WEBVTT - Season 09 Episode 10: Me and the Devil Blues 0:00:00.080 --> 0:00:03.080 Hello, It's Richard mcclinsmith here with a couple of announcements. 0:00:03.279 --> 0:00:06.240 After the amazing success of last year's Crimewave at Sea, 0:00:06.440 --> 0:00:08.799 I'm excited to announce that we'll be setting Saiale again 0:00:08.880 --> 0:00:12.039 next year February eighth to the twelfth of twenty twenty seven. 0:00:12.400 --> 0:00:14.239 I can't tell you enough how much I enjoyed this 0:00:14.360 --> 0:00:16.959 last year, and I'll be participating fully next year with 0:00:17.040 --> 0:00:20.120 the show. So he fancies some spooky true crime on 0:00:20.160 --> 0:00:22.880 a cruise round the Bahamas, This one's for you. Go 0:00:23.000 --> 0:00:26.200 to Crimewave at seed dot com for more information. Tickets 0:00:26.200 --> 0:00:29.080 will go on sale on Friday, February thirteenth, so listen 0:00:29.120 --> 0:00:31.760 out for more announcements there. Further to that, I'm also 0:00:31.840 --> 0:00:34.760 hugely excited to say I'll be attending crime Con US 0:00:34.800 --> 0:00:37.440 and UK this year. So for the US we're going 0:00:37.479 --> 0:00:39.520 to be in Las Vegas twenty eight to the thirty 0:00:39.520 --> 0:00:42.040 first of May. Go to Crimecon dot com to buy 0:00:42.040 --> 0:00:45.240 ticket and use voucher code unexplained for ten percent off. 0:00:45.440 --> 0:00:47.680 And in the UK we'll be in Birmingham on April 0:00:47.720 --> 0:00:50.160 the twenty fifth and London on the third and fourth 0:00:50.159 --> 0:00:52.960 of October. These are all really special events that do 0:00:53.000 --> 0:00:55.440 a lot to put survivors of crime front and center, 0:00:55.640 --> 0:00:58.600 and I'm really honored to be taking part for crime CONUK. 0:00:58.840 --> 0:01:01.920 Go to Crimecon dot com UK to buy tickets and 0:01:02.000 --> 0:01:05.319 again use voucher code Unexplained for ten percent off. You 0:01:05.360 --> 0:01:07.680 can also find all the links on my website at 0:01:07.760 --> 0:01:23.880 Unexplained podcast dot com. Forward slash events. In British society, 0:01:23.880 --> 0:01:26.480 at least, we tend to prefer that people wear their 0:01:26.520 --> 0:01:30.440 talent lightly. But such attitudes tend to come with a 0:01:30.480 --> 0:01:35.440 few caveats, largely to do with class and race. For 0:01:35.480 --> 0:01:37.560 those that we might consider to be in the higher 0:01:37.600 --> 0:01:40.720 reaches of the British class system, it's all very well 0:01:40.760 --> 0:01:44.760 speaking quietly about your achievements when you already occupy a 0:01:44.800 --> 0:01:48.880 comfortable and privileged place in society. There is no need 0:01:48.920 --> 0:01:52.200 to boast, for example, because your place, as it were, 0:01:52.840 --> 0:01:56.960 is self evident and secure. However, should you dare to 0:01:57.000 --> 0:02:01.120 come from a position of decidedly less established privilege when 0:02:01.160 --> 0:02:04.920 your talent starts to attract fame and attention, then be 0:02:05.040 --> 0:02:07.920 prepared to do battle with the court of public opinion 0:02:08.280 --> 0:02:11.000 at the first sign of weakness, or the moment you 0:02:11.040 --> 0:02:15.480 commit a supposed social faux pas. We see it every 0:02:15.480 --> 0:02:19.040 time we open a tabloid newspaper in the gossip columns 0:02:19.080 --> 0:02:24.040 detailing the latest celebrity mishap. More often than not, it's 0:02:24.080 --> 0:02:27.640 hard not to sense the quiet implication that the subject 0:02:27.680 --> 0:02:31.000 has committed the ultimate sin of forgetting where they came 0:02:31.000 --> 0:02:36.000 from or failing to know their place. Things become even 0:02:36.040 --> 0:02:40.000 more complicated and sinister. Even if we believe talent to 0:02:40.040 --> 0:02:44.440 be something that is not necessarily earned, but bestowed upon us. 0:02:45.520 --> 0:02:48.960 For some talent is simply a gift given to the 0:02:49.000 --> 0:02:53.519 individual by God, and should therefore be encouraged, regardless of 0:02:53.560 --> 0:02:57.600 the perceived merits of the