DISGRACELAND - Robert Johnson: Voodoo, Delta Blues, Cursing God, and a Crossroads

Episode Date: November 1, 2022

Robert Johnson didn’t just play the blues. He embodied them. He drank and womanized his way through the South, New York, and Chicago in the 1930s, until he finally met the devil at the crossroads for a little trade. So the legend goes, anyway. With the same soul he supposedly sold to the devil, Robert Johnson belted lightning blues that captured trouble in 12 bars. But the trouble he touted would eventually trickle into his own life, one bottle of poison at a time. This episode contains themes that may be disturbing to some listeners and includes descriptions of racial violence and traumatic childbirth. This episode was originally released on Nov. 1, 2022. To view the full list of contributors, see the show notes at ⁠www.disgracelandpod.com⁠. Visit ⁠www.disgracelandpod.com/merch⁠ to see the latest Disgraceland merch and check out the new limited edition Halloween merchandise! To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to exclusive content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at ⁠disgracelandpod.com/membership⁠. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - ⁠GET THE NEWSLETTER⁠ Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: ⁠Instagram⁠ ⁠YouTube⁠ ⁠X⁠ (formerly Twitter)  ⁠Facebook Fan Group⁠ ⁠TikTok  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. Hey, everybody. This is a special episode of Disgraceland because I was able to cast one of my favorite singers in soul music today. Lee Fields. Lee Fields is an incredible vocalist, great artist.

You should check him out wherever you stream your music, Amazon music, or wherever you listen. Lee Fields plays the part of Sun House's head in this episode. He did an amazing job. I just want to give a special thanks to Lee. And again, if you don't know his music, go check it out. You won't be disappointed. All right.

Melotron! The stories about Robert Johnson are insane. He drank and womanized his way through his gigs from the South in the 1930s all the way up to New York and Chicago. He cursed the name of God to any friend who would listen, often to the detriment of those friendships. At the age of 17, he married. a 14-year-old, both lying about their ages on their marriage license, a relationship that would

end in tragedy, and forever cast a dark shadow on his spirituality. He worked out his original blues sound by practicing guitar in the cemetery at night, and when that didn't yield the results he was looking for, he went further out of town, to the crossroads, where legend has it that he sold his soul to the devil in exchange for the lightning blues guitar talent that came to define the dealt the blue genre for all time. And despite only living for 27 years on this earth, with only the last two of those years after his supposed deal with the devil, Robert Johnson made great music, some of the most unique and most influential music on this planet, music that no one has ever been able to imitate, music that Robert Johnson laid down in just

two recording sessions. Again, great music. Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop for my Melotron called Thighbone Xylophone MK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to music maestro please by Tommy Dorsey. And why would I play you that specific slice of toilet plunger trumpet cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on a song. August 1st, 1938. And that was the day that Robert Johnson stepped off the train for the last time in a Mississippi town to perform a string of gigs that would end in his murder. On this episode,

Cemetery Blues deals with the devil, cursing God, plunged trumpet cheese, and Robert Johnson. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. The train left the station. The blues men stood on the platform, pinstripe suit, guitar case in his hand. He pushed the brim of his hat up and away from his brow. He surveyed the town before him. Greenwood, Mississippi. A town he knew well. A town he would make famous, or infamous, rather.

The town looked back at him and word began to spread immediately. Here comes that guitar man. I'll look out, he's back. Lock up your daughters. The man is back in town. Best get your wives in line. It's Robert Johnson. Robert Johnson strolled down the middle of the street in Greenwood's Baptist Town neighborhood.

Doors quietly locked. Curtains closed. Men stared silently backing away off of their porches, back into whatever saloon or a good time house they were fronting. Women gawked. Fathers cringed. Husband seethed. Little girls saw their future and it was dark.

It was Saturday night. Church was tomorrow's business. Tonight was the devil's business, and the devil just walked into town. And in 1938, in the American South, blues music was indeed the work of the devil. God-fearing black folk, those who went to church each Sunday,

who kept a hymn in their heart on every other day, despised blues music as being the low-down work of the devil. With its innuendo and rabble-rousing jump-booky, Blues music meant one thing, sex. And sex meant some sort of headache or another. Unwanted pregnancies, jealous lovers, spurned lovers, violence. Blues music was nothing more than trouble in 12 bars. Blues music was not to be listened to.

