Speaker 1: Hello, It's Richard mcclinsmith here with a couple of announcements.
Speaker 1: After the amazing success of last year's Crimewave at Sea,
Speaker 1: I'm excited to announce that we'll be setting Saiale again
Speaker 1: next year February eighth to the twelfth of twenty twenty seven.
Speaker 1: I can't tell you enough how much I enjoyed this
Speaker 1: last year, and I'll be participating fully next year with
Speaker 1: the show. So he fancies some spooky true crime on
Speaker 1: a cruise round the Bahamas, This one's for you. Go
Speaker 1: to Crimewave at seed dot com for more information. Tickets
Speaker 1: will go on sale on Friday, February thirteenth, so listen
Speaker 1: out for more announcements there. Further to that, I'm also
Speaker 1: hugely excited to say I'll be attending crime Con US
Speaker 1: and UK this year. So for the US we're going
Speaker 1: to be in Las Vegas twenty eight to the thirty
Speaker 1: first of May. Go to Crimecon dot com to buy
Speaker 1: ticket and use voucher code unexplained for ten percent off.
Speaker 1: And in the UK we'll be in Birmingham on April
Speaker 1: the twenty fifth and London on the third and fourth
Speaker 1: of October. These are all really special events that do
Speaker 1: a lot to put survivors of crime front and center,
Speaker 1: and I'm really honored to be taking part for crime CONUK.
Speaker 1: Go to Crimecon dot com UK to buy tickets and
Speaker 1: again use voucher code Unexplained for ten percent off. You
Speaker 1: can also find all the links on my website at
Speaker 1: Unexplained podcast dot com. Forward slash events. In British society,
Speaker 1: at least, we tend to prefer that people wear their
Speaker 1: talent lightly. But such attitudes tend to come with a
Speaker 1: few caveats, largely to do with class and race. For
Speaker 1: those that we might consider to be in the higher
Speaker 1: reaches of the British class system, it's all very well
Speaker 1: speaking quietly about your achievements when you already occupy a
Speaker 1: comfortable and privileged place in society. There is no need
Speaker 1: to boast, for example, because your place, as it were,
Speaker 1: is self evident and secure. However, should you dare to
Speaker 1: come from a position of decidedly less established privilege when
Speaker 1: your talent starts to attract fame and attention, then be
Speaker 1: prepared to do battle with the court of public opinion
Speaker 1: at the first sign of weakness, or the moment you
Speaker 1: commit a supposed social faux pas. We see it every
Speaker 1: time we open a tabloid newspaper in the gossip columns
Speaker 1: detailing the latest celebrity mishap. More often than not, it's
Speaker 1: hard not to sense the quiet implication that the subject
Speaker 1: has committed the ultimate sin of forgetting where they came
Speaker 1: from or failing to know their place. Things become even
Speaker 1: more complicated and sinister. Even if we believe talent to
Speaker 1: be something that is not necessarily earned, but bestowed upon us.
Speaker 1: For some talent is simply a gift given to the
Speaker 1: individual by God, and should therefore be encouraged, regardless of
Speaker 1: the perceived merits of the recipient. As the Bible says
Speaker 1: in Matthew five point fifteen, one shouldn't light a lamp
Speaker 1: and hide it under a bushel. Instead, they should put
Speaker 1: it on a stand where it can give light to
Speaker 1: everyone in the house. So what then, of those who
Speaker 1: are prodigiously talented but don't, according to the lords of society,
Speaker 1: fit the mold of someone who should be you're listening
Speaker 1: to unexplained and I'm Richard mc lean smith. It was
Speaker 1: a bright close evening in May nineteen thirty four, and
Speaker 1: the stars were flung out across the purple mississippy sky
Speaker 1: like crumbs on a picnic blanket. The crooked branches of
Speaker 1: the region's tupelow trees stood out like grasping fingers, and
Speaker 1: a full moon bled its terrible light across the dusty trail.