recipient. As the Bible says 0:02:57.880 --> 0:03:01.800 in Matthew five point fifteen, one shouldn't light a lamp 0:03:01.840 --> 0:03:05.399 and hide it under a bushel. Instead, they should put 0:03:05.440 --> 0:03:08.000 it on a stand where it can give light to 0:03:08.120 --> 0:03:11.960 everyone in the house. So what then, of those who 0:03:12.000 --> 0:03:16.600 are prodigiously talented but don't, according to the lords of society, 0:03:17.080 --> 0:03:21.320 fit the mold of someone who should be you're listening 0:03:21.320 --> 0:03:33.040 to unexplained and I'm Richard mc lean smith. It was 0:03:33.080 --> 0:03:36.800 a bright close evening in May nineteen thirty four, and 0:03:36.920 --> 0:03:40.400 the stars were flung out across the purple mississippy sky 0:03:40.920 --> 0:03:45.160 like crumbs on a picnic blanket. The crooked branches of 0:03:45.160 --> 0:03:49.280 the region's tupelow trees stood out like grasping fingers, and 0:03:49.360 --> 0:03:52.880 a full moon bled its terrible light across the dusty trail. 0:03:54.000 --> 0:03:58.080 Unnamed animals could be heard howling into the darkness for miles, 0:03:58.640 --> 0:04:01.320 and through it all came the footsteps of a young 0:04:01.400 --> 0:04:06.119 man plodding tirelessly along the road. Twenty one year old 0:04:06.200 --> 0:04:10.800 Robert Johnson had endured a tumultuous few days. He'd only 0:04:10.840 --> 0:04:13.440 been with his wife, Coletta for less than a year, 0:04:13.880 --> 0:04:16.359 but after it emerged that he'd fathered a child with 0:04:16.440 --> 0:04:20.640 another woman named Vergie May Smith, Johnson was flung out, 0:04:21.760 --> 0:04:24.479 and so he hit the road to follow his dream 0:04:24.720 --> 0:04:29.200 of becoming a traveling bluesman. He'd shown some early promise 0:04:29.560 --> 0:04:33.279 playing at the various shotgun shacks and illicit shabines that 0:04:33.360 --> 0:04:36.919 were dotted around the American South. He could play a 0:04:37.000 --> 0:04:40.840 mean harmonica, but even after a short apprenticeship to the 0:04:40.920 --> 0:04:46.400 master of House Blues azayah Ike Zimmerman, older contemporaries like 0:04:46.600 --> 0:04:50.679 Son House remembered that the young player was hopelessly bad 0:04:50.839 --> 0:04:54.400 when it came to the guitar. Back when he'd been 0:04:54.400 --> 0:04:58.440 apprenticed to Zimmerman, there were whispers that his tutor liked 0:04:58.440 --> 0:05:01.600 to make the young bluesman practice with him in a cemetery. 0:05:02.279 --> 0:05:05.320 He claimed that it was because they'd be undisturbed by 0:05:05.360 --> 0:05:10.800 anyone eavesdropping, But before long, rumors began to circulate that 0:05:10.839 --> 0:05:15.119 the two men were undertaking something far more nefarious under 0:05:15.160 --> 0:05:19.919 cover of darkness, something which involved the supernatural and the 0:05:19.960 --> 0:05:25.800 conferring of knowledge from worlds beyond our own. Blues music 0:05:26.160 --> 0:05:29.160 was already beginning to cross over into the white mainstream 0:05:29.480 --> 0:05:33.400 from a mainly black folk tradition, and Johnson figured that 0:05:33.480 --> 0:05:36.240 if he could master the guitar the way he'd mastered 0:05:36.279 --> 0:05:39.680 everything else, there was a solid opportunity to make his 0:05:39.839 --> 0:05:44.000 fame and fortune. So, with a bindle slung over one shoulder, 0:05:44.480 --> 0:05:47.680 a ten dollar guitar strapped to another, and a single 0:05:47.760 --> 0:05:52.120 dollar bill tucked into his right shoe, Johnson decided to 0:05:52.120 --> 0:05:55.520 make the roughly two day hike from Cohoma County in 0:05:55.560 --> 0:05:59.760 his native Mississippi to the bright lights of Memphis, Tennessee. 