Blues musicians were not to be messed with. Doors locked, windows shut, shotguns caught. Except on Saturday nights. On Saturdays, for some anyway. exceptions were made. Out on the outskirts of town, not quite as far as the crossroads, but just past the cemetery, Robert Johnson, the blues musician, along with some of those greenwood residents from the black section of town from Baptist town, would get after it in the devil's workshop. That is, inside whatever juke joint was set to jump that evening. Jukes were rough. At the juke joints in

town, the doorman would collect the patrons' knives and guns at the door and return them at the end of the night. But such a practice didn't exist out of town. In the country jukes, which were generally lawless, weapons were not only allowed, weapons were necessary for survival. Musicians, the entertainment, would usually perform as duos, positioning themselves on stage, on chairs, with their backs to each other so that each could keep an eye out for the other one and prevent any sort of drunk and violent ambush from disgruntled patrons. But Robert Johnson performed solo. He was the only accompaniment he needed. It suited him and was worth the risk. More spoils, more money, and more women. The jute opened at 5 p.m. It was 25 cents to get in. Guests were encouraged to stay

all night, and the host kept the corn liquor flowing. Robert played most of the evening straight through the brawling and the bawling and left with whichever woman he wanted before his son was up. using the homes of these women to briefly settle into before rambling on via rail to his next stop. It was a loose, wayward, and dangerous way of life. But that's what life had been for Robert Johnson, as far back as he could remember. And before that, the stories he heard from his family

about life in the South, before he was born, life was rougher, routier, and even. The hounds were hot on his trail, barking mad, salivating. He could hear them gaining. If he were caught it would be the rope. He knew this. But that entitled motherfucker had it coming.

It wasn't much. Just a couple of words at first. But it was enough. Enough to make the white man pull his knife. He then pulled his straight razor, and the white man got the better of him. A gash across his jaw. But it wasn't enough to cut him down.

He took off, out of town, out toward the plantation. And now this, Hellhounds, on his trail. Through the blackberry patch, its brambles and briars cutting at his skin. The blood, breadcrumbs for the vicious hounds, but he knew these parts, knew them better than the dogs. And he knew them more than their racist owners, the white men on the horses that followed them. He burrowed down in the briar and waited them out. In the morning, he escaped by train.

He had to leave his wife behind, and after a few years, she took up with another man. On May 8, 1911, she gave birth to a boy, Robert Johnson, born only because his mother's his first husband was run out of town, and she was forced to remarry, a man who would eventually become a father to him. A circumstance that never would have come to be had not been for the threat of violence, the threat of evil. Robert Johnson, from the jump, born under a bad side. Young Robert Johnson didn't know what he was looking for, but he'd know it when he saw it, some sort of hoodoo supplies. And there were plenty on the shelves of, of A. Schwabs, dry goods, mojo bags, hot foot powder, goofer dust. He didn't want anything that would

kill his stepfather. He only wanted to knock him down a bit. Give him some sort of sickness, causing some pain as retaliation for the plantation beatings he doled out to Robert for no good reason. Plantation life was hard, but made harder when you were a teenage didn't have no mind for fieldwork. You knew what you were good at. Manual labor was not it. It was music. It had. It had been music from the beginning. Ever since you strung that bailing wire to the side of the shack with a glass bottle for a bridge and started playing the Didle Bow. Then when you got your hands on that acoustic guitar and started trying to string together

Jimmy Rogers' tunes and then mimicking the sounds of those older local bluesmen, Charlie Patton, and Sun House, you got yourself some recognition. Girls noticed you. And there was money in it too. Not much, but more than plantation work, where you sweated it out for your money. mother and your stepfather and for barely a penny. Street work, playing your guitar and singing out on Beale Street. It brought in some coin and unlocked a whole new world. Finally, you were somebody. You didn't even know who that somebody was, but you were determined to find out. Build out,

and bound to go. Unlike most in his community, Robert Johnson never went to church. For the self-identifying so-called low-down blues man, church was the rails, hopping moving freight trains to travel from one place to another. It was Robert Johnson's only mode of transportation. It was necessary for him to travel as a working musician, honing his craft and developing a reputation toward the end of booking a recording engagement where a record would be made with his voice and his guitar playing for commercial distribution. an effort that in Robert's mind was the key to fame and unheard of success Robert would ride the rails nearly all the way into town pop off at the outskirts and walk the rest of the way

he'd trek down the railroad track and keep an eye out for black children playing whichever side of the track the kids were hanging out on was the side of town Robert wanted to be on once he had determined that he'd head deeper into the segregated community to find the first popular street corner he could plopped down his guitar case, take his guitar out, and begin playing and singing right there. If he was good, he could make up to a quarter in one Saturday afternoon.