Speaker 1: Unnamed animals could be heard howling into the darkness for miles,
Speaker 1: and through it all came the footsteps of a young
Speaker 1: man plodding tirelessly along the road. Twenty one year old
Speaker 1: Robert Johnson had endured a tumultuous few days. He'd only
Speaker 1: been with his wife, Coletta for less than a year,
Speaker 1: but after it emerged that he'd fathered a child with
Speaker 1: another woman named Vergie May Smith, Johnson was flung out,
Speaker 1: and so he hit the road to follow his dream
Speaker 1: of becoming a traveling bluesman. He'd shown some early promise
Speaker 1: playing at the various shotgun shacks and illicit shabines that
Speaker 1: were dotted around the American South. He could play a
Speaker 1: mean harmonica, but even after a short apprenticeship to the
Speaker 1: master of House Blues azayah Ike Zimmerman, older contemporaries like
Speaker 1: Son House remembered that the young player was hopelessly bad
Speaker 1: when it came to the guitar. Back when he'd been
Speaker 1: apprenticed to Zimmerman, there were whispers that his tutor liked
Speaker 1: to make the young bluesman practice with him in a cemetery.
Speaker 1: He claimed that it was because they'd be undisturbed by
Speaker 1: anyone eavesdropping, But before long, rumors began to circulate that
Speaker 1: the two men were undertaking something far more nefarious under
Speaker 1: cover of darkness, something which involved the supernatural and the
Speaker 1: conferring of knowledge from worlds beyond our own. Blues music
Speaker 1: was already beginning to cross over into the white mainstream
Speaker 1: from a mainly black folk tradition, and Johnson figured that
Speaker 1: if he could master the guitar the way he'd mastered
Speaker 1: everything else, there was a solid opportunity to make his
Speaker 1: fame and fortune. So, with a bindle slung over one shoulder,
Speaker 1: a ten dollar guitar strapped to another, and a single
Speaker 1: dollar bill tucked into his right shoe, Johnson decided to
Speaker 1: make the roughly two day hike from Cohoma County in
Speaker 1: his native Mississippi to the bright lights of Memphis, Tennessee.
Speaker 1: Where and when Johnson appeared next is a matter of
Speaker 1: some conjecture. It might have been at a humble duke
Speaker 1: joint in Memphis, Tennessee, or in Helena, Arkansas. It might
Speaker 1: have been playing for a select few friends and acquaintances
Speaker 1: at a tavern or saloon in one of the many
Speaker 1: one horse towns that Johnson passed through during his years
Speaker 1: of itinerancy. Either way, what we do know from anecdotal
Speaker 1: evidence is that wherever it was, Robert Johnson was said
Speaker 1: to suddenly be possessed of a talent for playing the guitar,
Speaker 1: which he'd never shown before. To many who saw it,
Speaker 1: his fingers seemed to slide across the frets of his
Speaker 1: battered old guitar in a way that suggested they'd been
Speaker 1: possessed by some other agency. And it wasn't only Johnson's
Speaker 1: playing that raised eye. It was the sudden caliber of
Speaker 1: his songs who On November twenty third, nineteen thirty six,
Speaker 1: Robert Johnson appeared at the general store of one Henry
Speaker 1: Columbus Spear, who'd become legendary in the city of Jackson, Mississippi,
Speaker 1: as a talent scout and broker for some of the
Speaker 1: biggest names on the burgeoning blue circuit of the day.
Speaker 1: William Harris, Ishman Bracy, Charlie Patton, and Evans Son House.
Speaker 1: After playing only a few tunes for him, Spear was speechless. Immediately,
Speaker 1: he put Johnson in contact with an English record producer
Speaker 1: named Don Law. Law brought Johnson to Room four one
Speaker 1: four of the gun To Hotel in San Antonio, Texas,
Speaker 1: and for the next two days, the young musician recorded
Speaker 1: several of what would later become absolute standards of the genre.
