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Short Stuff: Robert Johnson and the Devil · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to short Stuff. There's Chuck, there's Jerry.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: I'm Josh, and this is Welsh. I already said, short stuff,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: I've already screwed up and wasted time, squandered precious time. Chuck,
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: let's just get started. Bannon in it? Oh yeah, in it?
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Like I said, Oh, yeah, who was the I can't
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: remember the Simpsons character? Now? What a dummy bleeding gums Murphy.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Well he played the sacks. Yeah, I know, but I
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: don't know. He was a jazz man, not a blues man.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: He was a hepcat. He was super happy. He wore
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: like sandals year round without socks with suits, I believe.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: So yeah, this is about the blues, and specifically Robert Johnson. Um.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: And this is I have an interesting relationship with the blues. Yeah,
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: and that I love occasionally putting on like Sun House
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: or Robert Johnson or something like that, um and enjoy
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: it for a bit, but then I have to turn
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: it off. And I also recognize that blues is the
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: foundation of rock and roll, like full stop, but I
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: also hate like I just call it the blind Willie's Blues.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: It's a place here in Atlanta. This legendary blues barber Like,
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: it's like the blues version of smooth jazz. Yeah, it's
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: like where you see like the fifty two year old
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: and flip flops and cargo shorts up there playing the blues.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: That's the stuff that makes me hate the blues despite
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: loving rock and roll and recognizing that blues is the
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: foundation of that. I'm with you, so you can collective,
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: you can. It is complicated. Actually, that's really really good
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: way to put it. All right, So we're talking about
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Robert Johnson and whether or not he sold his soul
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: to the devil at the Crossroads to gain more talent
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: as a blues guitarist and singer. Spoiler, that did not happen,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: because there is no there is no devil. What I've
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: wasted my life. But we're gonna talk a little bit
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: about Robert Johnson's history and uh, and he's certainly man
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: who sang the blues for a reason, a lot of reasons. Yeah,
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: he had a pretty rough life. So he was as
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: a little kid. He he got moved from place to place,
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: mostly between uh little towns in Mississippi and I believe
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Memphis and um he uh, he lost his dad early
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: and I think his dad left, his stepfather abused him. Um,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: and he uh, yeah, he just kind of had a
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: rough especially after he became an adult. He married his girlfriend, Virginia,
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: and they had a kid, and Virginia and the baby
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: died during childbirth, and so he kind of, um got
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: unmoored after that and very very quickly, um started singing
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: the blues more than ever, became a pretty hardcore alcoholic,
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: I believe as a result. So yeah, he he definitely
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: had it rough, and he lived the life that that
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: you could live to be the foundation of the Blues basically,
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: which he grew up to be. And they they think
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: he even he's a member of the twenty seven club,
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: perhaps the first even if you really think about it.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: But he died at twenty seven years old, supposedly out
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: of and you know, records are tough on guys like
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: Robert Johnson, but supposedly was poisoned by the husband of
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: one of his lovers on you know, when he was
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: twenty seven years old. Right. So, but in that time, though,
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: he managed to create like a body of work that,
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: like you said, is is basically pointed to is one
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: of the major blocks in the foundation of rock and roll. Um,
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: this is in the thirties that he was he was
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: playing prolifically, right, Yeah, and he you know, he followed
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: in the footsteps of Uh. You know, he wasn't the
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: first blues guitarist by any means. No, No, he wasn't.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: He wasn't. In fact, Um, there's the story, and this
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: is the whole thing where it's like, you know, why
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: why did he sell the sol of double? What's the
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: what's the story? We're gonna tell you this story. The
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: whole thing starts back in and robin Inville, Mississippi, and
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: there is a duke joint where the blues is being
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: played by a couple of legends, um sonhouse who you mentioned, Uh?
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: And I think who else was there that night? Willie
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Brown was playing that night and these guys were already
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: established as Delta Blues Mett right and Um. The house
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: was packed, and I guess in between sets, a very
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: young Robert Johnson, uh came up to the stage and
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: grabbed and I'm sure the stage is just a chair
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: that was on the same level as the other chairs
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: or wherever people were sitting and understanding, Um, and he
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: grabs the guitar not even his guitar, I mean the audacity, right,
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: and he starts playing, and because it's Robert Johnson, you
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: would assume that everybody was just stopped, transfixed at how
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: amazing he was. That is not how it went down
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: at all. As a matter of fact. No, he wasn't
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: very good. Uh, and Sonhouse, you know, even says, uh,
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: why don't he said that? People came and told him,
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: why don't some of y'all go down and make that
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: boy put that thing down? He's running us crazy, right
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: because his playing was so bad and this is humiliating enough,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: they went over and basically said, you you not only
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: need to stop playing, you need to leave this juke joy.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: You just showed you're actually not not cool enough to
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: even sit here as like an audience member anymore. So
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: he left and he disappeared, and he vanished. And then
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: a year later, as legend has it, right, uh, at
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: another blues place again, Willie Brown and um Sonhouse, we're
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: playing and Robert Johnson shows up, and he shows up
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: with a guitar, his own guitar this time, and he
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: starts playing and it's like nothing anyone else has ever heard.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: This guy has turned insanely good, almost overnight, and he's
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: got a seventh string on his guitar and everyone was
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: like what yeah, and he used it to great effect.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: Eric Clapton put it, um kind of succinctly. He said that, Um,
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: he was simultaneously playing a disjointed baseline on the low strings,
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: rhythm on the middle rings, and lead on the trouble strings,
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: which had the effect of sounding like there were multiple
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: people playing when it was really just him on that
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: seven string guitar. That's how fast and how varied the
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: music he was playing was, and no one had ever