And if he was really good, you get invited to come play at one of the Jukes that night. And if he was great, get to stay in town a spell and keep on playing. At Robert's young age, that didn't happen often. By all accounts, as a teenage bluesman, Robert Johnson wasn't that good. But he must have been doing something right in DeSoto County, Mississippi, back in in 1928 because his afternoon spell on the corner turned into a juke show that night. Out by the cotton plantations near the Mississippi River up on Highway 61 in the communities of Clack and Pennon. The sharecroppers needed entertainment that Saturday in the Clack grocery store,

which doubled as a juke joint on weekend nights. 17-year-old Robert Johnson would do. His country-style blues wasn't yet earth-shattering, but it would work. It was plenty good enough to keep joint-hont. and plenty good enough to capture the eye of a young impressionable sharecropper's daughter who somehow managed to find her way into the juke. 14-year-old Virginia Travis, her beauty was beyond compare. Robert was smitten. He laid an aunt thick, pouring his heart into his playing,

exposing his vulnerabilities in public in the way that only musicians can. Through his songs, that internal pain he was grappling with, the torment of his abusive stepfather, the ever-present wickedness of the Jim Crow South, the teenage angst of not knowing exactly who you are or why you're here or what you're meant to do. All of that tangled itself up with the longing he now felt for this heaven-sent Mississippi Queen. And Robert Johnson was able to express it with the dark brand of low-down blues he had been experimenting with. All of it came out in a captivating mix of self-expression that perfectly featured Robert Johnson's devilish charm. In the end, Virginia Travis didn't stand a chance.

She, like her musical suitor, was smitten. Despite the protests of her parents who worried about a blues man darkening their doorway, the 14-year-old Virginia Travis and the 17-year-old Robert Johnson married two months later, each lying about their ages on their marriage certificate. In no time, Virginia was pregnant. Robert was committed. He put down the guitar and picked up the plow. The two set up home in the all-black Mississippi Delta community of New Africa.

Robert sharecropped. Virginia prepared for the baby. But New Africa was no place for her to give birth. She wanted to be closer to her immediate kin, so she headed back to Clack Mississippi. Robert stayed behind to keep working and keep saving. He'd joined her shortly before the baby was born. The screams were their own kind of hellfire.

The pain was all. encompassing. Every inch of Virginia's pregnant body hurt. There was little progress. The baby was stuck and none of what was happening seemed natural. Virginia screamed with the devil's tongue and the midwife covered her ears. Robert Johnson's baby seemed to be holding on for dear life, not wanting to leave the comfort of the womb to enter this world gone wrong, hesitant for reasons that'll never be known to give in to this thing called life. Virginia screamed some more. Her A 14-year-old body was ill-equipped for the pain. She pushed.

She screamed again. Pushed once more. Screamed an earth-shattering death rattle. The baby gave in and finally exited. The midwife held it in her arms. She looked to Virginia, who was now silent and still. The midwife knew it in an instant. She'd seen it before.

Virginia Travis was dead. So, too, was her baby. Robert Johnson was unaware. He was using his new wife's absence to let off some steam before taking on the immense responsibility of fatherhood. He put down the plow, picked up his guitar, and hit the jukes, of what was to be a one-night stand stretched into a two-week run. By the time he turned up on the doorstep of his wife's parents' home to embrace Virginia and his new baby, both were in the ground.

Her parents were not surprised. The low-down bluesman had delivered upon his reputation. Robert Johnson was devastated. There was no one or no thing that was going to heal this immense heartbreak. Church wasn't an option. His family was dead. The only thing that helped was music. Robert hit the rails again.