Speaker 1: I Believe, I'll Dust my Broom, Sweet Home Chicago, Terraplane Blues,
Speaker 1: and an especially mysterious track known as cross Road Blues,
Speaker 1: which Johnson seemed reticent to furnish with any added context
Speaker 1: or illuminating detail. A few months later, in June nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty seven, Law arranged for Johnson to finish his recording
Speaker 1: at a makeshift studio in Dallas. He set down a
Speaker 1: total of twenty nine tracks, most of which seemed to
Speaker 1: emerge perfectly, formed in little more than two or three takes,
Speaker 1: and for someone so inexperienced, Law was a little taken
Speaker 1: aback when Johnson insisted did the songs not exceed three
Speaker 1: minutes in length, almost as though some kind of spell
Speaker 1: might be broken, should he deviate from it, given how
Speaker 1: slap dash the recording process had been. The first single
Speaker 1: released by Johnson, Terraplaine Blue, who did remarkably well commercially,
Speaker 1: selling over ten thousand copies. Most, if not all, of
Speaker 1: the tracks Johnson taped between November nineteen thirty six and
Speaker 1: June nineteen thirty seven still survived today. When a young
Speaker 1: Keith Richards first heard the record in the early nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: which had been introduced to him by bandmate Brian Jones,
Speaker 1: Richards was spellbound. Richards would later tell interviewers, when I
Speaker 1: first heard it, I said to Brian, who's that Robert Johnson?
Speaker 1: He said, yeah, but who's the other guy playing with him?
Speaker 1: Because I was hearing two guitars, it took me a
Speaker 1: long time to realize he was actually doing.
Speaker 2: It all by himself or was he.
Speaker 1: Tragically, for Robert Johnson, he wouldn't get to enjoy much
Speaker 1: more more of the success that the early sales of
Speaker 1: Terraplane Blues seemed to promise. On August sixteenth, nineteen thirty eight,
Speaker 1: at the age of twenty seven, Johnson died from unknown
Speaker 1: causes near the city of Greenwood, Mississippi. Because his death
Speaker 1: wasn't reported widely at the time, we are left with
Speaker 1: several competing theories as to what actually happened. No formal
Speaker 1: autopsy is known to have taken place, and because of
Speaker 1: the inherent racism of the American South at that time,
Speaker 1: it is likely that the authorities decided instead to make
Speaker 1: do with a pro former examination of his body to
Speaker 1: file the death certificate quickly. Some have speculated that he
Speaker 1: died from complications related to untreated congenital syphilis. Others have
Speaker 1: focused their attention on events immediately preceding Johnson's death, where
Speaker 1: it was known that he'd secured a residency for a
Speaker 1: few weeks at the Three Forks Club in the village
Speaker 1: of Itabina, about fifteen miles west of the city of Greenwood, Proper.
Speaker 1: According to another contemporary of Johnson's, David Honeyboy Edwards, Johnson's
Speaker 1: predilection for the company of women may have contributed to
Speaker 1: his untimely death. In this version of the story, Johnson
Speaker 1: was seen flirting with a married woman one evening after
Speaker 1: finishing one of his sets. The woman had been drinking,
Speaker 1: and in a quiet interlude between songs, a bottle of
Speaker 1: whiskey materialized and was offered up to Johnson, seeing that
Speaker 1: the bottle had been tampered with before it was placed
Speaker 1: in front of him. When Johnson went to take a
Speaker 1: swig from it, the young honey boy Edwards, who claimed
Speaker 1: to be with him at the time, knocked it out
Speaker 1: of his hand. Already drunk from a long night of
Speaker 1: drinking on stage with its band, Johnson admonished Edwards. Then
Speaker 1: the woman's husband is said to have arrived and encouraged
Speaker 1: Johnson to drink. He accepted the invitation graciously and set
Speaker 1: about knocking the whiskey back. Not long afterwards, it said
Speaker 1: that Johnson began to feel ill. He was escorted back
Speaker 1: to his room in the early hours of the morning.
Speaker 1: Over an excruciating three day period, Johnson's condition worsened before
Speaker 1: he finally died in a convulsive state of severe pain,
Speaker 1: having supposedly been poisoned by the jealous husband. Many years later,
Speaker 1: American musicologist and folklorist Robert mac McCormick claimed to have
Speaker 1: tracked down the elusive husband and elicited a confession from
Speaker 1: him that he poisoned Robert Johnson with strychnine. He refused
Speaker 1: to reveal the man's name, saying that the confession was
Speaker 1: given to him in confidence. But the mystery of Robert
Speaker 1: Johnson's tumultuous life and death didn't end there. I went
Speaker 1: to the cross road, fell down on my knees, asked
Speaker 1: the Lord above, have mercy now, save poor Bob if
Speaker 1: you please, sings Robert Johnson on the startling cross Road Blues.