0:06:00.960 --> 0:06:04.600 Where and when Johnson appeared next is a matter of 0:06:04.640 --> 0:06:08.440 some conjecture. It might have been at a humble duke 0:06:08.560 --> 0:06:13.160 joint in Memphis, Tennessee, or in Helena, Arkansas. It might 0:06:13.200 --> 0:06:16.240 have been playing for a select few friends and acquaintances 0:06:16.560 --> 0:06:18.960 at a tavern or saloon in one of the many 0:06:19.040 --> 0:06:22.839 one horse towns that Johnson passed through during his years 0:06:22.839 --> 0:06:27.719 of itinerancy. Either way, what we do know from anecdotal 0:06:27.760 --> 0:06:32.440 evidence is that wherever it was, Robert Johnson was said 0:06:32.440 --> 0:06:35.880 to suddenly be possessed of a talent for playing the guitar, 0:06:36.440 --> 0:06:46.640 which he'd never shown before. To many who saw it, 0:06:47.040 --> 0:06:50.159 his fingers seemed to slide across the frets of his 0:06:50.279 --> 0:06:53.719 battered old guitar in a way that suggested they'd been 0:06:53.800 --> 0:06:58.680 possessed by some other agency. And it wasn't only Johnson's 0:06:58.720 --> 0:07:02.640 playing that raised eye. It was the sudden caliber of 0:07:02.680 --> 0:07:07.839 his songs who On November twenty third, nineteen thirty six, 0:07:08.320 --> 0:07:12.200 Robert Johnson appeared at the general store of one Henry 0:07:12.240 --> 0:07:17.040 Columbus Spear, who'd become legendary in the city of Jackson, Mississippi, 0:07:17.280 --> 0:07:19.840 as a talent scout and broker for some of the 0:07:19.880 --> 0:07:23.000 biggest names on the burgeoning blue circuit of the day. 0:07:23.880 --> 0:07:29.520 William Harris, Ishman Bracy, Charlie Patton, and Evans Son House. 0:07:30.800 --> 0:07:36.480 After playing only a few tunes for him, Spear was speechless. Immediately, 0:07:36.840 --> 0:07:40.240 he put Johnson in contact with an English record producer 0:07:40.440 --> 0:07:45.000 named Don Law. Law brought Johnson to Room four one 0:07:45.120 --> 0:07:49.400 four of the gun To Hotel in San Antonio, Texas, 0:07:49.440 --> 0:07:52.760 and for the next two days, the young musician recorded 0:07:52.800 --> 0:07:57.040 several of what would later become absolute standards of the genre. 0:07:58.320 --> 0:08:03.480 I Believe, I'll Dust my Broom, Sweet Home Chicago, Terraplane Blues, 0:08:04.120 --> 0:08:08.320 and an especially mysterious track known as cross Road Blues, 0:08:08.880 --> 0:08:13.560 which Johnson seemed reticent to furnish with any added context 0:08:13.920 --> 0:08:19.720 or illuminating detail. A few months later, in June nineteen 0:08:19.760 --> 0:08:23.960 thirty seven, Law arranged for Johnson to finish his recording 0:08:24.160 --> 0:08:28.120 at a makeshift studio in Dallas. He set down a 0:08:28.200 --> 0:08:31.760 total of twenty nine tracks, most of which seemed to 0:08:31.760 --> 0:08:36.600 emerge perfectly, formed in little more than two or three takes, 0:08:37.200 --> 0:08:41.120 and for someone so inexperienced, Law was a little taken 0:08:41.120 --> 0:08:45.440 aback when Johnson insisted did the songs not exceed three 0:08:45.520 --> 0:08:49.080 minutes in length, almost as though some kind of spell 0:08:49.200 --> 0:08:53.439 might be broken, should he deviate from it, given how 0:08:53.559 --> 0:08:57.560 slap dash the recording process had been. The first single 0:08:57.640 --> 0:09:02.559 released by Johnson, Terraplaine Blue, who did remarkably well commercially, 0:09:03.040 --> 0:09:07.640 selling over ten thousand copies. Most, if not all, of 0:09:07.679 --> 0:09:12.120 the tracks Johnson taped between November nineteen thirty six and 0:09:12.280 --> 0:09:17.200 June nineteen thirty seven still survived today. When a young 0:09:17.280 --> 0:09:21.040 Keith Richards first heard the record in the early nineteen sixties, 0:09:21.360 --> 0:09:24.640 which had been introduced to him by bandmate Brian Jones, 0:09:25.200 --> 0:09:30.200 Richards was spellbound. Richards would later tell interviewers, when I 0:09:30.240 --> 0:09:34.480 first heard it, I said to Brian, who's that Robert Johnson? 0:09:34.559 --> 0:09:38.840 He said, yeah, but who's the other guy playing with him? 0:09:39.080 --> 0:09:42.800 Because I was hearing two guitars, it took me a 0:09:42.840 --> 0:09:45.680 long time to realize he was actually doing. 