(Doin' some cut 'n' paste ... some of these facts I want to recant have already been said so well ...)
Here's a good 'un ...
Did Robert Johnson sell his soul to the Devil at the Crossroads? ...
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Robert Johnson is known as “the King of the Delta Blues Singers” but did he get that title with a Faustian pact, and as legend has it, “sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads”?
Transferred from old African beliefs, the legend in the South became that if a man went down to the crossroads at midnight and sat down and started playing his guitar and wished for the devil, the devil would appear. He would sit down next to the man, take his guitar, tune it and start playing it. He would hand the guitar back to the man and the deal was done. The man could play anything that he wanted and have what he wanted in this life, but in the next his soul belonged to the devil.
Robert Leroy Johnson lived in Robinsonville and blues man Son House moved into the same town.
“As a teenager, Johnson venerated House, especially, and Willie Brown; and badgered them to let him sit in at gigs. House recalls Johnson’s guitar playing as a “racket”, though both of them helped him out with the basics” (Joe Cushley)
For various reasons, in1930 Robert moved back to the town of his birth, Hazlehurst, Mississippi.
In 1932 he went back to Robinsonville, and played again for House and Brown. They were astounded by the quality and originality of his style to such an extent that Son House said “he must have done a deal with the devil to get that good, that quick.”
So the legend was born.
However playing songs entitled “Crossroad Blues” and “Me and the Devil Blues” would not help to dispel the story.
Nor would his “womanising” or the way in which he died.
He died on August 16, 1938 at the age of 27 by drinking whisky poisoned, it is thought, by a club owner with whose wife he was “fooling around”.
On the sleeve notes of the album “Robert Johnson: Old School Blues”, Joe Cushley writes: “his use of diminished chords and his innovative use of the boogie bass… had Keith Richards (of The Rolling Stones) convinced there were two guitars playing when he first heard it.” He also quotes Eric Clapton saying “His remains the most powerful cry you can find in the human voice.”
In the two years that he was away from Robinsonville, honing his skills, did Robert Johnson sell his soul to the devil?
Only Robert Johnson will ever know …….and the devil.
... )
... ) played guitar on 'Nutbush City Limits'
... Always broke my heart and pissed me off, hate the trend ... 