He turned up in a town called It's. That's right. ITS. It's Mississippi. Just south of Hazlehurst. There, he met an older player named Aik Zimmerman. Ike played unlike anyone Robert had ever heard before, and unlike the older players working their way around the Delta,

Ike was settled, a family man, a father. And also, unlike any other season musician Robert had met by that point, Ike seemed intent on helping Robert. Ike wasn't competitive. Ike was generous. What his angle was Robert didn't know. Robert was happy to have a mentor. Ike listened, and Robert had a lot to get off of his chest.

He was angry, disillusioned. While Ike rifted on guitar, Robert riffed on life. How church was a scam, how everyone he knew was a hypocrite, whooping it up with him on Saturday night, and then cursing the blues man every Sunday morning. Religion was a joke. Why I worship a god that didn't respect you? A god that forced you to live like this.

Under the threat of the rope from the white man, under Jim Crow, a god who was spiteful. Robert ran this rap regularly to the point where his friends he'd made started to distance themselves from him, but not Ike. Ike kept Robert close. Robert told Ike flat out, he hated God. For as much as he knew, he was the devil. Ike paid Robert's anger no service.

He simply kept playing guitar. Robert knew Ike's tutelage was the key. The key for him to get better, and getting better was key to making a recording engagement. Ike was straight as an arrow in most ways, with the exception of one peculiar habit. He practiced out at the graveyard. So that's where Robert Johnson practiced too. Robert set up on one of the newer gravestones and began to play. The wind picked with his foot.

His hand stretched effortlessly over the neck of his guitar. His voice spread out in a melodic wail. The moonlight painted shadows and small pools around Robert's feet. He felt at peace and his interterm with by song. His song, giving chase to some unlucky soul. soul. Robert knew where this would end. He'd heard this racist riff played before. It was a distraction at the exact wrong time. Just when he was getting somewhere, he could feel it, feel himself, getting better. He needed a pull on that thread, see where it led, see where it would take him and see

what he would become. Robert needed privacy, a place where he could play uninterrupted. Hike told him about a spot. It was way out of town, but quiet. The moon full. flooded out this peculiar spot with just enough light, and there were no trees, most important, no passengers, no parents, no God-fearing judgment, and no hounds. But what there was plenty of was opportunity. On the right night, on a night like this, under a full moon there was a bargain to be had.

All Robert had to do was head down to that spot and play to the crossroads. We'll be right back after this world. When Robert Johnson returned to rambling after his stint with Ike Zimmerman, his tutelage at the cemetery, and his fabled visit to one of the Delta's many outlying crossroads, he was, by all accounts, from every musician who knew him and from anyone who'd ever heard him perform in one of the Mississippi or Memphis Jukes before, a changed man. Just asks Sun House. That is, if he could find him in one piece, His lifeless body was prone on the juke's wide wooden floorboards,

his severed head, a few feet removed from the body, having rolled over to the side of the room, but still with a clear view of young Robert Johnson on the juke's makeshift stage, making quick, devastating work of the audience. Sunhouse's head blasted a vicious trail of curses ending with, How the fuck Robert Johnson in the spare deal? Robert took that guitar with his massive hands and bent it to his will.

He rocked, he rolled. Simultaneously, he played the rhythm and the melody. Both parts, at the same time, along with the bass part too. He needed no accompaniment. Sunhouse's head was livid. Bad Dill? My motherfucking ass. Robert used the guitar to fashion the sound of a Delta orchestra in his own two hands. His sound was fuller and more realized than anything Sunhouse or anyone in the room had heard before.

Motherfuckers to pay dilly for this bullshit. Robert connected. He worked his own tunes with immediate effect. Creating what seemed to be instant hits. Come on in my kitchen. Traveling Riverside Blues and Cross Road Blues. Sunhouse's head thought that last one rich. Cross Road Blues?