0:09:45.480 --> 0:09:48.720 It all by himself or was he. 0:09:56.080 --> 0:09:59.760 Tragically, for Robert Johnson, he wouldn't get to enjoy much 0:09:59.760 --> 0:10:02.320 more more of the success that the early sales of 0:10:02.440 --> 0:10:07.960 Terraplane Blues seemed to promise. On August sixteenth, nineteen thirty eight, 0:10:08.520 --> 0:10:12.320 at the age of twenty seven, Johnson died from unknown 0:10:12.360 --> 0:10:17.600 causes near the city of Greenwood, Mississippi. Because his death 0:10:17.720 --> 0:10:20.520 wasn't reported widely at the time, we are left with 0:10:20.640 --> 0:10:25.760 several competing theories as to what actually happened. No formal 0:10:25.800 --> 0:10:29.360 autopsy is known to have taken place, and because of 0:10:29.400 --> 0:10:32.680 the inherent racism of the American South at that time, 0:10:33.160 --> 0:10:36.680 it is likely that the authorities decided instead to make 0:10:36.760 --> 0:10:39.920 do with a pro former examination of his body to 0:10:40.000 --> 0:10:44.640 file the death certificate quickly. Some have speculated that he 0:10:44.720 --> 0:10:50.520 died from complications related to untreated congenital syphilis. Others have 0:10:50.640 --> 0:10:56.320 focused their attention on events immediately preceding Johnson's death, where 0:10:56.360 --> 0:10:58.920 it was known that he'd secured a residency for a 0:10:58.960 --> 0:11:02.360 few weeks at the Three Forks Club in the village 0:11:02.360 --> 0:11:06.920 of Itabina, about fifteen miles west of the city of Greenwood, Proper. 0:11:08.120 --> 0:11:14.079 According to another contemporary of Johnson's, David Honeyboy Edwards, Johnson's 0:11:14.120 --> 0:11:17.840 predilection for the company of women may have contributed to 0:11:17.880 --> 0:11:22.400 his untimely death. In this version of the story, Johnson 0:11:22.520 --> 0:11:25.760 was seen flirting with a married woman one evening after 0:11:25.800 --> 0:11:29.480 finishing one of his sets. The woman had been drinking, 0:11:29.840 --> 0:11:33.080 and in a quiet interlude between songs, a bottle of 0:11:33.120 --> 0:11:38.200 whiskey materialized and was offered up to Johnson, seeing that 0:11:38.240 --> 0:11:41.040 the bottle had been tampered with before it was placed 0:11:41.080 --> 0:11:43.800 in front of him. When Johnson went to take a 0:11:43.800 --> 0:11:47.120 swig from it, the young honey boy Edwards, who claimed 0:11:47.120 --> 0:11:49.320 to be with him at the time, knocked it out 0:11:49.320 --> 0:11:53.080 of his hand. Already drunk from a long night of 0:11:53.160 --> 0:11:58.160 drinking on stage with its band, Johnson admonished Edwards. Then 0:11:58.240 --> 0:12:01.560 the woman's husband is said to have arrived and encouraged 0:12:01.600 --> 0:12:06.640 Johnson to drink. He accepted the invitation graciously and set 0:12:06.679 --> 0:12:11.160 about knocking the whiskey back. Not long afterwards, it said 0:12:11.200 --> 0:12:14.839 that Johnson began to feel ill. He was escorted back 0:12:14.880 --> 0:12:17.200 to his room in the early hours of the morning. 0:12:18.400 --> 0:12:23.600 Over an excruciating three day period, Johnson's condition worsened before 0:12:23.640 --> 0:12:27.240 he finally died in a convulsive state of severe pain, 0:12:27.640 --> 0:12:33.720 having supposedly been poisoned by the jealous husband. Many years later, 0:12:34.240 --> 0:12:39.360 American musicologist and folklorist Robert mac McCormick claimed to have 0:12:39.440 --> 0:12:43.000 tracked down the elusive husband and elicited a confession from 0:12:43.080 --> 0:12:48.040 him that he poisoned Robert Johnson with strychnine. He refused 0:12:48.040 --> 0:12:51.160 to reveal the man's name, saying that the confession was 0:12:51.200 --> 0:12:54.679 given to him in confidence. But the mystery of Robert 0:12:54.760 --> 0:13:06.160 Johnson's tumultuous life and death didn't end there. I went 0:13:06.240 --> 0:13:10.440 to the cross road, fell down on my knees, asked 0:13:10.520 --> 0:13:15.240 the Lord above, have mercy now, save poor Bob if 0:13:15.280 --> 0:13:20.240 you please, sings Robert Johnson on the startling cross Road Blues. 