Speaker 1: But in the wake of his untimely death, some began
Speaker 1: to wonder if, instead of the Lord, it was some
Speaker 1: one else entirely whom Robert Johnson had pleaded to for
Speaker 1: help while on his knees at those cross roads, had
Speaker 1: as some began to wonder, he died so young because
Speaker 1: that was the price of some kind of bargain that
Speaker 1: he'd made. A few years after Johnson's death, a strange
Speaker 1: story began to take shape regarding an apparent detour that
Speaker 1: Johnson took after he set out all those years ago
Speaker 1: as a budding but limited twenty one year old musician
Speaker 1: to find fame and fortune in Memphis, Tennessee. Some say
Speaker 1: it was his old mentor, Ike Zimmerman, who gave him
Speaker 1: the instructions. On the next full moon, he was to
Speaker 1: head out to the crossroads near the Dockery plantation in
Speaker 1: the heart of the Mississippi Delta. Whereat midnight a visitor
Speaker 1: would appear that would finally help him realize his ambition
Speaker 1: to become the greatest blues player of his generation. And
Speaker 1: perhaps Johnson did just that, and made his way out
Speaker 1: to that perfectly ordinary, nondescript crossroads at the next full moon,
Speaker 1: only to find suddenly, at the stroke of midnight that
Speaker 1: all the nocturnal ambients that had so filled the air,
Speaker 1: the cicadas, singing, owl's hooting, the wind blowing, had disappeared completely.
Speaker 1: Perhaps it was then that the figure he'd been told
Speaker 1: to expect made him self known, a peculiar looking man
Speaker 1: dressed smartly, put in unusual clothes for the age, who,
Speaker 1: on seeing Johnson with his guitar, offered to show him
Speaker 1: some licks of his own, before handing the instrument back
Speaker 1: to the young man with a wry smile, And perhaps
Speaker 1: on taking it from him, it was only then that
Speaker 1: Johnson noticed how peculiarly long the man's fingers were, or
Speaker 1: the strange fire that seemed to glow in his eyes.
Speaker 1: And maybe Johnson asked the strange man to teach him
Speaker 1: everything he knew, to which the man said he would
Speaker 1: be more than happy to on one condition that Johnson
Speaker 1: sell him his soul in return, And perhaps it was
Speaker 1: then that Johnson happily signed it away. Many will be
Speaker 1: familiar with Christopher Marlow's classic Elizabethan drama Doctor Faustus, in
Speaker 1: which the eponymous Faustus sells his soul to the devil
Speaker 1: in return for knowledge and power. However, the notion of
Speaker 1: the devil's bargain or Faustian pact as its roots in
Speaker 1: much earlier cautionary tales about mortals making unwise covenants with
Speaker 1: divine beings. Perhaps the most famous example is the Greek
Speaker 1: myth of Orpheus and his Descent into the underworld, where
Speaker 1: the hero makes an agreement to retrieve the soul of
Speaker 1: his love Eurydicy, on condition that he doesn't once look
Speaker 1: behind him as they ascend back into the mortal realm.
Speaker 1: But as Orpheus approaches the surface, he is suddenly overcome
Speaker 1: with doubt, turning at last only to see the soul
Speaker 1: of his beloved being pulled away from him forever. But
Speaker 1: what if there were some truth to the idea. Perhaps
Speaker 1: the most well known historical example of a deal with
Speaker 1: the devil is the case of Bavarian born seventeenth century
Speaker 1: painter Johann Christoph Heitzmann, who claimed to have signed not one,
Speaker 1: but two pats for his soul in sixteen sixty eight.
Speaker 1: After Heitzman became an orphan and was left destitute at
Speaker 1: the age of seventeen, he claimed that the devil appeared
Speaker 1: to him and offered him a contract signed in ink
Speaker 1: and another signed in his own blunt. For nine agonizing years,
Speaker 1: Heisman apparently subsisted as the devil's bounden son. When the
Speaker 1: date finally arrived in sixteen seventy seven for the relinquishment
Speaker 1: of his soul, Heitzmann took sanctuary at a monastery in
Speaker 1: the Austrian town of Mariotsel. There a series of exorcisms
Speaker 1: was said to have been performed, culminating in the devil
Speaker 1: giving back the contracts and Heightsman taking vow to join
Speaker 1: the brotherhood of Saint John of God. The artist would
Speaker 1: eventually die in seventeen hundred, leaving behind a famous triptych
Speaker 1: depicting his ordeal. Of course, we only have Heitzman's word
Speaker 1: to take on this, and even if we are to
Speaker 1: believe that such a fabulous story played out. There are
Speaker 1: a number of other explanations for what actually took place.