There's nothing to foolback. Motherfucker went out of the hayseeing and come back as a headcut. Robert sprinkled in audience favorites in the place went wild. Songs by Blind Willie McTell, Lonnie Johnson, even by country singer Jimmy Rogers. Then, standards in different styles, ragtime, waltzes, even a fucking polka just to make them all fall out. Sunhouse's head couldn't believe what it was seen. Robert's style, his technique, his execution, all his shit in one bag. His hands moved like lightning up and down the neck, augmented seventh, nights, diminishes,

and all with that steady rhythm under everything and stinging melody up on top. Robert Johnson's playing was, in a word, everything. Sunhouse's head had seen enough, but was powerless to do anything. It's not like it had legs and could just walk away, nor could it just roll itself on out of the joint. All it could do is squinted its eyes shut in protest and curse the devil as he saw him. Motherfuck, it wasn't shit before he went out on crossroads. Now look at him, shit of them walking puts the first off on his lemon. Robert Johnson heard nothing.

himself possessed. The audience hypnotized. He had the entire juke in his grasp. The dance floor was full. Men were in awe. Women were enthralled. Everyone drank more. Everyone got on their grind. Saturday night felt a little looser. The sweat tasted a little sweeter. Sunday morning seemed a long ways off and Sun House was fucked. Robert Johnson had cut his head off. Having one's head cut off, or more to the point, cutting one's head off, was a Delta Blues tradition. Quote, cutting heads was the practice of one perpetrating blues men showing up at another blues man's gig, coming on all friendly, talking himself onto the stage to give the other

player whose gig it was a much-needed rest, and then playing so well that the audience then wanted to hear the perpetrating blues man and only the perpetrating blues man, rendering the original bluesman whose gig it was in the first place. plays out of a job, wherein the head cutter would make the money the original performer was supposed to make. As an experienced bluesman, Sun House had done this many times, cut someone's head. As an inexperienced bluesman, Robert Johnson had this done to him many times, had his head cut. But those days, work was a proclamation. There was a new player in town.

Sun House learned the hard way. Sun House knew what was up. No one goes out of town one day to fuck off in the country and comes back to next as the greatest bluesman the Delta has ever seen without getting a leg out for Mr. Jake Legg himself, the devil. Sun House knew all about the myth of the crossroads. That fabled Delta outpost where bluesmen would exchange their eternal souls with Satan for earthly fame and pleasures beyond one's imagination.

But Sun House never believed it. Not until tonight. Not until seeing what Robert Johnson had turned into. A beast. From on stage, Robert Johnson could see Sun House looking on in disbelief. Fuck him. Serves him right to suffer.

He never believed in Robert. No one did. Not son, not any of the other players. His stepdad, Virginia's parents, none of them. At least of all, God. God never offered him nothing. God cursed him. Took his family, took his wife, his baby.

Fuck God. It was Robert Johnson's time to take. Robert was going to take what he was owed. On stage, he basked in what was finally his. greatness. No longer the meek struggling musician. At his young age and with little to no training, certainly no formal training, he had become a killer, vanquishing the blues master himself Sondhouse from the stage. It felt good. Robert enjoyed the feeling. Being bad felt good. And now Robert needed to take his bad self nationwide, a recording contract, a record,

and then real fame and real success. Robert Johnson woke up in a strange woman's bed, and the next day he did the same in a different town. He woke up with a different woman, a day after that the same thing. And there were many towns over many days and many women. And the women had one thing in common, and it was that they had nothing in common. Robert Johnson didn't discriminate. Beautiful, ugly, fat, skinny, young, old, married single, none of it mattered. Robert worked women the way he worked the rails as a means to an end.

In this case, it was shelter from the storm, a place to lay his head while he traveled from Mississippi to Texas for his first recording engagement. Robert Johnson arrived in San Antonio, Texas on November 22, 1936, and promptly got down to business, setting up shot by the Southern Pacific Railroad Depot to make a little extra coin, playing on the street before hitting the studio. Robert quickly drew a crowd. He lit them up with his brand of country blues, and then, Robert's lights went out. A sudden thwarted to the back of his head in immediate darkness. When Robert opened his eyes, he was in a San Antonio cell, arrested on charges of vagrancy,

and judging from the bump on his head and his sore ribs, he must have caught a beating to boot. The vagrancy charge was bullshit. Some square-jawed Texas good old boy cop didn't like the cut of Robert's devilish jib and decided to knock him down a peg or two. Robert was released into the custody of a white man named Don Law, who was tasked by Vocalian Records with getting Robert's songs down on record. The two quickly headed to the Gunter Hotel,

where Law had a makeshift recording studio set up in two rooms on the fourth floor, one room for the musician in the microphone, and the other for the engineers and the recording equipment. And there was a window on the door that separated both rooms where the engineers could look in on and communicate with the musician. Robert sat on a chair. alone in the room, waiting for the signal from the engineers to start playing. He got it.