0:13:21.160 --> 0:13:24.120 But in the wake of his untimely death, some began 0:13:24.160 --> 0:13:27.080 to wonder if, instead of the Lord, it was some 0:13:27.120 --> 0:13:30.800 one else entirely whom Robert Johnson had pleaded to for 0:13:30.920 --> 0:13:35.600 help while on his knees at those cross roads, had 0:13:35.800 --> 0:13:39.840 as some began to wonder, he died so young because 0:13:39.880 --> 0:13:43.040 that was the price of some kind of bargain that 0:13:43.120 --> 0:13:48.680 he'd made. A few years after Johnson's death, a strange 0:13:48.679 --> 0:13:52.600 story began to take shape regarding an apparent detour that 0:13:52.720 --> 0:13:56.000 Johnson took after he set out all those years ago 0:13:56.200 --> 0:13:59.600 as a budding but limited twenty one year old musician 0:14:00.080 --> 0:14:05.400 to find fame and fortune in Memphis, Tennessee. Some say 0:14:05.440 --> 0:14:09.000 it was his old mentor, Ike Zimmerman, who gave him 0:14:09.040 --> 0:14:13.040 the instructions. On the next full moon, he was to 0:14:13.080 --> 0:14:16.600 head out to the crossroads near the Dockery plantation in 0:14:16.640 --> 0:14:20.920 the heart of the Mississippi Delta. Whereat midnight a visitor 0:14:20.960 --> 0:14:24.480 would appear that would finally help him realize his ambition 0:14:24.880 --> 0:14:30.080 to become the greatest blues player of his generation. And 0:14:30.160 --> 0:14:33.840 perhaps Johnson did just that, and made his way out 0:14:34.040 --> 0:14:38.880 to that perfectly ordinary, nondescript crossroads at the next full moon, 0:14:39.400 --> 0:14:43.040 only to find suddenly, at the stroke of midnight that 0:14:43.160 --> 0:14:46.360 all the nocturnal ambients that had so filled the air, 0:14:47.160 --> 0:14:54.080 the cicadas, singing, owl's hooting, the wind blowing, had disappeared completely. 0:14:55.600 --> 0:14:58.600 Perhaps it was then that the figure he'd been told 0:14:58.640 --> 0:15:02.840 to expect made him self known, a peculiar looking man 0:15:03.200 --> 0:15:07.880 dressed smartly, put in unusual clothes for the age, who, 0:15:08.120 --> 0:15:11.600 on seeing Johnson with his guitar, offered to show him 0:15:11.640 --> 0:15:14.880 some licks of his own, before handing the instrument back 0:15:14.960 --> 0:15:19.200 to the young man with a wry smile, And perhaps 0:15:19.440 --> 0:15:22.200 on taking it from him, it was only then that 0:15:22.320 --> 0:15:27.400 Johnson noticed how peculiarly long the man's fingers were, or 0:15:27.440 --> 0:15:30.520 the strange fire that seemed to glow in his eyes. 0:15:31.640 --> 0:15:35.240 And maybe Johnson asked the strange man to teach him 0:15:35.280 --> 0:15:38.840 everything he knew, to which the man said he would 0:15:38.880 --> 0:15:43.200 be more than happy to on one condition that Johnson 0:15:43.440 --> 0:15:47.760 sell him his soul in return, And perhaps it was 0:15:47.840 --> 0:16:02.840 then that Johnson happily signed it away. Many will be 0:16:02.920 --> 0:16:08.320 familiar with Christopher Marlow's classic Elizabethan drama Doctor Faustus, in 0:16:08.320 --> 0:16:11.440 which the eponymous Faustus sells his soul to the devil 0:16:11.680 --> 0:16:15.680 in return for knowledge and power. However, the notion of 0:16:15.720 --> 0:16:19.640 the devil's bargain or Faustian pact as its roots in 0:16:19.760 --> 0:16:25.160 much earlier cautionary tales about mortals making unwise covenants with 0:16:25.320 --> 0:16:30.360 divine beings. Perhaps the most famous example is the Greek 0:16:30.400 --> 0:16:34.440 myth of Orpheus and his Descent into the underworld, where 0:16:34.440 --> 0:16:37.640 the hero makes an agreement to retrieve the soul of 0:16:37.680 --> 0:16:41.280 his love Eurydicy, on condition that he doesn't once look 0:16:41.360 --> 0:16:45.040 behind him as they ascend back into the mortal realm. 0:16:45.400 --> 0:16:49.480 But as Orpheus approaches the surface, he is suddenly overcome 0:16:49.560 --> 0:16:53.080 with doubt, turning at last only to see the soul 0:16:53.160 --> 0:16:57.840 of his beloved being pulled away from him forever. But 0:16:57.960 --> 0:17:01.800 what if there were some truth to the idea. Perhaps 0:17:01.840 --> 0:17:05.080 the most well known historical example of a deal with 0:17:05.160 --> 0:17:09.080 the devil is the case of Bavarian born seventeenth century 0:17:09.119 --> 0:17:13.480 painter Johann Christoph Heitzmann, who claimed to have signed not one, 0:17:13.560 --> 0:17:17.120 but two pats for his soul in sixteen sixty eight. 