Speaker 1: Sigmund Freud revisited the case in nineteen twenty three, and
Speaker 1: it was his belief that what Heisman experienced was a
Speaker 1: lifelong affliction with what he termed demonological neurosis or an
Speaker 1: advanced form of schizophrenia in today's modern parlance. But there
Speaker 1: are more modern examples of the Faustian pact at work,
Speaker 1: which defy and even supersede the publication of Freud's study
Speaker 1: into Heizmann. We are not so sophisticated that we have
Speaker 1: jettisoned the old mythologies entirely. They still linger in the
Speaker 1: high way. We speak about talented people who have flown
Speaker 1: too close to the sun and burned out before their time.
Speaker 1: It is no accident, for example, that rock and roll
Speaker 1: is still referred to as the Devil's music, or that
Speaker 1: we link the term so closely with the so called
Speaker 1: twenty seven Club, a term linking musicians as diverse as
Speaker 1: Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, and Amy Winehouse,
Speaker 1: all of whom died at the tender age of twenty
Speaker 1: seven and first among them was Robert Johnson. Blues historian
Speaker 1: Pete Welding had the opportunity to sit down with one
Speaker 1: of Johnson's contemporaries, Son House, for a Rolling Stone profile
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty six. When he asked the elderly legend
Speaker 1: about his brief association with the traveling bluesman during the
Speaker 1: depression year of the nineteen thirties, House seemed to have
Speaker 1: no doubt where the talent had come from. He sold
Speaker 1: his soul to the devil to play like that, House
Speaker 1: said to Welding, to his mind and many others. It
Speaker 1: was the only explanation for Johnson's sudden mastery over the
Speaker 1: sliding blues scale, which just a short time before had
Speaker 1: eluded him so perceptibly. Perhaps there was an element of
Speaker 1: professional jealousy that hot young players from the UK like
Speaker 1: John Mayle, Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck were beginning to
Speaker 1: tout Johnson as an influence. Indeed, the fact that the
Speaker 1: likes of House had struggled for decades to support themselves,
Speaker 1: only for mainstream white audiences to suddenly pay attention to
Speaker 1: the art form after it had been adapted by men
Speaker 1: who looked like them must have been a source of
Speaker 1: great frustration. Now there was an opportunity to have some
Speaker 1: fun with Johnson's legend. He had, after all, left pressure
Speaker 1: little behind in terms of his history, and it's plausible
Speaker 1: to think that the likes of House was putting his
Speaker 1: tongue firmly in his cheek at his gullible new white
Speaker 1: audience's expense. Whatever the truth of House's intentions may have been,
Speaker 1: there is no doubt that it must have come as
Speaker 1: a shock when the relatively unknown Johnson suddenly made his
Speaker 1: appearance as a fully fledged, accomplished blues guitarist sometime in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty four or thirty five. We can almost imagine
Speaker 1: Son House sitting there nursing a glass of tepid beer,
Speaker 1: smoke swirling around his weather beaten face in an old
Speaker 1: shotgun shack as the evening kicks into gear. Perhaps he's
Speaker 1: taken his woman out for the evening, the two of
Speaker 1: them just waiting for the next high energy jive to begin.
