The Myth of Robert Johnson
The use of the Devil as lyrical content stems from Robert Johnson who played the Blues.
The Blues in the late 19th/early 20th c. from various sources – folk narrative songs, field chants, and the new ragtime jazz music, by about 1910 these had fermented into Blues, a mainly Afro-American music. The moaning vocal style comes from the laments of plantation workers (Cambridge Companion to Blues and Gospel Music (ed. Allan Moore – Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press, 2002)
There are many variations on the legend of Robert Johnson. The most widely told is that Johnson sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads in return for his guitar playing skill.
Among Johnson’s song titles (he recorded 29 songs) are Hellhound on my Trail, Me and the Devil Blues, Preaching the Blues (Up Jumped the Devil) and If I Had Possession over Judgement Day.
Johnson’s lyrical themes dealing with such issues as hoodoo can be found here
Some of Johnson’s collected recordings were released as an album called ‘King of the Delta Blues Singers’ in 1961 at a time when not a lot was known about Johnson.
The Blues boom of the early-mid 60s (Stones, John Mayall, Yardbirds, Downliners Sect etc.) picked up on it and Johnson became beatified and turned into a popular cult figure with trendy white British musicians, not just known amongst hardcore blues and jazz scholars in the US or people who’d known him.