0:17:18.400 --> 0:17:21.879 After Heitzman became an orphan and was left destitute at 0:17:21.920 --> 0:17:25.280 the age of seventeen, he claimed that the devil appeared 0:17:25.280 --> 0:17:28.200 to him and offered him a contract signed in ink 0:17:28.760 --> 0:17:34.520 and another signed in his own blunt. For nine agonizing years, 0:17:35.000 --> 0:17:40.520 Heisman apparently subsisted as the devil's bounden son. When the 0:17:40.600 --> 0:17:44.640 date finally arrived in sixteen seventy seven for the relinquishment 0:17:44.720 --> 0:17:48.320 of his soul, Heitzmann took sanctuary at a monastery in 0:17:48.400 --> 0:17:53.399 the Austrian town of Mariotsel. There a series of exorcisms 0:17:53.600 --> 0:17:56.639 was said to have been performed, culminating in the devil 0:17:56.800 --> 0:18:00.840 giving back the contracts and Heightsman taking vow to join 0:18:00.920 --> 0:18:05.200 the brotherhood of Saint John of God. The artist would 0:18:05.200 --> 0:18:09.520 eventually die in seventeen hundred, leaving behind a famous triptych 0:18:09.840 --> 0:18:14.680 depicting his ordeal. Of course, we only have Heitzman's word 0:18:14.800 --> 0:18:16.960 to take on this, and even if we are to 0:18:17.000 --> 0:18:20.439 believe that such a fabulous story played out. There are 0:18:20.480 --> 0:18:23.800 a number of other explanations for what actually took place. 0:18:24.920 --> 0:18:29.040 Sigmund Freud revisited the case in nineteen twenty three, and 0:18:29.119 --> 0:18:32.679 it was his belief that what Heisman experienced was a 0:18:32.720 --> 0:18:38.199 lifelong affliction with what he termed demonological neurosis or an 0:18:38.280 --> 0:18:43.560 advanced form of schizophrenia in today's modern parlance. But there 0:18:43.560 --> 0:18:46.800 are more modern examples of the Faustian pact at work, 0:18:47.080 --> 0:18:51.520 which defy and even supersede the publication of Freud's study 0:18:51.600 --> 0:18:55.560 into Heizmann. We are not so sophisticated that we have 0:18:55.640 --> 0:18:59.760 jettisoned the old mythologies entirely. They still linger in the 0:18:59.800 --> 0:19:03.280 high way. We speak about talented people who have flown 0:19:03.359 --> 0:19:06.760 too close to the sun and burned out before their time. 0:19:07.680 --> 0:19:10.600 It is no accident, for example, that rock and roll 0:19:10.840 --> 0:19:14.080 is still referred to as the Devil's music, or that 0:19:14.240 --> 0:19:16.680 we link the term so closely with the so called 0:19:16.760 --> 0:19:20.920 twenty seven Club, a term linking musicians as diverse as 0:19:21.000 --> 0:19:26.960 Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, and Amy Winehouse, 0:19:27.920 --> 0:19:30.760 all of whom died at the tender age of twenty 0:19:30.840 --> 0:19:43.120 seven and first among them was Robert Johnson. Blues historian 0:19:43.280 --> 0:19:46.560 Pete Welding had the opportunity to sit down with one 0:19:46.560 --> 0:19:51.000 of Johnson's contemporaries, Son House, for a Rolling Stone profile 0:19:51.119 --> 0:19:55.120 in nineteen sixty six. When he asked the elderly legend 0:19:55.359 --> 0:19:59.240 about his brief association with the traveling bluesman during the 0:19:59.280 --> 0:20:03.119 depression year of the nineteen thirties, House seemed to have 0:20:03.280 --> 0:20:07.000 no doubt where the talent had come from. He sold 0:20:07.040 --> 0:20:10.000 his soul to the devil to play like that, House 0:20:10.040 --> 0:20:14.520 said to Welding, to his mind and many others. It 0:20:14.600 --> 0:20:18.159 was the only explanation for Johnson's sudden mastery over the 0:20:18.240 --> 0:20:22.120 sliding blues scale, which just a short time before had 0:20:22.119 --> 0:20:26.199 eluded him so perceptibly. Perhaps there was an element of 0:20:26.240 --> 0:20:30.280 professional jealousy that hot young players from the UK like 0:20:30.440 --> 