Speaker 1: A hush descends over the room as a young Robert
Speaker 1: Johnson shuffles onto the clapboard platform and takes his seat
Speaker 1: on the stool. Then he takes his guitar out of
Speaker 1: its tattered wooden case, leans forward toward the microphone and
Speaker 1: starts to play a set of which no one has
Speaker 1: ever heard the like before. Given that so little about
Speaker 1: Johnson's actual life was committed to the written record, getting
Speaker 1: to the bottom of whether he truly learned his trade
Speaker 1: at the lap of a mentor who taught him in
Speaker 1: a graveyard, or whether he sold his soul to the
Speaker 1: devil at midnight on a barren crossroads near Docking, Mississippi,
Speaker 1: or whether he really was murdered by a jealous husband
Speaker 1: is nihon impossible. What we do know is that its
Speaker 1: imprint can be found on so much, from delta blues
Speaker 1: inflected records like the Rolling Stones is Let It Bleed
Speaker 1: and Exile on Main Street, to less obviously conventional modes
Speaker 1: of influence, like how it is now a standard that
Speaker 1: a pop song should be only three minutes long. And
Speaker 1: although there is something undoubtedly appealing about referring to rock
Speaker 1: and roll, both to those who play it and those
Speaker 1: who listen to it as the Devil's music, with Johnson
Speaker 1: its devil son in chief, it's worth pausing for a
Speaker 1: moment to think about what that idea really does. Because
Speaker 1: the myth of Robert Johnson's selling his Soul was not
Speaker 1: something that meaningfully followed him in life. He played mostly
Speaker 1: in black establishments, places already viewed with suspicion by churches
Speaker 1: and white authorities alike. To many in mainstream America, blues
Speaker 1: musicians were considered itinerant, immoral, and dangerous. The music itself
Speaker 1: was already seen as transgressive. The devil didn't need to
Speaker 1: be invoked to make it suspect. But after Johnson's death,
Speaker 1: the story takes on a different function. It begins to
Speaker 1: do a kind of cultural work. The myth reinforces something
Speaker 1: that many people were already comfortable believing, that this kind
Speaker 1: of brilliance emerging from a poor young black man in
Speaker 1: the Jim Crow South couldn't possibly be the product of discipline, intellect,
Speaker 1: or intention. It had to come from somewhere else, somewhere darker,
Speaker 1: somewhere other. In some ways, you might say, the legend
Speaker 1: doesn't elevate Johnson, it diminishes him. It strips away the
Speaker 1: hours of practice, the mentorship, the travel, the listening, the
Speaker 1: pioneering innovation of combining various musical forms. All of that
Speaker 1: is replaced with a supernatural shortcut. His talent was no
Speaker 1: longer earned, it was given to him, and maybe for
Speaker 1: white audiences encountering Johnson's music decades later, this framing was
Speaker 1: often easier to accept, not through conscious malice, but through
Speaker 1: something slipperia and more ingrained. It preserved hierarchy, It exoticized
Speaker 1: black creativity. It cast the blues as primal, mystical, and dangerous,
Speaker 1: as opposed to modern, innovative and authored. In all likelihood,
Speaker 1: although he clearly had an aptitude for it, Johnson simply
Speaker 1: practiced obsessively. He traveled constantly, absorbing the different styles of
Speaker 1: different regions. He learned from older musicians like Iike Zimmermon.
Speaker 1: He innovated with structure and narrative lyricism. It was genius
Speaker 1: and in that sense perhaps even supernatural. But it isn't magic.
Speaker 1: Its work well, that's my two cents. At least in truth.
Speaker 1: We'll never know for sure exactly how Robert Johnson came
Speaker 1: to possess the talent he did, or indeed why he
Speaker 1: died at such a tragically young age. That will remain
Speaker 1: forever tantalizingly unexplained. This episode was written by James Connor
Speaker 1: Patterson and Richard mc clean Smith. Thank you as ever
Speaker 1: for listening Unexplained as an Avy Club Productions podcast created
Speaker 1: by Richard mc lean Smith. All other elements of the podcast,
Speaker 1: including the music, are also produced by me Richard mc
Speaker 1: clan smith. Unexplained The book and audiobook is now available
Speaker 1: to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble,
Speaker 1: Waterstones and other bookstores. Please subscribe to and rate the
Speaker 1: show wherever you get your podcasts, and feel free to
Speaker 1: get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the
Speaker 1: stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an
Speaker 1: explanation or a story of your own you'd like to share.
Speaker 1: You can find out more at Unexplained podcast dot com
Speaker 1: and reach us online through X and Blue Sky, That
Speaker 1: Unexplained Pod and Facebook at Facebook dot com, Forward Slash,
Speaker 1: Unexplained Podcast.
Speaker 2: A.
Speaker 3: Recry It Came, and.
Speaker 2: And any More Mone Blow an
Speaker 3: Assassssssssss