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: heard anything like it. Yeah. So uh. The legend is
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: that he went down to the crossroads during that time,
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: sold his soul to the devil, and Satan granted him
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: with these special talents in exchange for his soul. But
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: like you already spoiled that, that actually probably didn't happen.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: So should we take a break. We should take a break.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: We'll do some more explaining when we get back. M okay, chuck.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: So we've established that there actually isn't a devil unless
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: it's the greatest trick you ever pulled. We may have
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: just fallen victim to that, but um, not only, so
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: does that mean that that story didn't happen in that sense,
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: it probably didn't even happen to Robert Johnson. There's seems
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: to have been a case of mistaken identity because there's
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: a story of an earlier blues man who's not related
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: to Robert Johnson, but at the same last name. His
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: name was Tommy Johnson. And if you're a fan of
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: the movie, oh brother, were art thou and you were
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: only familiar with Robert Johnson like me, you may have
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: been wondering all this time why they didn't just call
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: that character Tommy Johnson Robert Johnson, since he was clearly
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: based on Robert Johnson. Well, it turns out, I know
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: now that the Coen Brothers did their homework. They tend
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: to do that. So, yeah, Tommy Johnson was in that
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: movie and had sold his soul to the devil in
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: that movie. It's been covered elsewhere. That was a great
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: movie to me. Crossroads with Ralpha Maccio was a good well.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: I mean it was one of those HBO movies that,
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: as a young kid who got a guitar at thirteen,
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: watched like fifty times. I thought it was pretty great.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: I mean, Steve. I isn't it? Oh? Yeah, he plays
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: Satan's right hand man and lead shredder in the in
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: the main cutting heads competition at the end. Did Pat
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: Morita play Satan? He totally should have. No. Who was it?
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: Oh man, he's been in stuff. If you saw him,
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: he be like, oh he plays a good Satan wings Houser. No,
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: Tree Williams No, I don't know. Then those are the
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: only three actors you know? Uh, Tommy Chong nor anyway,
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: I haven't seen it in a while. I'd like to
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: check it out. But that there's always sort of been
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: this blues legend all the way around is where the
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: crossroads you go meet the Devil. You sign up for
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: a lifetime of hell fire in exchange for um. But
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: what seems to be like a good deal on earth,
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: even though the tail end of that tale always ends
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: is like they die young or something. Right. Don't fall
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: for it, kids, that's right, Like it's supposedly Jimmy Page
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: sold is sold at the devil too? Sure? Who didn't
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: you know? So? Um? The story, though, you know, seems
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: to have originated with Tommy Johnson. And there's a there's
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: a an article, there's this site Chuck called um Paranormal Academic,
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: which is just like a dream come true for me.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: I just found it. Um. It was linked to in
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: this house Stuff Works article, and I mean, you're not
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: going to tinfoil hat dot com anywhere, No, not anymore.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: I've kind I've resended my membership um so on Paranormal Academic.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: There's a an excerpt from an interview with Tommy Johnson's
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: brother who said, Tommy told me the story of what happened,
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: and he supposedly went down to the crossroads. He said,
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: anybody can do this. You get onto the crossroads, get
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: there a little before midnight to make sure they're on time,
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: which is hilarious that he included a little detail be
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: be punctual and um, if you bring your own instrument,
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: like great big black man will show up, take your
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: instrument from you, tune it for you, hand it back
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: and the deal is done. That's how it happens. And
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: that's what the legend became. And but then at some
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: point it seems to have been transposed onto from Tommy
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: Johnson onto the later on much greater known Robert Johnson.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: And Robert Johnson seems to have been like sure Yeah,
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: that happened to me, and you can really see that
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: in some of the song titles of the body of
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: his work. Yeah, hell hound on my trail, Me and
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: the Devil blues um. Obviously the song Crossroads, Crossroad blues
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: up jumped the devil. Here's the thing though, The singing
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: about the devil and talking about the devil in that
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: community at that time was very commonplace, and Robert Johnson
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: was talking about his demons, not literal demons, just his
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: demons in life because he had a rough go and
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: then you know, fell into alcoholism and chasing women and uh,
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: probably believed that the hell hounds were on his tail
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: or I'm sorry, on his trail right, in his it's right,
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: the devil had given him. So um. That's the interpretation
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: by his grandson, Stephen Johnson, who also has an answer
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: for that question. Okay, alright, fine, but yeah, but besides
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: the supernatural, how could somebody go from zero to hero
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: blues legend wise in just a year like that? And
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: Stephen Johnson's like, actually it is probably more like three years,
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: Like yeah, he actually probably was kicked out of that
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: juke joint for playing badly and he probably did come
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: back and blow those same people away. But it wasn't
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: a year is about three years, and he didn't go
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: sell a soul of the devil. He went and studied
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: under a legendary guitarist named Ike Zimmerman, whose family confirms
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: that Robert Johnson was there all the time around that time. Yeah. So,
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: like the the boring but also inspiring answer was practice. Yeah,
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: don't he got good because he played a ton of guitar.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: Probably uh, because he wanted to get better, but probably
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: also due to a little bit of shame and wanted
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: to go back there and make a name for himself.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: So he practiced and practiced in practice like anybody who
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: was good at anything does. And that is the true
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: legacy of Robert Johnson, legendary blues man. Right right, well,
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: thanks for listening. You can read about this article on
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: how stuff Works. That's where we got this one, right Chuck,
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: That's right, all right, Well then until next time, Short
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: stuff away. Stuff you should know is production of iHeart
• 12:33
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• 12:36
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• 12:39
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