0:20:34.560 John Mayle, Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck were beginning to 0:20:34.560 --> 0:20:38.480 tout Johnson as an influence. Indeed, the fact that the 0:20:38.640 --> 0:20:42.080 likes of House had struggled for decades to support themselves, 0:20:42.320 --> 0:20:46.080 only for mainstream white audiences to suddenly pay attention to 0:20:46.119 --> 0:20:49.080 the art form after it had been adapted by men 0:20:49.119 --> 0:20:51.919 who looked like them must have been a source of 0:20:51.960 --> 0:20:55.959 great frustration. Now there was an opportunity to have some 0:20:56.040 --> 0:20:59.960 fun with Johnson's legend. He had, after all, left pressure 0:21:00.200 --> 0:21:03.520 little behind in terms of his history, and it's plausible 0:21:03.640 --> 0:21:05.960 to think that the likes of House was putting his 0:21:06.080 --> 0:21:09.320 tongue firmly in his cheek at his gullible new white 0:21:09.359 --> 0:21:14.920 audience's expense. Whatever the truth of House's intentions may have been, 0:21:15.320 --> 0:21:17.000 there is no doubt that it must have come as 0:21:17.040 --> 0:21:20.679 a shock when the relatively unknown Johnson suddenly made his 0:21:20.760 --> 0:21:25.359 appearance as a fully fledged, accomplished blues guitarist sometime in 0:21:25.480 --> 0:21:29.840 nineteen thirty four or thirty five. We can almost imagine 0:21:30.000 --> 0:21:33.760 Son House sitting there nursing a glass of tepid beer, 0:21:34.200 --> 0:21:38.080 smoke swirling around his weather beaten face in an old 0:21:38.200 --> 0:21:43.120 shotgun shack as the evening kicks into gear. Perhaps he's 0:21:43.160 --> 0:21:45.800 taken his woman out for the evening, the two of 0:21:45.840 --> 0:21:49.160 them just waiting for the next high energy jive to begin. 0:21:50.160 --> 0:21:53.280 A hush descends over the room as a young Robert 0:21:53.359 --> 0:21:57.520 Johnson shuffles onto the clapboard platform and takes his seat 0:21:57.600 --> 0:22:01.040 on the stool. Then he takes his guitar out of 0:22:01.080 --> 0:22:05.639 its tattered wooden case, leans forward toward the microphone and 0:22:05.720 --> 0:22:08.440 starts to play a set of which no one has 0:22:08.520 --> 0:22:19.040 ever heard the like before. Given that so little about 0:22:19.119 --> 0:22:23.399 Johnson's actual life was committed to the written record, getting 0:22:23.400 --> 0:22:26.080 to the bottom of whether he truly learned his trade 0:22:26.320 --> 0:22:28.480 at the lap of a mentor who taught him in 0:22:28.520 --> 0:22:31.320 a graveyard, or whether he sold his soul to the 0:22:31.359 --> 0:22:35.520 devil at midnight on a barren crossroads near Docking, Mississippi, 0:22:35.960 --> 0:22:38.720 or whether he really was murdered by a jealous husband 0:22:39.240 --> 0:22:43.120 is nihon impossible. What we do know is that its 0:22:43.119 --> 0:22:46.320 imprint can be found on so much, from delta blues 0:22:46.400 --> 0:22:49.879 inflected records like the Rolling Stones is Let It Bleed 0:22:50.200 --> 0:22:54.280 and Exile on Main Street, to less obviously conventional modes 0:22:54.320 --> 0:22:57.240 of influence, like how it is now a standard that 0:22:57.320 --> 0:23:01.119 a pop song should be only three minutes long. And 0:23:01.200 --> 0:23:05.240 although there is something undoubtedly appealing about referring to rock 0:23:05.320 --> 0:23:08.359 and roll, both to those who play it and those 0:23:08.400 --> 0:23:12.320 who listen to it as the Devil's music, with Johnson 0:23:12.640 --> 0:23:15.800 its devil son in chief, it's worth pausing for a 0:23:15.840 --> 0:23:20.040 moment to think about what that idea really does. Because 0:23:20.040 --> 0:23:23.080 the myth of Robert Johnson's selling his Soul was not 0:23:23.240 --> 0:23:28.280 something that meaningfully followed him in life. He played mostly 0:23:28.320 --> 0:23:33.440 in black establishments, places already viewed with suspicion by churches 0:23:33.520 --> 0:23:38.479 and white authorities alike. To many in mainstream America, blues 0:23:38.560 --> 0:23:44.280 musicians were considered itinerant, immoral, and