And then, he did something neither engineer had ever seen before in all of their combined experience. Robert Johnson stood, repositioned his microphone, and turned his chair around so that it faced the wall, so that it faced the exact opposite direction of the engineers. He then sat and began to perform. Robert Johnson was no dummy. He knew that his style was unique. He knew that the world was full of head cutters and thieves and he wasn't about to let two white engineers he barely knew

have a front-road lesson on how to play guitar like Robert Johnson. His highly effective and unique guitar playing technique would remain a secret even if the white men were capturing his music on record. The move had the added but unintended benefit of altering Robert's sound, facing away from the engineers and directly toward the corner of the hotel room, The sound he generated bounced off of the hotels to adjoining hotel room walls to create a bigger, more dynamic sound. The results speak for themselves. Robert Johnson's first recordings are some of the most compelling recordings of all time.

Kind-hearted woman blues, terraplane blues, last fair deal gone down. These songs, along with all of Robert Johnson's songs, defy logic. They drive, they groove, they hurt. they inspire, and their construction is nearly impossible to visualize. How is one man making all of that glorious sound at the same time, in one sitting, with one instrument? You can't understand it, but at the same time, you know it's the coolest thing you've ever heard. Robert Johnson's songs deliver you from wherever it is you're stuck.

They unlock another place in time to which you believe only you have entry. As a teenager, when I first heard Robert Johnson, I felt like I was being led in on a secret. Something dangerous, something no one else I knew could possibly understand. His music makes you feel singular. It's that same feeling you get when you're being whisked backstage at a show under the envious eyes of all the other concert goers. Robert Johnson's songs are a ticket in first class, an invitation to an unknown back room

where only the most interesting people hang out, and only the most exciting things happen. This feeling of being led in on something special is perhaps what contributed to the success of these songs, Maybe, I don't know. All I do know is that immediately upon their release, Robert Johnson's music made an impact, and in the pre-pop-star days of the music business,

they made Robert Johnson a success. The relative fame suited him. The notoriety hardened him. Finally, into the professional musician he always knew he was destined to become. Any remaining ideas about family or some other sort of more traditional life involving someone else's crops in a plow were D-E-A-D dead by the time Robert Johnson turned 25 years old

and released his first recordings in January of 1937. Robert traveled more, beyond the south, all the way to Chicago and New York. His reputation preceded him everywhere he went. He weaponized his music. On stage, he killed. Offstage, he took whatever spoils, usually in the form of women that he could. Robert embraced the image of the bad man, the lowdown blues man. Columbia Records John Hammond II took an interest in Robert

and wrote under a pseudonym that he was more authentic than fame blues musician and ex-convict, Ledmilly, who, in Hammond's estimation, was now nothing more than a poser, just an Alan Lomack's fabrication compared to the authenticity of Robert Johnson. Robert could only grin. The interest in Robert from Hammond and Columbia, the opportunity that represented was almost a blur. Everything just seemed to be moving so fast. And like the many trains he hopped,

1937 was full steam ahead for Robert Johnson. Doubling down on what got him to this point, himself, low down, crude, increasingly drunk and violent. Robert kept up his crusade against God, cursing him out in the company of his friends with or without the drink, so much so that Equatences increasingly stopped, hanging around with Robert for fear they'd be struck down. And Robert also kept up his pursuit of women on a nightly basis.

And more often than not these days, with married women. Robert had no respect for the ring. No respect for God's vows. God had given him nothing. Robert Johnson, oh God, not a single thing. No. Robert Johnson had another debt entirely. For the upstanding citizens of Baptistown in Greenwood, Mississippi,

to even hear the blues whistled was enough to make them shut their windows and lock their doors. The sight of the notorious bluesman Robert Johnson strolling down their main street was enough to cause legitimate shock in some. Robert knew what he was looking for. The little girl. Tush Hogg's daughter. Robert tracked her down at the Three Forks Duke out by, the crossing of highways 82 and 49. And when he did, Robert learned that Tush Hoggs baby girl

had nothing on the older, more experienced Beatrice, the wife of a three-forks bartender. The fact that Beatrice was married mattered none to Robert. He quickly turned on the charm, used all his powers to seduce Beatrice, and it worked. Robert set up shop in Greenwood, performing at the Three Forks in the evening and stealing away to shack up with Beatrice during the day. Rumors spread. The bluesman is up to no good. Beatrice is shaming her husband. Robert Johnson got the devil in him. She ain't ever going to show her face in church again. Old Robert Johnson is a bad, bad man. It wasn't long before the rumors reached Beatrice's husband, a man who went by the name R.D. R.D. played it cool, like a snake lying in the cut, biting his time, ready to attack at the most opportune moment, when his victim least expected it.

