none whatsoever. And every once in a while we’d see somebody try to peep in through the curtain, or over the curtain, get up on top of the car hood try to peep in over the curtain. So finally a fellow told us, ‘This man was making a bunch of money off y’all, ain’t he?’ And I said ‘How’s that?’ ‘He’s got people paying seventy-five cents a piece or something like that just to come in and see you all. Black people.’ Well he didn’t say black people, he said ‘you niggers.’ So I told Robert about it and we left the guy. He was payi
n’ us good money to be there, but we didn’t want to be there exhibited as niggers, you know? I didn’t feel as though I should’ve been exhibited as that. An attraction. The music with most people was very effective. They liked the music. Even though they didn’t like the faces doing the music.”22
Up Jumped the Devil Page 19