dangerous. The music itself 0:23:44.560 --> 0:23:48.760 was already seen as transgressive. The devil didn't need to 0:23:48.760 --> 0:23:53.280 be invoked to make it suspect. But after Johnson's death, 0:23:53.680 --> 0:23:57.359 the story takes on a different function. It begins to 0:23:57.400 --> 0:24:01.720 do a kind of cultural work. The myth reinforces something 0:24:02.040 --> 0:24:06.400 that many people were already comfortable believing, that this kind 0:24:06.440 --> 0:24:10.080 of brilliance emerging from a poor young black man in 0:24:10.160 --> 0:24:15.840 the Jim Crow South couldn't possibly be the product of discipline, intellect, 0:24:16.119 --> 0:24:21.320 or intention. It had to come from somewhere else, somewhere darker, 0:24:22.000 --> 0:24:26.399 somewhere other. In some ways, you might say, the legend 0:24:26.440 --> 0:24:31.280 doesn't elevate Johnson, it diminishes him. It strips away the 0:24:31.280 --> 0:24:36.080 hours of practice, the mentorship, the travel, the listening, the 0:24:36.119 --> 0:24:41.040 pioneering innovation of combining various musical forms. All of that 0:24:41.280 --> 0:24:45.640 is replaced with a supernatural shortcut. His talent was no 0:24:45.680 --> 0:24:49.879 longer earned, it was given to him, and maybe for 0:24:49.960 --> 0:24:55.080 white audiences encountering Johnson's music decades later, this framing was 0:24:55.119 --> 0:24:59.480 often easier to accept, not through conscious malice, but through 0:24:59.560 --> 0:25:06.280 something slipperia and more ingrained. It preserved hierarchy, It exoticized 0:25:06.359 --> 0:25:11.720 black creativity. It cast the blues as primal, mystical, and dangerous, 0:25:12.000 --> 0:25:17.040 as opposed to modern, innovative and authored. In all likelihood, 0:25:17.480 --> 0:25:21.560 although he clearly had an aptitude for it, Johnson simply 0:25:21.680 --> 0:25:27.600 practiced obsessively. He traveled constantly, absorbing the different styles of 0:25:27.640 --> 0:25:32.000 different regions. He learned from older musicians like Iike Zimmermon. 0:25:32.600 --> 0:25:37.280 He innovated with structure and narrative lyricism. It was genius 0:25:37.640 --> 0:25:42.560 and in that sense perhaps even supernatural. But it isn't magic. 0:25:43.359 --> 0:25:48.960 Its work well, that's my two cents. At least in truth. 0:25:49.280 --> 0:25:53.520 We'll never know for sure exactly how Robert Johnson came 0:25:53.560 --> 0:25:57.000 to possess the talent he did, or indeed why he 0:25:57.119 --> 0:26:01.280 died at such a tragically young age. That will remain 0:26:01.400 --> 0:26:12.399 forever tantalizingly unexplained. This episode was written by James Connor 0:26:12.440 --> 0:26:17.000 Patterson and Richard mc clean Smith. Thank you as ever 0:26:17.119 --> 0:26:21.240 for listening Unexplained as an Avy Club Productions podcast created 0:26:21.280 --> 0:26:24.879 by Richard mc lean Smith. All other elements of the podcast, 0:26:24.960 --> 0:26:28.679 including the music, are also produced by me Richard mc 0:26:28.720 --> 0:26:33.000 clan smith. Unexplained The book and audiobook is now available 0:26:33.040 --> 0:26:37.080 to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, 0:26:37.440 --> 0:26:41.520 Waterstones and other bookstores. Please subscribe to and rate the 0:26:41.560 --> 0:26:44.720 show wherever you get your podcasts, and feel free to 0:26:44.720 --> 0:26:47.560 get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the 0:26:47.600 --> 0:26:50.320 stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an 0:26:50.359 --> 0:26:53.200 explanation or a story of your own you'd like to share. 0:26:53.720 --> 0:26:56.760 You can find out more at Unexplained podcast dot com 0:26:56.840 --> 0:26:59.760 and reach us online through X and Blue Sky, That 0:27:00.040 --> 0:27:04.879 Unexplained Pod and Facebook at Facebook dot com, Forward Slash, 0:27:05.160 --> 0:29:00.600 Unexplained Podcast. 0:28:05.680 --> 0:28:05.760 A. 0:28:17.640 --> 0:29:04.800 Recry It Came, and. 0:28:58.320 --> 0:29:24.360 And any More Mone Blow an 0:30:01.880 --> 0:30:19.280 Assassssssssss