when his victim was at his most comfortable. And that's precisely where Robert Johnson was at the moment on August 13, 1938. On stage, as comfortable a place for the musician as anywhere else on God's Green Earth. Made even more comfortable by the steady flow of drinks Beatrice was bringing him during his set. While Robert performed at the juke and the crowd jumped, R.D. slung drinks from behind the bar, including to his wife Beatrice, who steadily served them to her not-so-secret lover, the bluesman, on stage, Robert Johnson. Brother Robert nor Beatrice were wise to the vengeful intentions of the man behind the bar.

At around 11 p.m., with Robert Johnson lit up in the head and lighting up the audience in the juke, R.D. gave Beatrice another jar of corn liquor to give to Robert. And prior to doing so, R.D. dissolved in the liquor numerous mothballs containing the tasteless, colorless and odorless poison naphthalene. Robert drank the poison concoction between sets and immediately felt something go terribly wrong. He slouched in his chair. The room bent.

The audience is pleased for him to continue to perform felt deaf on his ears. His stomach contorted with sharp pain. The last thing he remembered was sliding out of his chair and on to the floor of the duke. Robert Johnson woke up in his hotel room and vomited violently, howling like one of those furious hellhounds in pain, coughing up blood,

spitting up bits of his torn esophagus, hemorrhaging over and over again until finally giving into the pain and giving into this world completely. Robert Johnson died alone with himself, with the devil. Robert Johnson did not die because of the devil. There was no Faustian bargain that felled the bluesman as the famous myth goes, that Robert Johnson died at the age of 27 because he made a deal with the devil on that demonic debt at Comteau. No. Robert Johnson did not make a deal with the devil. Robert Johnson was the devil. Both options are equally ridiculous and both options are equally unprovable. Sure, you can say that there was no way a blues player was evil incarnate. Satan himself here on earth, but you can't actually prove that he wasn't either.

From a young age, Robert Johnson spurned church, hated religion, cursed God. He lived unscrupulously, coveted women regardless of their age or marital status, wrote and sang songs filled with voodoo imagery with particular homage paid to Satan over and over again. And most famously, Robert Johnson had an unexplainable, otherworldly talent that his mortal contemporaries couldn't come close to replicate. a talent that to this day, nearly 100 years later, is as spellbinding as it was when it first came to be. On the other hand, maybe Robert Johnson wasn't the actual devil, but instead, maybe the devil was just always there with Robert Johnson. There in the stories about his kin,

in the briar with his mother's first husband, on the end of a blade, on the end of the hanging rope, on the hot breath of the hellhounds. There in the plantation fields right, hiding hide most on the sharecropper's plow. There, in that little girl's smile, on the lips of her judgmental parents, there out in the cemetery wind, under the crossroads moon, out on the rails and in the jukes, on the face of Sunhouse's head, at the end of a Texas cop's billy club, in the dark corner of a San Antonio hotel room, on the minds of opportunistic record men, in his lyrics, between the thighs of a married juke joint bartender's woman.

And finally, at the bottom of a poison jar of corn liquor. As far as Robert Johnson's life was concerned, the devil was everywhere. And myth, or no myth, the devil's outsized influence most definitely brought upon the immensely talented blues men's early demise. And that is a disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All-Axist member, thank you for supporting the show.

We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelandpod.com slash membership. Members can listen to every episode of Disgraceland ad-free. Plus, you'll get one brand new exclusive episode every month. weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio collections, and early access to merchandise and events. Visit disgracelampod.com slash membership for details. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook at DisgracelamPod, and on YouTube at YouTube.com slash at disgracelandpod.

Rockerola.